Which is more important in IT? Information or Technology?

Part of my work as an IT consultant is to set up new IT systems for businesses. Many businesses behave much like individuals when it comes to IT. They want the latest technology and the most flashy hardware. Their focus seems to be squarely on the "technology" side of things.

I often have to decide if I will go along with or fight my clients attempting to out "techno" other local business competitors with whiz-bang gadgetry and dazzle their employees with really techy apps.

Lost in the rush for high tech is the reason why the technology exists in the first place. Information. All the technology in the world is useless if it cannot collect, store, retrieve, and manipulate information efficiently. The Information in any IT system should have equal or greater value than the technology used in that system.

It is therefore the information in a system which should decide the technology of that system.

But when the entire focus is on technology, it is sometimes difficult to get clients to see these truths.

And it isn't simply a matter of old and new technology. While hardware generally moves from lower to higher technology, the higher technology is not always better in every application and the lower technology is not always inferior. In the IT world, new technology can be rejected by the masses and die, leaving early adopters stranded. On the other hand, new technology occasionally can leave everyone wondering how such a simple and elegant solution could have gone unnoticed for so long.

For businesses, having technology which is more valuable than the information it is used to manipulate is a waste of resources and presents an unnecessarily steep learning curve for users. Employees then begin to use the extra technology for non-work related activities. At businesses which have 3 times the internet speed they require, young male employees are twice as likely to use the connection for online gaming. Overtech-ing then has the dreaded double hit of wasting money and making employees less efficient.

Undertech-ing can be just as detrimental to the bottom line. It exposes your information to loss or theft. But it also makes employee under-value the information in the system and thereby leave themselves open to theft of data the old fashioned way. I recently had to help a company where all the employees were saving sensitive data to their laptops because it was dicey trying to save it to their old, slow, unreliable server. One stolen laptop and the company was facing a catastrophic information security problem.

The lure of flashy new tech is beguiling, and the comfort familiar old tech is reassuring, but information is king. Technology should follow the information. Beware of the IT expert pushing only technology as the only solution to your IT needs.

By George Andrews.