In 2003, Nicolas Carr wrote an article called “IT doesn’t matter,” which created significant discomfort in the IT community. In the article, the author compares infrastructural technologies to IT in that both provide a competitive advantage only at their early stages of availability. His point in the article was primarily that as technology is endorsed by more companies, the power of technology diminishes as a competitive advantage and investments are made basically for the sake of doing business without any advantage.

Carr later wrote a book, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, where he compared the evolution of the Internet to electricity by predicting that Internet services will be provided through a grid, just like electricity. What Carr did not consider is that electricity, the railroad and other infrastructural technologies he builds his opinion upon, are only one dimensional and do not offer a competitive advantage once their build-out is completed. Conversely, I believe IT has endless dimensions that are constantly evolving to better serve end users, customers, partners, you know it. Generally, IT is filled with visionary leadership who understand and can articulate how IT will continue to solve personal and organizational issues and provide those companies that supply that with a competitive advantage.

Fast forward ten years to today.

To support my point, we just need to observe what technology has to offer. With the introduction of cloud services, mobility and social media, IT presents endless opportunities for differentiation and ultimately creating a competitive advantage. Companies that realize the value of these emerging technologies and effectively use them will be best positioned to become established leaders in their markets since they leveraged IT to create a competitive advantage and achieve better results for their shareholders. Today we are just scratching the surface of what can be achieved.

B.Y.O.D is already recognized as a platform for endless solutions that will provide competitive advantage in the years to come. Companies are realizing that the proliferation of mobile devices and the secure access to enterprise applications opens a whole new way of doing business, such as improving customer satisfaction, reducing cycle time and increasing partner loyalty.

I wonder what you think.