Definition: Information technology is the application of technological tools and methodologies to information processing within an organization. It is the way businesses and institutions handle all the information they have contact with by using technology as the platform to do it more effectively.
What Does Information Technology Mean?
The concept of information technology was brought up in the early 20th century and it was used in the context of new super computers that had outstanding capabilities to multi-task and processing huge amounts of information and there was an increasing interest in the way that information could be handled and analyzed and that paved the way for information technology to rise.
What IT does is to systematically design a digital infrastructure that gathers and analyzes all information required by the organization to present it in an adequate and useful manner to those in charge of making the decisions. There are many elements involved in information technology, like hardware, software, networks, operators and processes and they all work together to achieve this goal of gathering and processing all information received and generated by a given institution.
Example
A company called Tasty Apples Co. distributes ready-to-eat apples to the retail market of the state of Nevada. The company has been growing fast since last year due to several medical studies that has been released about the benefits of including apples in daily diets. In order to understand the market and gain as much as possible from this trend the company wants to set up a top-of-the-line IT system.
In order to do that, they hired an IT Manager that designed a plan to invest boldly in technological tools that will help the company get the most out of this season. The plan included an ERP system implementation in all areas and levels of the company, an investment in hardware including new computers and servers, enhancements in the existing online tools like the company’s website and social media, and also an investment to increase the size of the bandwidth in all company locations.
He expects these initial measures can help the company understand the nature of this opportunity and allow it to profit as much as possible from it.
