In 1965, a study was made by the U.S. Department of Commerce´s Bureau of Economic Analysis and this study showed that only 5% of the capital expenditures were spent on information technology. However as time went by, capital expenditures spent on technology kept rising dramatically. The same study was held in the late 1990s which showed that capital expenditures on IT had almost reached 50%.
About 20 years ago information technology was generally used by employees at a lower level rather than managers. However in the past few years this has changed. Managers and employees that are in a leading position nowadays appreciate the importance of information technology because they have realised that by using IT a lot of time can be saved and easiness is added to the job. Managers also use IT to digitalize their business models.
There is no doubt that information technology has facilitated an immense number of activities that many years ago used to take up an incredible amount of time, work and sacrifice. Before people used to send letters which could have taken days, weeks or even months depending on where you wanted to send to. But thanks to IT nowadays we are able to write emails and send them in an instant and receive them in an instant at basically no cost and no matter where you send them to. So three of the main things that IT has facilitated is definetely communication, connections and time reduction.
But this is not where it ends. IT has facilitated many processes but IT is also evolving every day. Many techonologies are developing that make it able to store more data on a computer and internet connections are also improving with the purpose of making the connection faster. The number of websites during the past 15 years has increased from 0 to 40 million, which shows how important and how widely IT is being used.
There are some major advantages that information technology offers but on the other hand these offered advantages are considered a threat to other businesses. For example nowadays it is possible to watch a movie or burn music for absolutely no cost over the internet, and this drastically affects that music and the film industry because they make their money by selling DVDs, CDs, Movie and concert tickets. People are looking for ways to save money everyday which IT has made possible but on the other hand IT has also made it possible for other businesses to go bankrupt. IT has also come into the hands of many terrorists who use this technology to plan their attacks but on the other hand information techonology has also provided and the police and secret services with many advantages to avoid these attacks.
In conclusion we can say that IT has revolutionized our world and will continue to do it as techonology advances. For example businesses purchase more than 100 million computers every year and mostly these computers replace older models wich means that IT continues to advance at a very rapid pace.
Sources:
Carr, N. (2004). Does IT Matter? Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage: Harvard Business Press.
