Information Technology

What does IT actually mean today? What does it mean Information Technology?" We kind of just toss it around and we don't really know what it means. It was a little bit more distinct  maybe 10 years ago, but now what does it involve, especially for those of you that are new software developers, some of you are confused. "What is the difference between IT and software development and what does it encompass?" In the corporate world, we call it IT and we kind of just know what that is, but what does it actually mean? It's basically the entire scope of all the jobs and everything that's related to computer and technology in business.  That has sort of changed a lot over the years because we used to have IT people and IT people were the people that would come and set up your computer at your corporate job and install Microsoft Windows on there and image your system and if your hard drive crashes they would fix it and they would set up your network and all that. 

The developer, operations people who are part developer and part operations people who do the infrastructure and also make sure that the software gets deployed. IT is technically you as a software developer, right? You're IT as well because you're part of IT. That was always kind of part of it. Information Technology is sort of that whole big scope of every single job role and responsibility that as to do with computers in the business setting. That's how we define it. Some people might define it differently but that's really what it is. The IT industry is that entire industry and it's really big. But a lot of things are changing, because again, we used to use the term to talk about the help desk people, the people that would set up your computer and networking and stuff, but a lot of times now we've got the cloud. 

 

We've got AWS where we're basically using virtual machines and we're using cloud based hosting and so a lot of companies aren't. They don't even really have IT, they're outsourcing IT essentially because that infrastructure, those guys that used to run those network wires and used to give you an IP address they're not needed anymore because we're able to solve that with technology. Now it's actually there's a lot of new software developers that are like, "Well, what is that? I don't understand it? Don't we just spin up a machine in the cloud? What is IT? I don't get it. They're software developers who write code and that's it and then we have to deploy the code that's it." 

 

IT in some companies has been eliminated based on that. You don't necessarily have to have a network guy. You don't necessarily have to have a help desk guy because you've got this ability as technologies change. That's really what it is and it's something that is evolving. if you've been in the industry for a while. Some of the newer developers that don't quite understand like this, because you might have never seen IT like we used to when you used to have to get a sub-net address and split up the IP and put the sub-net mask in and all this stuff. You had to have someone that knew how to do all that stuff, because now a lot of it is automatic or you don't need that or you're running wires and twisting cables and all that kind of stuff. There is still always be some of that, but a lot of companies can actually exist with everyone remote and you don't actually have a real IT department in the company and that the way for the future. IT is going to disappear but the general IT that includes software developers and all of those other roles that's' always going to be around obviously.