The terms "information technology" and "IT" are widely used in business and computing. People use the terms generically when referring to different types of computer-related work, which sometimes confuses their meanings.
Information technology in 4 minutes
A 1958 article in the Harvard Business Review referred to information technology as consisting of three basic components: computational data processing, decision support, and business software. This period marked the beginning of IT as an officially defined area of business; in fact, this article probably coined the term.
In the decades that followed, many companies created so-called "IT departments" to manage the computer technologies associated with their businesses. Whatever these departments worked on became the de facto definition of information technology, a definition that has evolved over time. Today, IT departments have responsibilities in areas such as computer technical support, corporate computer network and database management, enterprise software implementation, and information security.
Especially during the dotcom boom of the 1990s, information technology came to be associated with aspects of computing that went beyond those of IT departments. This broader definition of IT includes areas such as software development, computer systems architecture, and project management.
