Is technology a dirty word in the enterprise?

We rarely talk about IT technologies as cool anymore. It suggests that we are making the age-old mistake of embracing technology for technology's sake. CIO Martin Davis' post "Implementing technologies for the right reasons" of July, 2011 drove home the point: 

"It often seems that we decide on a technology solution then start looking for an opportunity to use it, or we implement technology projects because they seem like a good idea.....The trouble is this often leads to what I call the “tail wagging the dog”," Davis wrote.

Technology for technology's sake is a tabu discussion in the enterprise unless it's in context of the business strategy. Strategy is the first priority with technologies as just one of several elements that support it.  

Check out the comments answers to our current CIO Question of the Week where HP Fellow Charlie Bess asks what will be the "driving technologies in IT" during the next decade (it might be hair splitting, but it occurs to me that question might ask which technologies will drive the enterprise, not so much IT).

Here's how CIOs think about technology:

"I do not believe that it is possible to forecast, with any degree of accuracy, technology trends beyond about three years into the future.  Things simply evolve too quickly.  I believe the way to look at this is not what technologies will drive IT but how trends in business, demographics and society will impact the workplace and the use of technology in it." -- college professor and retired CIO Joel Dobbs

"It's all about enablement. There are a lot of different and what some people may call new technologies out there but most people are looking at them for technology's sake. The technologies that succeed are those that enable people/communities/business to be more flexible and agile." -- Brian Katz, director and head of mobility engineering at Sanofi-Aventis U.S. LLC.

"Simple Charlie - customers/consumers. Technology innovation driven from any other perspective is wasted effort. IT companies must start to look at what the customer wants, how they want it, and why they need it - and deliver on that." -- HP security strategist Rafal Los.

It's rare now that a single technology surfaces that promises to transforms the enterprise. Will mobility transform the enterprise? Or does mobility ride on the back of strategy? It's probably a little of both, but how we think about technology has become a lot more contextualized.

What do you think? 

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