As someone who has covered IT in the enterprise for more than 25 years, it’s pretty fair to say that I have an ongoing passion for the subject at hand.

Today we live in challenging economic times where a lot of our focus in on reducing the cost of delivering IT. Unfortunately, the business value of IT frequently gets lost -- in good times or bad -- in all the jargon and nomenclature we wrap around it. This blog is going to be dedicated to helping people see past all the bits and bytes to appreciate the real business implications of new and emerging technologies in the enterprise.

For those of you who may not be familiar with me, I first cut my teeth in this business as a reporter working for a publication called Digital Review just as the MicroVAX II was being rolled out by Digital Equipment Corp. After stints with ComputerWorld and PC Week, I became the news editor and eventually Editor-in-Chief of InfoWorld. From there I went on to become the Editor-in-Chief of CRN and then the Editorial Director for Ziff-Davis Enterprise, which publishes eWeek, Baseline, CIO Insight and Channel Insider.

Although we are in a time when most people are focused on getting more value out of their existing IT investments, the fact remains that we’re also in the early stages of a Renaissance period in enterprise IT. We’re seeing a rapid evolution of technologies thanks to recent advances in enabling technologies such as new processors, virtualization software, faster networks and more intelligent storage systems. These technologies are providing a foundation for a host of software innovations that will ultimately transform every business process in the enterprise.

By helping to explain the downstream implications of these technology advances, it’s my hope that in some small way this blog will contribute to not only speeding the adoption of new technologies, but also doing it in the most intelligent way possible.

When you think about that, it’s a pretty tall order. Clearly, I’m going to need to call on the collective intelligence of the entire enterprise IT community starting with you. So please feel free to contact me at mike.vizard@itbe.com with your hopes and fears for enterprise IT. Together, we can advance the best IT has to offer, while simultaneously laying to rest many of the misconceptions that all too frequently hold IT back.