Stories by: Barbara Gomolski

An IT manager in a telecommunications company recently told me that he is waging a major battle over the mainframe. It seems that the high-level executives in IT (along with the company's CIO) have been singing a familiar song: "The Mainframe Has Got to Go." The execs are principally concerned with three things:

In the next 15 years, there will be unprecedented opportunities to exploit IT for competitive advantage. In the next 15 years, IT really won't matter, and organizations will spend as little as possible in this area.

Information technology professionals generally eat their own dog food. That is, as a group, we practice what we preach. Go to any place where IT people gather, and you'll see the latest and greatest in communications devices -- phones, pagers and various input/output hardware.

Information technology professionals generally eat their own dog food. That is, as a group, we practice what we preach. Go to any place where IT people gather, and you'll see the latest and greatest in communications devices -- phones, pagers and various input/output hardware.

Have you noticed that just about all of your creditors are pushing automatic online bill paying in a big way? I'm talking about encouraging customers to have their billed amounts automatically withdrawn from their bank accounts each month.

Thirteen years ago, I embarked on a personal and professional adventure when I accepted a job in the Boston area while living in California, with the intention of telecommuting full time. The forward-thinking company that hired me (which happens to publish Computerworld) recognized that it could hire the best people if it cast its hiring net nationally. Now, of course, telecommuting is a norm and a perk that many IT professionals have come to expect. Still, it's not a given in all companies.