In the past, and perhaps even now, the relationship between an organisation and its IT function was defined largely by technology. IT s retreat into technology is entirely understandable. IT was required to focus on communal services and systems for the business, often drawing further away from the business as the technology became more demanding, and frankly more friendly than users. On the other hand, easy to use PC application packages available from your nearest corner-store haven t made the relationship between IT and business any easier to sustain. Most of these PC applications are simple to operate, have little security and the crudest networking capability if any. This might lead the average business person to believe that IT is easy. When in fact we know that the complexity of IT is seldom within a system, and is more often found outside the system, in the architecture, in the interfacing, in the multi-user accessibility functions, in the security and firewalling, and in the upgrading and general maintenance (backups, etc.). No wonder IT and business people don t see eye to eye, in many cases not seeing each other for weeks at a time.

The bad news is that the relationship between IT and the business is one of the primary determinants of success for IT. We have to make an effort. Many CIOs have set up user-liaison positions only to be disappointed with their failure1. Some business units have set up the opposite IT liaison function to face similar disappointment.