IT doesn't matter

The article shows the relevance of Information Technology and its competitive advantage for the short term and possible long term. The main argument that the article makes is that most advantages from Information Technology only last for a short while. This is exactly what we talked about in our class and I agree.

The advantages from IT only last as long as your competitors don’t possess the same capabilities that come from whatever source of advantage you have. Unfortunately, most companies will get the same, or very similar forms of IT in order to avoid losing profitable opportunities. For this reason, most competitive advantages are ephemeral.

For IT to be a competitive advantage, companies would need to create their own programs to run that no other company could get ahold of. In this case, a company could potentially have, and keep an advantage; however, it would be difficult operate. In today’s world, most companies need to transfer information to people outside the company. Programs used by competitors, suppliers, and buyers would have to be able to turn your formatting into one that their computers could understand. This would slow down growth, and limit the efficiency in many aspects for the company that has custom IT. It is better to have similar forms that can be easily transferred to others, rather than having customized technology that will hinder long term growth.