Technology Strategy as Rosetta Stone

Before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, Egyptian hieroglyphicswere indecipherable. The stone tablet with its message inscribed in threelanguages, one of which could be read because it was similar to modernGreek, enabled classical scholars to break the code and enabled the wallsof the pyramids to again speak.Immensely detailed, electronically encrypted customer data are thepresent business world’s inscrutable writing on the wall. Businesses aresucceeding, to various degrees, in understanding these messages—ac-cording to how accustomed they are to viewing their core business asinformation management. For example, the financial sector has long un-derstood transactions and dollar movements as bits of information andits technology strategy has emphasized massively networked process-ing. As a result, we are used to spending money without ever touchingit. The transition to web-based banking, brokering, and other financialservices has been rapid.The utility industry has also embraced information technology. Butunlike the financial sector utilities have a huge asset base in productionhardware—generating plant, transmission, and distribution. Technologystrategy has focused on these assets—coordinating them, improvingtheir reliability and performance. In discharging its responsibility to so-ciety of maintaining this infrastructure, the utility industry treats energyas a physical production process and a resulting commodity.