An article appearing in the May edition of the Harvard Business Review by Nicolas Carr entitled "IT Doesn't Matter" stirred up a great deal of dialog in recent weeks. His title, implying that IT isn't strategically important, is aimed more at sparking controversy--which it did--than rational discourse. In fact, the title is the only reference to the notion that "IT doesn't matter," but he did get Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Intel CEO Craig Barrett to launch counterarguments to his title thesis.

Carr's real argument is that IT doesn't matter any more than electricity. It's essential for survival in business, but it's not a strategic advantage. IT, like electricity, has become a commodity, and should be viewed and managed as such.

The author posits that IT is following the same trajectory as the steam engine, railroad, telegraph, and electricity. Each seminal invention went through a disruptive period of rapid build out and industry transformation, affording the early adopters competitive edge and economic advantage. Over time, as the technology become more ubiquitous, innovation and proprietary schemes gave way to the commodity factors of production, Carr says. Today, according to Carr, IT is on track to become simply the cost of doing business, an invisible infrastructure layer, and about as exciting and complex as plugging an electrical adapter into the wall.

Carr writes that "while no one can say precisely when the build out of infrastructural technology has concluded, there are many signs that the IT build out is much closer to its end than its beginning." He bases his assessment on the affordability of IT, vendors positioning themselves as utility suppliers, an overabundance of fiber-optic capacity, and IT capabilities outstripping most business needs.

I agree that IT infrastructure as we know it today is heading toward a kind of commoditization, but the road is not well paved.

Industry consolidation will continue, with fewer players who are increasingly less differentiated in their product offerings. Most IT executives are more pragmatic today, looking at technology as a way to lower costs and increase efficiency-not to reinvent their businesses. "It's getting much harder to achieve a competitive advantage through an IT investment, but it is getting much easier to put your business at a cost disadvantage," Carr writes.

Embedded in the universal call to reduce the complexity of IT is a move toward more standards, such as Web services, and a more level playing field in terms of technology. Prepackaged server clusters, software suites, outsourcing, and the push toward on-demand computing by the industry heavyweights all signal a focus on lowering the cost to deploy and manage technology. New categories or niches of software and hardware will continue to spring up that bring proprietary advantages to the vendors and customers, but they will mostly be short-lived. Differentiation among companies delivering IT products and services will have more to do with support, security, availability, integration, and the trust factor. Technology as a competitive weapon is more about execution and competency than a secret sauce.

Does that make IT less visible, more of commodity? Yes and no. It's a commodity if the technology itself is built out of fairly standard components that don't vary greatly among vendors or provide truly unique advantages. However, the problem is that most software vendors have not figured out yet how to build reliable, easy-to-configure-and-use software, and IT organizations are often dysfunctional. While IT executives wish that building an IT solution were as easy as plugging servers, software, and end-user devices into a network grid, that's not the case. Carr's notion of the commoditization and homogenization of infrastructure gives too much credit to IT as a mature industry with an established base of technology and best practices that will evolve linearly.

Although IT is becoming ubiquitous, especially via the Internet and the declining pricing for increasingly powerful technology, it is also messed up. The Internet may be the equivalent of the U.S. standard railroad gauge, but delivering value along that track is often elusive. IT is absolutely a strategic and competitive advantage to companies that can implement and manage it effectively-even if the constituent parts are more universal and provide no distinct advantage themselves.

"IT management should, frankly, become boring," Carr writes. "The key to success, for the vast majority of companies, is no longer to seek advantage aggressively but to manage costs and risks meticulously." While boring isn't the word I would use (how about pragmatic?), what Carr articulates is good common sense. Investments in Web services, grid computing, self-healing systems, pay-as-you-go services, embedded business processes and other innovations designed to improve reliability and reduce the cost to deliver IT should be done with caution.

Perhaps 10 years from now, when the complexities of today's IT have been overcome, a true era of commodity computing will dawn. But tomorrow's IT will present new, possibly unforeseen branches of technology, and start a new cycle of creativity and innovation.

We know a lot about automating processes with computers, for example, but we are just at the beginning of automating computing itself, which is an essential next step in IT evolution. In that scenario, several layers of IT can be viewed as a commodity---as a common foundation upon which new, strategically important technology innovations will arise.

Use TalkBack to let your fellow ZDNet readers know what you think. Or write to me at dan.farber@cnet.com. If you're looking for my commentaries on other IT topics, check the archives.