Stephanie Overby

Hiring was hot in the late 1990s, as CIOs threw money around trying to find and retain top technical talent. But early in the new millennium hiring fizzled, and CIOs, pressured to cut costs and do more with less, outsourced much IT work and even fired employees.

The internal IT staff is back. Hiring needs have changed and people with business skills are the most valuable. They're also the hardest to find.

CIOs who outsource discrete processes that have well-defined business rules are almost always happy with the outcome

For 18 months, Haidar Attia has been hard at work setting up a new IT infrastructure. He has purchased 500 new PCs, nine new servers, new network hardware and a private switch for his data network. He has bought a physical security system, installed voice over IP and deployed a new e-mail system. Now he's rolling out new business applications. The work is ordinary, but because Attia is the IT director for the Iraq Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, there is much at stake.

Even the smartest CIOs can miss one of the most important considerations

The CIO of Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse Corp. says he values the agility and experience of his 180 in-house staff members more than any savings he could get from overseas vendors.

When IT executives at Life Time Fitness Inc., a fast-growing health and nutrition company, first considered sending systems development work offshore two years ago, they tried to do everything right.

You can't throw a rock in technology circles these days without hitting some soul sounding off about the importance of running IT like a business. But what does it mean to "run IT like a business"? It sounds logical. It sounds beneficial. And for many, it sounds like just another in the long line of ill-defined catchphrases that the IT community latches onto to no avail.