IT versus BT

I'm sitting in a TOGAF enterprise architecture class today listening to an interesting discussion about the responsibility of CIO's and enterprise architects to communicate the value of IT to the business, but I keep wanting to violently slide back to the position that effective 21st century business leaders should completely understand business technology as much as 19th century leaders understood the power of steam, of railroads or the telegraph. This artificial distinction of IT as a separate function is insane.

Centralized IT infrastructure should be in the cloud, generic systems should be served up software as a service style and specialized business tool should be the province of business analysts, business technologists embedded in the business. Some business technology strategists may need to be centralized, but they should be an offshoot of corporate strategy and planning.