Scarlett Pruit

At the Economist's Technology Industry Summit in Hanover on Wednesday, attendees were having deja vu. VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol), Linux in the enterprise, outsourcing and utility computing were themes of the day, and frankly, attendees said, these are nothing new. Those asking why they were talking about the same issues discussed six months ago and a year ago, were answered by IBM Corp. Vice President of Strategy Matthias Hartmann in his presentation "Why IT never did matter -- now more than ever."