Information and communication technologies

Information and Communications Technology or ICT, is often used as an extended synonym for information technology (IT), but is a more specific term that stresses the role of unified communications and the integration of telecommunications (telephone lines and wireless signals), computers as well as necessary enterprise software, middleware, storage, and audio-visual systems, which enable users to access, store, transmit, and manipulate information.

The phrase ICT had been used by academic researchers since the 1980s, but it became popular after it was used in a report to the UK government by Dennis Stevenson in 1997 and in the revised National Curriculum for England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2000.

The term ICT is now also used to refer to the convergence of audio-visual and telephone networks with computer networks through a single cabling or link system. There are large economic incentives (huge cost savings due to elimination of the telephone network) to merge the audio-visual, building management and telephone network with the computer network system using a single unified system of cabling, signal distribution and management.

The term Infocommunications is sometimes used interchangeably with ICT. In fact Infocommunications is the expansion of telecommunications with information processing and content handling functions on a common digital technology base. For a comparison of these and other terms, see.

The ICT Development Index compares the level of ICT use and access across the world.

Technological capacity of ICT
The world's technological capacity to store information grew from 2.6 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 1986 to 15.8 in 1993, over 54.5 in 2000, and to 295 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2007. This is the informational equivalent to 404 billion CD-ROM in 2007. Piling them up would create a stack from the earth to the moon and a quarter of this distance beyond (with 1.2 mm thickness per CD). The world’s technological, capacity to receive information through one-way broadcast networks was 432 exabytes of (optimally compressed) information in 1986, 715 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 1993, 1.2 (optimally compressed) zettabytes in 2000, and 1.9 zettabytes in 2007. The world's effective capacity to exchange information through two-way telecommunication networks was 281 petabytes of (optimally compressed) information in 1986, 471 petabytes in 1993, 2.2 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2000, and 65 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2007. The world's technological capacity to compute information with humanly guided general-purpose computers grew from 3.0 × 10^8 MIPS in 1986, to 6.4 x 10^12 MIPS in 2007.

Global Costs of IT
The total money spent on IT worldwide has been most recently estimated as US $3.5 trillion, and is currently growing at 5% p.a. – doubling every 15 years. IT costs, as a percentage of corporate revenue, have grown 50% since 2002, putting a strain on IT budgets. Today, when looking at companies’ IT budgets, 75% are recurrent costs, used to “keep the lights on” in the IT department, and 25% are cost of new initiatives for technology development.

The average IT budget has the following breakdown: 31% – personnel costs (internal) 29% – software costs (external/purchasing category) 26% – hardware costs (external/purchasing category) 14% – costs of external service providers (external/services)