I heard a West Point professor address a roomful of CIOs recently, telling some gripping tales about how military leaders grudgingly accept (or just tolerate) IT. "How do you change an organization's culture to make its executives actually value IT?" he asked. "CIOs get it, but do their bosses?"

Those questions set off quite a buzz, as IT execs from a wide selection of midmarket companies started comparing notes on how their relationships with their business colleagues were going. And here, as the stories for this issue were coming together, we also noted a recurring theme around that core connection between IT and business.