The Business and Information Technologies (BIT) study documents the information technology driven changes that occur in business structures, business practices and sector structures. Conducted by participating countries at appropriate time intervals and encompassing a wide spectrum of industry sectors, the study provides hard information on what is really happening across the economic landscape as a result of changes in information technologies. The global perspective combined with the longitudinal view offers a unique and comparative picture of technology and business practice across the globe.

Uday S Karmarkar is LA Times Professor of Technology and Strategy, Research Director and co-founder of the Center for Management in the Information Economy (CMIE) at the Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA. He is a founder and former chairman of the Manufacturing Interest Group (now MSOM) of INFORMS. Till 1994, he was Xerox Professor of Operations Management, Director of the Center for Manufacturing and Operations Management (CMOM), and Faculty Director of the Executive Seminar Program (ESP) offering short courses for managers, at the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Rochester. Prior to that, he taught at the GSB, University of Chicago. Professor Karmarkar received the Distinguished Service Award from MSOM (Informs) in 2003. He was recognized as a Distinguished Alumnus of IIT-B (Mumbai, India) in 1997 and received their Distinguished Service Award in 2003. Professor Karmarkar has undertaken consulting and research projects in technology management, information technology, industrial (B2B) marketing, production management, production system performance evaluation and design, service processes, supply chain and distribution management with firms including the Aditya Birla Group, Becton Dickinson, Bowthorpe Plc., Eastman Kodak Co., Ford Motor Co., IBM, Milton Roy, Nippon Becton, Thomson Professional Publishing, Xerox Corporation and Xoriant Corporation. He is an advisor to or director of several companies in areas such as technology investments, manufacturing, enterprise software, on-line education, data mining software, eCRM, IT-enabled service out-sourcing, and educational software products. Vandana Mangal is Associate Research Director, BIT (Business and Information Technologies) with the Anderson School of Management at UCLA. She is involved in all lifecycle activities of the various research projects conducted under the BIT umbrella. Before joining UCLA, she was working at Intel as the Intel-HP Alliance Manager. She has also worked with Hitachi Data Systems and AE Business Solutions. In these roles, she worked on various projects including business process redesign, e-business, web development and distributed software development in the areas of education, telecommunications, government and law.