InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology

IT salaries begin to thaw, with median pay for staffers at $90,000 and managers at $120,000.

Salaries are rising slightly, with median compensation for IT staff at $90,000 and for managers at $120,000. Here are 11 key insights that IT pros should take from the findings from our 14,000 survey respondents.

Delighting customers is job No. 1. Everything else is secondary.

Forty-seven percent of business technology pros we surveyed say staffing at their companies has increased over a year ago, and just 18% say it's decreased. The standout is app dev, with 25% of respondents putting it in the top two categories of growth. Find out what other skills are sought after and whether that demand translates into more hiring in this report.

Spare the euphemisms. Great teams embrace mistakes and get better.

Vail, the No. 4 company in the InformationWeek 500, has created customer-facing apps that encourage social media posting.

Deere & Co., the No. 2 company in the InformationWeek 500, adds remote diagnosis to farm and construction vehicles to build closer customer ties.

Union Pacific shows the enormous potential of the instrumented, interconnected, analytics-intensive enterprise.

Emerging from bankruptcy and a bailout, the automaker is overhauling its IT operations under new CIO Randy Mott. First to go: its dependency on outsourcing.

InformationWeek's 2012 U.S. IT Salary Survey shows IT pros doing OK in a slow-growing economy, with staffers typically making $90,000 and managers $116,000. Most wanted: People who blend business analysis and IT skills.