IF you work in an organisation where almost everyone has a unique e-mail address, it is likely that your company has a division, or perhaps a department everyone just calls the “IT department” (Other variations: IT division, Technology department and Tech support). More often than not, you’d only get to meet the folks who work there when your Internet connection is down, or your computer is not working properly.

Notice when the e-mail program seems to have stalled, or an Error 404 message appears on your Internet Explorer window, you tend to dial the four-number extension of the IT department without giving it much thought?

Usually, after being alerted of a breakdown, one of the “tech guys” would come down and patiently check if your RJ-45 cable is properly connected. If this is not the problem, he would log into the computer and try to figure out what was wrong.

On the other hand, like a hungry vulture, you would be hovering around asking questions like “What do you think is the problem?”. As you listen to the explanation, you would likely nod or reply, “Oh, I see”, although that is no indication of actually understanding what was conveyed.

The truth is, not many of us understand the amount of knowledge needed to troubleshoot such a situation. Making technology work for its users not only needs knowledge, creativity, strategy and discipline, but also a passion to solve problems and come up with better solutions. In other words, these people are professionals who aim to make things better.

Last month, Microsoft highlighted such “heroes” through an event billed Heroes Happen Here when it launched three new enterprise products – Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 – that help IT departments and back-end personnel build better infrastructure for their organisation. Hailed as “Heroes in the Computing World”, a number of IT personnel were given due recognition as they received their awards from Microsoft.

Typically, professionals who work in the IT department are aware that their job is far from glamorous. Many come to work – be it at the workstation, server room, test lab or data centre – with the mindset of making technology easy and advantageous for everyone in the organisation. They also take pains to learn new, sophisticated technologies and figure out how such tools can help end users become more productive.

Today, the tech guys are probably the most important enablers of many automation, communication and other computing work that are an integral part of everyone’s daily routine. Although technology is a big part of it, the people who deliver it are an important piece of the puzzle.

Yet, many end users still do not realise the complexity that runs behind every e-mail being sent, instant messaging chat, video-conferencing session and other similar tasks. Indeed, many have taken for granted that the networked printer should be churning out pages right after the Print button is clicked.

It is high time that we thank the people who deliver the technology to our desks.