College graduates receiving their diplomas this year were teenagers when the first iPhone debuted and Facebook allowed anyone to create a profile. As this tech-saturated generation enters the IT workforce their familiarity with technology -- especially consumer products -- can lead to communication and work style clashes with more seasoned employees who may not share a passion for digital life.

Economic woes have pushed companies of all sizes to shake up data center hiring, development and other processes to better align IT and business operations.

Financial concerns in the wake of the recession are causing companies to better align IT and business and this shift is changing what is expected from technology workers, say executives and staffing professionals. Business acumen is now on par with possessing stellar technical skills, with in-demand employees those who can contribute more than code to the company.

Nearly a decade after research firms predicted major cost savings and clinical benefits from the use of health-IT, adoption rates among U.S. medical providers remain sluggish, with the industry slow to embrace the big-data movement.

IT hiring in 2013 will focus on jobs involving cloud computing, mobile technology and business intelligence, said staffing professionals.

A career path that began with studying infectious diseases and led to analyzing terabytes of game data may seem a circuitous route. For Brendan Burke, though, the applied math skills he picked up as an undergraduate biology and political science major, the programming skills he added as a bioengineering graduate student, and his use of the two as a research scientist led to a job in the booming IT field of data science.

Colleges have noticed the strong interest companies have taken in data science and are incorporating the field into their computer science curriculum. Here are a few examples of the many data education efforts being made at universities.

Electronic Arts has sued Zynga, developer of the popular -Ville brand of social media games, alleging that the company violated EA copyright pertaining to its Facebook game "The Sims Social," EA said Friday.

U.S. drivers seem to hold conflicting opinions on in-car Internet access, viewing the technology as a driving hazard and even a threat to privacy while praising the entertainment and safety features it offers.

The health care industry's increased use of electronic medical records (EMRs), wireless medical devices and personal mobile technology has turned hospital networks into important components in patient treatment. Practicing medicine now requires maintaining constant wireless connectivity and possibly managing wired network traffic if doctors and nurses are to fully leverage health IT according to health care professionals.

Future scientists and technology professionals, not governments, will develop the innovations that most benefit society, online educator entrepreneur Sal Khan told MIT's 2012 graduates during his commencement speech Friday.

Web services, VoIP and other technology may have turned any place with an Internet connection into an office and decreased the importance of an IT professional's location, but a range of factors contribute to how enterprise telecommuting policies are developed and who should untether from the traditional workplace, said IT executives and staffing professionals.

A recent coding competition in the Boston area brought together IT professionals, medical workers and others with an interest in health IT to show how data analytics can improve health care.

Next-generation CIOs will have to consider how technology affects other corporate departments as well as handle traditional IT management functions, especially those accompanying mobile device management and greater data analysis, according to panelists who spoke at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Businesses can now remotely control enterprise mobile applications developed for Apple's mobile platform with the latest version of Soti's MobiControl Software Developer Kit for iOS, announced Tuesday.