English to Spanish Tech/Engineering IT (Information Technology) IT

The word is in the glossaries here and it has been posted before ans translated as "paradigma". My dilemma is that in the text that I am translating, paradigm appears 19 times in 12 pages, and it has a whole paragraph dedicated to its definition.
"Information Technology, as a business function, has historically been defined by major technological paradigms. The word Paradigm comes from the Greek. It is defined to be a model, a theory, perception, rule of thumb, a standard, or frame of reference. It’s the way we “see” things. Paradigms establish boundaries with which we screen out new data, opportunities, and strategies. The first IT paradigm was the Mainframe Computer, followed by the Mini (sometimes called Midrange) Computer, and then by the Personal Computer. IT is now moving into its 4th major paradigm: Internet Appliances (See Figure 1).

Now,the RAE defines "paradigma" as Ejemplo o ejemplar en la primera acepcion, todas las demas son del campo de la linguistica. Mi primer impulso fue el de usar la palabra modelo o patron, peero ese parrafo de la definicion en ingles es el que me causa problemas, ya que la definicion es espanol no es la misma. Siento la tentacion de omitirlo...que piensas ustedes?""""""""""""""""""""""""""""