Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The age of electronics and more specifically, computers, has caused a tremendous paradigm shift in the way we do business today. Just 15 years ago, innovations such as the Facsimile(FAX) machine, and the Personal Computer(PC) were state-of-the-art and considered cutting edge. Today, many business people wouldn't be able to function efficiently without these tools. Furthermore, communications as we know it, would almost cease to exist without E-mail, fax-on-demand and teleconferencing. We have gotten so accustomed to the presence of computers and the services they provide that many of us don't remember what it was like before. This assignment will attempt to discuss the evolution of some of today's technologies and their impact on how we do business. The Changing Workplace
Business spent US$1 trillion in the last decade, but showed little gain or efficiency.1 Only now are we seeing the payoff. Some of this latency is due to some people's natural resistance to the types of change introduced by evolving technologies.
Many employees are anxious and/or resentful of being forced to change the way they perform their job function. Every organization has individuals that would much prefer to be operating "the old way". Slowly, these individuals are either embracing the change or face elimination. This elimination can take the form of either attrition or in extreme cases - termination or layoff. It is not uncommon for an organization to go through a cleansing process that eliminates "dead-wood" and individuals who refuse to obtain the required skill sets. Because computers can perform repetitive tasks so well, their evolution has taken a somewhat predictable path and has eliminated many jobs that were once performed by people. Although many of these tedious jobs have been reduced or eliminated, computers created a whole new set of jobs focused on computer manufacture, programming and support. A major challenge for the government and business sectors, is that these new jobs demand highly skilled, adaptable, innovative workers who are constantly upgrading
copper/fiber-optic lines providing instant bi-directional communication). Computer Architecture The first widespread use of computers consisted of a centralized mainframe computer acting as a server and "dumb" video display terminals(VDT) which were on the user's desk and provided a window to applications which resided on the server. These applications included character-based versions of software such as WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3 and E-mail. Since the VDT could not store any data, this too was stored on the server. Eventually, VDTs disappeared and were replaced by Personal Computers. This represented a major paradigm shift in the way we thought about serving applications and data storage. In essence, every user had their own server on their desk and the mainframe was only for legacy applications that did not lend themselves to porting. Today, we have come almost full-circle and are using high-power UNIX or Windows NT servers with a majority of the applications "served" from these machines. Conversely, the client PCs have minimal local applications and typically store their data on the server. This client-server configuration provides for centralized backups and easy software upgrades or modifications. In addition, the trend is leading towards a diskless Internet machine. This machine will have copious amount of memory, but little or no hard drive. All of the applications will either be served via the internal Intranet or the external Internet.
The Internet
The Internet began as a government effort to provide fast communications for scientists working on national security issues around the globe. Today, the number of Internet users is doubling every 6 months Studies show that one out
of every eleven people are connected to the Internet.2 The Internet is a replete source of information, software and communications. Many would agree that the future of communications and business commerce liens in the Internet. The Word Wide Web (WWW) is another name for the Internet, but "The Web" is best known for its graphical hyperlink based "pages". Depending on their purpose and how they are configured, clicking on these hyperlinks can play audio, display graphic images or text documents or simply route the user through additional Web pages, all linked by a common logical thread. The Web is extremely popular for recreational use as there are enormous amount of FAN Clubs, hobby centered and general interest sites as well as some extremely bazaar sites. For example - you could visit one out of the hundreds of Elvis Fan clubs, discover carpentry techniques and learn about UFOs, Devil worship, and how to build a bomb out of fertilizer, all in the same sitting. While the number of users is doubling every six months, the number of these Web pages is doubling every 53 days.2 Although the Web is great for recreation, its primary focus is business. Most medium to large companies have their own "Home Page" and use these pages to provide information and services to their customers. For example, a computer hardware distributor could provide a means for customers to search through online catalogs and manuals, download sales presentations, software and hardware drivers. In addition, a customer could fill out a shopping list and make a purchase right from their computer. In addition to the World Wide Web, the Internet offers other services including Newsgroups where people can post and reply to messages that are grouped by subject matter
and Electronic Mail(E-mail). E-mail over the Internet provides extremely quick correspondence and helps to further the growth of the global market.
Changes in Communications
The growth and innovations of the computer brought along with it many aspects of the business world. Communication is an example of one of these business processes that have grown in parallel with the computer and like the computer, this growth has been exponential. The global market has created the need for fast communications over a great distance. Teleconferencing and E-mail are two excellent examples of technologies that have met these needs and have literally transformed the way the business world operates. Teleconferencing - In some companies, Teleconferencing has all but replaced "physical" meetings, thereby drastically reducing travel costs and the loss of productivity as a result of the travel time required to attend the meetings. Teleconferencing is particularly useful when remote teams are working at different locations, but on a common project. It also provides a means for adhoc meetings where spontaneity is desirable or necessary. Electronic Mail (E-mail) - E-mail has transformed business communication like no other technology. In addition to simple inter-office communications, E-mail has helped to advance the global market and provides immediate information transfer. In the modern business world, E-mail has all but replaced conventional postal mail for simple communications and has put a significant dent into the overnight delivery services. In addition, although the telephone is an immediate means of communication, some people would still prefer to communicate via E-mail. Their logic is E-mail gives them an opportunity to better articulate themselves and expound on their thoughts. This is particularly effective for technical communications
where specific details are important and would be prohibitively tedious to transcribe over the phone. E-mail also tends to reduce encoding when forwarding communications through a workflow. Unlike verbal data, E-mail does not decay while traversing from one e! mployee to the next. Lastly, E-mail is self-documenting and is an excellent means of providing an audit trail when working on important projects.
Summary
Technology is growing at a rate that is faster than many of us can fathom. An ancient chinese curse states "May you live in interesting times!". We are extremely fortunate to be living in such interesting times. It is our duty as members of the business community and as common shareholders in this point in history to embrace these technologies and assimilate and integrate them into the way we do business.