Managing Computers in Large Organizations

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Managing Microcomputers in Large Organizations http://www.nap.edu/catalog/167.html About this PDF file: This new digital representation of the original work has been recomposed from XML files created from the original paper book, not from the original typesetting files. Page breaks are true to the original; line lengths, word breaks, heading styles, and other typesetting-specific formatting, however, cannot be retained, and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted. Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative version for attribution. FASTER, SMALLER, CHEAPER TRENDS IN MICROCOMPUTER TECHNOLOGY 25 powerful device. This is a characteristic of the second stage. For users stage two means looking out across a larger network of capabilities; for the vendor it means delivering more power at lower cost, with peripheral technology as well as dedicated distributed resources. Modem chips are one example of peripheral chip development; they give the capability to put a modem on an expansion board and simply have a wire attachment coming out of the personal computer. I think peripheral chip technology will make the whole area of word processing protocol conversion a nonissue in two or three years, when we will be able to encode all of a system's character formats and control codes at the chip level— all transparent to the end user. What is apparent in this discussion of stage-two developments is that vendors have not and managers of computer user environments should not underestimate the demand both for sophisticated devices with interfaces that are easy to use and for powerful microprocessor systems. This demand changes the character of the capacity planning capability that I defined earlier. Where will we deliver the application of software? How will we develop it? Where should it be located in our network of processing capabilities? The question is not how much we can get, but what good use can we put it to? And further, how much raw processing power do we need at the desk? This last question is part of the larger question—where do we need power in our organization? It is likely that in just a few years, we will walk into a large mainframe computer facility and see 40 people wandering around a processor the size of a file cabinet. A brief look at what is presently available in terms of off-loading power from the mainframe and the minicomputer suggests some of the possibilities for the future: Lisa. Though I hate rodents and think the Mouse is overrated and takes away from keyboarding capabilities, Lisa suggests the potential of multiple windows. The ability to process numerous applications at one time and to move from one process to another as we would with pieces of paper on our desk is clearly in our future. Apollo. Apollo represents the workstation of the future. (One is already available for $9,000.) With tremendous horsepower, and capable of relatively simplified artificial intelligence research, Apollo was chosen as the lead system at the Yale Artificial Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
Managing Microcomputers in Large Organizations http://www.nap.edu/catalog/167.html About this PDF file: This new digital representation of the original work has been recomposed from XML files created from the original paper book, not from the original typesetting files. Page breaks are true to the original; line lengths, word breaks, heading styles, and other typesetting-specific formatting, however, cannot be retained, and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted. Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative version for attribution. FASTER, SMALLER, CHEAPER TRENDS IN MICROCOMPUTER TECHNOLOGY 26 Intelligence Labs on the basis of cost performance, multiple concurrent processes, and a domain operating system in which a number of units in the network share their own resources. Rather than having a mainframe, one key computer facility, Apollo will have its intelligence distributed around the network, with additional capacity available at any time if needed. Apollo represents a new philosophy. It defines domain as being able to reach out, not only to share files but to gain processing power from other workstations. Synapse. Another company that has been involved in sharing processing power is Synapse. With each additional user a microprocessor is added into a back-playing system. The controlling logic of the system distributes the resources of the microprocessors in the network so that the user is not limited to the power at the individual workstation. From a historical perspective, development has clearly been from mainframe to microcomputer to the concept of the workstation as a window onto a distributed resources network. There has been development in other directions as well: Wang. A recent offering from Wang gives a sense of the other capabilities that will become available. The new Wang PIC, a jazzed-up version of its personal computer, works with a charge-coupled device technology to digitize a piece of paper. The user places the piece of paper containing graphics on the workstation platform and presses a button on the keyboard; the bit-map of the image is blown into a bit-map on the screen and is integrated into the text capability. Thus we have the integration of text and graphics at a very sophisticated level as well as the ability to store this in digital form on a drive. One of the key issues to keep in mind as we move more and more toward graphics and high resolution bit-map displays is the necessity for high communications speeds to refresh the screens at appropriate intervals. Another element seen in some offices today is the HP-7475A, a 2-or 3-pin plotter available for under $1,000 and capable of doing excellent business graphics in work environments as a part of the local PC station. Cynthia Peripherals. A subsidiary of Honeywell, Cynthia Peripherals has been involved in Winchester disk technology, especially removable disk technologies. Winchester technology had provided a very large volume storage capability—10 megabytes Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
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Managing Computers in Large Organizations

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