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. PERSONAL COMPUTER NETWORKS 39 has become a filing and database problem. We now receive so many important messages we can't afford to throw away the 10 megabytes that can be quickly consumed by our electronic correspondence. In the future, electronic mail will involve even more data-intensive modes—for example, voice integration in the messaging system, eliminating the telephone tag but maintaining voice, and eventually forms-base messaging in which the contents of the message is machine processable. Where does software development fit into the trend toward local networking of personal computers? I would put software into five broad categories in terms of its relation to networking. In some of these categories actual software does not yet exist. The first category I would call “unnetworked” software, and there is little of it left. Unnetworked software runs only on a personal computer and cannot in any way be networked, either because there is no transparent networking available or because the software implementors have not used the standard operating system available. Very few of these software packages would interest organizations. The second category can be called transparently networked software. This is software that uses the operating system cleanly, and networking facilities that have been developed for that operating system can be used transparently by preexisting software. Most of the software that is available today, including 1-2-3, can be and is transparently networked. The third category I refer to as network-delivered software. The use of the network to deliver the software is a substitute for the floppy disks that most of us have come to think of as a delivery mechanism for software. Examples are Visicalc and Visiword that can now be distributed without diskettes through 3Com's local network. These facilities can be bought for a large group of users. Supply users with the appropriate number of manuals, and they can get that software over the network much more quickly than they can off a floppy disk. And, they do not have to worry about storing the floppy disk. Those of us who were involved in the struggle to eliminate punch cards during the 1970s are now in the process of eliminating floppy disks. The fourth category of software I call multiaccess (or multiuser) networked software. The best example of this would be a dBase II personal computer database package that would allow users on multiple PCs to be concurrently accessing and updating a shared 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. PERSONAL COMPUTER NETWORKS 40 database through the network. This is not the same as transparent networking using the current dBase, which is a single-user system that does not provide for shared access to the same database. With such a system, there is the danger of multiple accesses damaging each other. Thus, the obvious next step is making available multiaccess database software using local networks to bring a number of PC users to the same database for concurrent access and update. The fifth and final category I call network-integrated software. Just as in 1-2-3, which integrates database, word processing, and graphics into a uniform user interface, and just as in Vision, where the entire user interface has been integrated along with a variety of applications, we can think of integrating networking into other applications for volume management. The movement of data from one place to another is a part of the natural use of integrated applications. As far as I know, only the first three software categories now exist: unnetworked, transparently networked, and network-delivered. But the other two are coming. In fact, the objective of the fifth category of software is to eliminate itself. In other words, when networking software exists, we won't have to talk about it as a separate category because it will be lost in the integration and become part of the applications that users actually need. No one actually needs networking, they need the applications it makes possible. These applications will be the focus of the coming decade. Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
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