Today
As with other industrial processes commercial IT has moved in all respects from a bespoke, craft-based industry where the product was tailored to fit the customer; to multi-use components taken off the shelf to find the best-fit in any situation. Mass-production has greatly reduced costs and IT is available to the smallest company.
LEO was hardware tailored for a single client. Today, Intel Pentium and compatible chips are standard and become parts of other components which are combined as needed. One individual change of note was the freeing of computers and removable storage from protected, air-filtered environments. Microsoft and IBM at various times have been influential enough to impose order on IT and the resultant standardizations allowed specialist software to flourish.
Software is available off the shelf: apart from Microsoft products such as Office, or Lotus, there are also specialist packages for payroll and personnel management, account maintenance and customer management, to name a few. These are highly specialized and intricate components of larger environments, but they rely upon common conventions and interfaces.
Data storage has also standardized. Relational databases are developed by different suppliers to common formats and conventions. Common file formats can be shared by large main-frames and desk-top personal computers, allowing online, real time input and validation.
In parallel, software development has fragmented. There are still specialist technicians, but these increasingly use standardized methodologies where outcomes are predictable and accessible. At the other end of the scale, any office manager can dabble in spreadsheets or databases and obtain acceptable results (but there are risks).Specialized software is software that is written for a specific task rather for a broad application area. These programs provide facilities specifically for the purpose for which they were designed.
Read more about this topic: Electronic Data Processing
Famous quotes containing the word today:
“The most original authors of today are original not because they create something new but because they are capable of saying such things as if they had never been said before.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“A good book is the best of friends, the same today and for ever.”
—Martin Tupper (1810–1889)
“Working women today are trying to achieve in the work world what men have achieved all along—but men have always had the help of a woman at home who took care of all the other details of living! Today the working woman is also that woman at home, and without support services in the workplace and a respect for the work women do within and outside the home, the attempt to do both is taking its toll—on women, on men, and on our children.”
—Jeanne Elium (20th century)