Educated Life

 THE ROLE OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS 

 

The Mainframe Era 

•From the late 1950s through the 1960s, computers were seen as a way to more efficiently do calculations.  

•The first computers were room-sized with several machines linked together. •Primarily use to organize and store large volumes of information.  

•In late 1960s, Manufacturing Resources Planning (MRP) systems were introduced.  

•It gave companies the ability to manage the manufacturing process, making it more efficient.  

•Dominant manufacturer of Mainframe computers : IBM 

The PC Revolution  

•In 1975, the first microcomputer was introduced.  

•Small businesses finally had affordable computing that could provide them with needed information systems.  

•Most of the early PCs were standalone machines, not connected to a network. •Manufacturers of PCs: Apple, IBM 

Client-Server  

•Allowed users to log in to the Local Area Network (LAN) from their PC (the “client”) by connecting to a central computer called a “server.”  

•These networks of computers were becoming so powerful and seen as tools to collaborate within an organization.  

• During this era, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems were developed and run on the client-server architecture 

The Internet, World wide web and E-commerce  

•Users of the internet were required to type commands (today we refer to this as “command line”) to communicate and transfer files. – coding  

•Introduction of the World wide web drove the use of the Internet as a way of sharing information about businesses.  

• In 1994, e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and eBay were introduced. 

 

WEB 2.0  

•New type of interactive website, where you did not have to know how to create a web page or do any programming in order to put information online, became known as Web 2.0. 

• Web 2.0 is a term that describes the changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and Web design that aim to enhance creativity, secure information sharing, increase collaboration, and improve the functionality 

Examples 

Web 2.0 examples include hosted services (Google Maps),Web applications ( Google Docs, Flickr), Video sharing sites (YouTube), wikis (MediaWiki), blogs (WordPress), social networking (Facebook), folksonomies (Delicious), Microblogging (Twitter), podcasting (Podcast Alley) & content hosting services and many more 

 

POST PC ERA

 • Cloud computing provides users with mobile access to data and applications, making the PC more of a part of the communications channel rather than a repository of programs and information. • And which include mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers as well as other mobile computers such as wearable and ubiquitous ones. • The personal computer will no longer be the primary way that people interact and do business.