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In a competitive world it is necessary for organizations to
take advantage of every opportunity to reduce cost, improve quality, and provide
service. Most organizations today recognize the need to be market driven, to be
competitive, and to demonstrate added value.
A strategy being adopted by many organizations is to flatten the management
hierarchy. With the elimination of layers of middle management, the remaining
individuals must be empowered to make the strategy successful. Information to
support rational decision making must be made available to these individuals.
Information technology (IT) is an effective vehicle to support the
implementation of this strategy; frequently it is not used effectively. The
client/server model provides power to the desktop, with information available to
support the decision-making process and enable decision-making
authority.
The Gartner Group, a team of computer industry analysts, noted a widening chasm
between user expectations and the ability of information systems (IS)
organizations to fulfill them. The gap has been fueled by dramatic increases in
end-user comfort with technology (mainly because of prevalent PC literacy);
continuous cost declines in pivotal hardware technologies; escalation in highly
publicized vendor promises; increasing time delays between vendor promised
releases and product delivery (that is, "vaporware"); and emergence of
the graphical user interface (GUI) as the perceived solution to all computing
problems.
In this section we will see that client/server computing is the technology
capable of bridging this chasm. This technology, particularly when integrated
into the normal business process, can take advantage of this new literacy,
cost-effective technology, and GUI friendliness. In conjunction with a well-architected
systems development environment (SDE), it is possible for client/server
computing to use the technology of today and be positioned to take advantage of
vendor promises as they become real.
The amount of change in computer processing-related technology since the
introduction of the IBM PC is equivalent to all the change that occurred during
the previous history of computer technology. We expect the amount of change in
the next few years to be even more geometrically inclined. The increasing rate
of change is primarily attributable to the coincidence of four events: a
dramatic reduction in the cost of processing hardware, a significant increase in
installed and available processing power, the introduction of widely adopted
software standards, and the use of object-oriented development techniques. The
complexity inherent in the pervasiveness of these changes has prevented most
business and government organizations from taking full advantage of the
potential to be more competitive through improved quality, increased service,
reduced costs, and higher profits. Corporate IS organizations, with an
experience based on previous technologies, are often less successful than user
groups in putting the new technologies to good use.
Taking advantage of computer technology innovation is one of the most effective
ways to achieve a competitive advantage and demonstrate value in the
marketplace. Technology can be used to improve service by quickly obtaining the
information necessary to make decisions and to act to resolve problems.
Technology can also be used to reduce costs of repetitive processes and to
improve quality through consistent application of those processes. The use of
workstation technology implemented as part of the business process and
integrated with an organization's existing assets provides a practical means to
achieve competitive advantage and to demonstrate value.
Computer hardware continues its historical trend toward smaller, faster, and
lower-cost systems. Competitive pressures force organizations to reengineer
their business processes for cost and service efficiencies. Computer technology
trends prove to leading organizations that the application of technology is the
key to successful reengineering of business processes.
Unfortunately, we are not seeing corresponding improvements in systems
development. Applications developed by inhouse computer professionals seem to
get larger, run more slowly, and cost more to operate. Existing systems consume
all available IS resources for maintenance and enhancements. As personal desktop
environments lead users to greater familiarity with a GUI, corporate IS
departments continue to ignore this technology. The ease of use and standard
look and feel, provided by GUIs in personal productivity applications at the
desktop, is creating an expectation in the user community. When this expectation
is not met, IS departments are considered irrelevant by their users.
Beyond GUI, multimedia technologies are using workstation power to re-present
information through the use of image, video, sound, and graphics. These
representations relate directly to the human brain's ability to extract
information from images far more effectively than from lists of facts.
Accessing information CAN be as easy as tapping an electrical power utility.
What is required is the will among developers to build the skills to take
advantage of the opportunity offered by client/server computing.
This section shows how organizations can continue to gain value from their
existing technology investments while using the special capabilities that new
technologies offer. The section demonstrates how to architect SDEs and create
solutions that are solidly based on evolving technologies. New systems can be
built to work effectively with today's capabilities and at the same time can be
based on a technical architecture that will allow them to evolve and to take
advantage of future technologies.
For the near future, client/server solutions will rely on existing minicomputer
and mainframe technologies to support applications already in use, and also to
provide shared access to enterprise data, connectivity, and security services.
To use existing investments and new technologies effectively, we must understand
how to integrate these into our new applications. Only the appropriate
application of standards based technologies within a designed architecture will
enable this to happen.
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