08
1999
Business Computing – II
(C-DAC Tata McGraw-Hill Series)
By Alexis Leon & Mathews Leon, Tata McGraw-Hill, 1999.
The last few years have seen a growing recognition of information as a key business tool. Those who successfully gather, analyze, understand and act upon information are among the winners in this new information age. Therefore, it is only reasonable, to expect the rate of producing and consuming information to grow.
We can define information as that which resolves uncertainty. We can further say that decision-making is the progressive resolution of uncertainty and is a key to the success in today’s brutally competitive business environment. In general, the current business market dynamics make it abundantly clear that, for any company, information is the very key to survival.
If we look at the evolution of information processing technologies we can see that while the first generation of client/server systems brought data to the desktop, not all of these data was easy to understand, and as such it was not very useful to the end users. As a result, a number of new technologies have emerged that are focused on improving the information content of the data, information sharing, collaborative working, etc. with the aim to empower the knowledge workers and make them more effective, efficient and productive. Among these technologies are groupware, workgroup computing, workgroup automation, on-line transaction processing (OLTP), on-line analytical processing (OLAP), data warehousing, data mining and so on.
This book is about the need, the value, and the technological means of acquiring and using information in the information age. This book covers the concepts and technologies that are revolutionizing the field of information technology and the way business is being conducted. The book gives the readers a detailed introduction of the concepts like groupware, workgroup computing, workgroup automation, collaborative computing, information sharing, on-line transaction processing (OLTP), on-line analytical processing (OLAP), data warehousing, data mining and so on. These technologies are changing the way people work and organizations function.
To survive in today’s information age one needs to understand and master these technologies and apply them into his/her profession. This book is indented as a primer on these technologies. The objective of the book is to provide the readers a good understanding of the various technologies, the concepts behind them, the advantages and disadvantages, the options available and so on.
