Week 1: Information Systems in the Digital Firm - Lecture

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Information Systems in the Digital Firm
Evolution | Current State | Trends | Tutorial
The Evolution, Current State, and Trends of Information Systems

In addition to the material currently described, an introduction to cloud computing and user involvement in IT projects also will be included in this lecture. This is required as foundational knowledge for the chapters to come. We will explore it at a business level and a minimal technical level. Evolution

The business landscape has changed over the past seventy years in every significant way. Without information systems, these changes would not have occurred. To gain a perspective on the evolution of information systems, we can review the significant computer inventions from the first computer through to cloud computing.
As computer technology progressed, new skills had to be learned, and new methods of management evolved to replace old hierarchical styles with new team based methods. Increased productivity resulting in new information technology caused the downsizing of employees that began in the late 1980s and has continued. Information systems consultants identified productivity gains, so large that they cut the numbers in half and still weren't believed. Many of the products and services we use every day had not been invented just five or ten years ago.
The ability to communicate electronically with anyone anywhere in the world has driven the globalization of business at a very rapid rate. Industrial economies and the business enterprise have been transformed by technology. The digital firm emerged, and the business environment we knew fifteen to twenty years ago no longer exists anywhere in the world.
Fortune 500 companies have global operations and operate as global enterprises for which time or borders are