Technology And Systems Trends

There are some specific breakthroughs that have made international projects possible and easier as well as cheaper. Some of these are:

Telecommunications. The middle twentieth century saw the worldwide telephone system being established. Fiber optics and satellite communications greatly increased both the capabilities and the capacity for communications. Costs have been dramatically lowered. A telephone card can let you talk to most of the people of the world for a very low per minute charge.
Networking. Networking technology has taken advantage of the telecommunication advances to allow for high-speed data and image communications.
Mobile communications. Cellular phone use has continued to rise rapidly over the past five years. While the growth is lower today, it is still on the rise. Mobile communications not only offers convenience to people and organizations, but it offers an alternative to standard land-based communications. This increases reliability of communications overall and encourages businesses and individuals to carry out more work overseas.
Hardware and systems software. Twenty years ago, hardware was much more expensive. Further back, there were many incompatible systems. The dominance of first IBM and then Microsoft has created standards for computing and common computing environments. Both of these facilitate and make feasible many international projects.
Computer systems. In the earlier days of IT (information technology), most computer systems were built for a specific firm in a specific company. The emergence of software packages changed the landscape. Many ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems can be tuned and set up to run in many different countries operating with different currencies and different rules and regulations.
Internet and World Wide Web. Probably, nothing has been more dramatic in impact than the use of the Web for communications and supporting the operations of multiple locations. Information is more available and widespread than it has ever been. There is a greater awareness of what is going on around the world. This in turn has fueled the interest in international projects.

What does the technology help an organization do better? How does technology support the global trends mentioned above?

Ability to clone the infrastructure and replicate it in many locations. Look at retailing or manufacturing. Today, you can take the software in one location and establish it in a location thousands of miles away with the same type of hardware and networking technology. You can then adapt it to local conditions more easily due to flexibility. You can obtain vendor support in many countries similar or comparable to what you have at home. One retail firm boasts that they can establish a new remote location within 60 days.

Ability to control remote locations on a more or less real time basis. Going back in time, the method for control was to empower the remote manager with almost all power and discretion of authority. Times have changed. Today, for many firms, there is a daily monitoring of what is going on in each location. Production schedules can be established, fine tuned, and changed overnight.

Ability to provide for standardization. The technology supports standardization. This means that if different locations use similar software or databases, they can share information quickly and effectively without massaging the data.

Ability to support some flexibility in offering products and services. Notice the word “some.” Automation and technology provide for limited flexibility and still act to restrain a company from carrying major new changes due to the limitations of the software. However, there is greater flexibility than was the case years ago

Technology And Systems Trends

Technology And Systems Trends

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