Information Technology in the 1990s: A Long Range Planning Scenario

This article describes a reasonable scenario for in technology, and its use within a major organization in the year 1990. The scenario is based upon a model used at Xerox to portray the use of Information Systems (IS) internally within the corporation in the year 1990. Assumptions are made about the technology and economics, and by coupling these with observed trend linos from historical data, predictions about the 1990 IS organization, technology, investment requirements, and support structure are drawn: Estimates are developed for the extent of distributed processing at four levels of the organizational hierarchy. Finally, a number of conclusions which deal with the changing nature of the IS technology and role. of IS management are described.