History of information technology in organizations
Companies begin to make use of automatisms and machinery even before the arrival of computers, for example in the early 1900s machines were used to organize the registry through ordered cards and selection mechanisms, or to synthesize information and accounts, such as for example the Tabulating or Accounting Machines.
International Business Machines, IBM, was born precisely in this sector: initially it sold systems for invoicing, which were done thousands of times a month; there were therefore systems for producing invoices, but not for management: there were no statistics and there was no place to store large volumes of data collected.
In the mid-30s and 40s, three main working groups worked on programmable electronic computers: Alan Turing in England, with the aim of creating an encryption system for war purposes, Konrad Zuse in Germany (considered by some to be the true inventor of the electronic calculator) and John von Neumann with the ENIAC team in America. The Americans in particular had the merit, after the war, of seeing a role for computers within organizations and therefore introducing them into these environments.
However, the concept of a programmable computer predates this period: already in the mid-1800s Charles Babbage had designed a mechanical machine to perform calculations, the "differential engine". However, this machine was affected by mechanical problems and was never built by Babbage (a production according to the original plans was completed in 1991, Science Museum in London). Babbage later designed the "analytical engine," an even more complex machine, which used punched cards, and which was capable of being programmed at will. It had arithmetic unit, flow control and memory: it was the first design of a Turing-complete calculator.
At the end of the 50s it was understood that the computer could be used in the enterprise and the public administration, whose organization suffered from the enormous quantities of data collected. Due to the high costs, only large organizations and research centers (such as space) and the military could afford a computer.
In the 60s, information technology finally enters companies in a widespread way also thanks to the role of IBM, which develops the first mainframe, the System/360 (1964), designed to have a very wide diffusion in medium/large organizations of that period.
In that era also in Italy there was a production of electronic calculators for organizations, thanks to Olivetti. This company was made up of two working groups: a Pisa the conceptual and physical design of the machine was carried out, in Ivrea there was the commercial center for sales and interaction with the customer. The development of computers, in this era, was a challenge and an adventure, since there were still no development processes that guaranteed the creation of highly usable machines.
Over time these technologies spread and the computer became a means by which to manage all the codifiable information.
Compared to 40 years ago, information technology has changed a lot today. There have been many improvements over the time of punch cards, but sadly there were also inevitable problems resulting from the change that innovation required. Currently, every time we introduce a change we have to deal with existing technologies (legacy), often poorly documented or not documented at all, foresee integrations and migration times, collide with user resistance.
In the company organization there is a push towards the continuous use of computers for various reasons. The most compelling are the huge amounts of data collected to manage, often unstructured information, and the need to perform repetitive or complex calculations.
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