my friend is majoring in electrical engineering, i told her that an information system is composed of hardware, software, data, procedures, and people. she responds by saying"This is ridiculous, it’s just hardware and software"!! How can I respond to my friend in distinguishing information systems from information technology? Can you tell me examples for IS and examples for IT?
Really good question. I’ve found this confusion from people in the industry. IT, Information Technology, is a high tech do-all answer to any computer orientated question until it’s asked. Then you find out IT is only Data input. I haven’t heard of Information Systems but it sounds like it encompasses all disciplines to bring raw data to the desired input.
This is the generation of Buzz Words, but if logic is introduced Information System would be a means of gathering, correlating and distributing data, which is as you describe. Procedures and, if you want, the people who input and interpret, are essential to the usable output.
My wants to know the medal distribution from the recent Olympics. I gather the data of medals won by name, events and nationality. I feed this to the IT Garu, who creates a data base so I can extract the information by, medal count, nationality, sport or individual. Then I evaluate and provide the data to the client in the format he/she wants. Later I may provide the data in a different format to a new client wanting different information.
September 22nd, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Just tell her that a bunch of people much older and wiser than she agree with you. You make the distinction very clearly and correctly.
References :
old scientist
September 22nd, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Really good question. I’ve found this confusion from people in the industry. IT, Information Technology, is a high tech do-all answer to any computer orientated question until it’s asked. Then you find out IT is only Data input. I haven’t heard of Information Systems but it sounds like it encompasses all disciplines to bring raw data to the desired input.
This is the generation of Buzz Words, but if logic is introduced Information System would be a means of gathering, correlating and distributing data, which is as you describe. Procedures and, if you want, the people who input and interpret, are essential to the usable output.
My wants to know the medal distribution from the recent Olympics. I gather the data of medals won by name, events and nationality. I feed this to the IT Garu, who creates a data base so I can extract the information by, medal count, nationality, sport or individual. Then I evaluate and provide the data to the client in the format he/she wants. Later I may provide the data in a different format to a new client wanting different information.
References :