Although many of our technologies are not yet considered a business application, they are becoming so that the information that we receive and the information that we process are both information. This is the idea of data communications and computer networks. We use computers to transmit data across networks and the information that is transmitted across the networks are also information.
Data communications and computer networks are just another way we are communicating over the Internet, but it is becoming more important for the information we process to be of an intangible nature, that is, data. If we can get information across a network, we have to be able to process it back into the same information. This is where we are starting to see the beginnings of “business applications” that we can use in the business world.
If we think of the Internet as the backbone of the world, then data communications are our backbone. To make sure we can keep up with our customers, we need to make sure we have a backbone for our business information. We also need to make sure that the backbone is secure, so we can’t accidentally reveal the wrong secret to our customers. Once we have that backbone, we can start using it to process information and our customers will be able to access that information.
