IT architecture to better match their new approach. This implies that an international
firm that has not reached the advanced state of being fully standardized and distrib-
uted in its equipment, software, data, and staff will be under continual pressure to
evolve in this direction. And this pressure is likely to be greater than that on a do-
mestic firm of the same size in the same business.
Extensive work had been done on communications and other technical standards
which forms the basis of interoperability among hardware and software produced by
different manufactures. For example, TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Inter-
net Protocol) has become the dominant communications protocol, worldwide. To the
extent a firm can adopt the leading standard in each area, it makes it easier to assem-
ble software and equipment in different locations that work together. When operating
in a foreign country, it is well to know the standards and protocols that are used in
that country.
If an international firm desires the flexibility of moving its staff to different loca-
tions worldwide, there are strong advantages in standardizing the office application
software (text processors, spreadsheets, presentation, and database software, and firm
specific applications) and their communications infrastructure. For example, when
fully standardized, a professional who is transferred from New York to the London
office can then expect to encounter the same set of office tools in both locations. If
the firm had an integrated communications architecture with a common e-mail di-
rectory service, only one administrative change need be made in the directory data-
base to indicate the real address of the e-mail server the worker will now be using in
London. The actual e-mail address used by others inside and outside of the firm to
send messages to him would not change.
This pressure for interoperability suggests that equipment and software in various
categories should be the same throughout a firm. At a minimum careful consideration
should be given as to how equipment and software in various categories will operate
together. For example, if managers at headquarters use Apple Macintoshes, then it is
desirable for them to be used also at subsidiaries so that managers traveling en-
counter familiar computer applications and can easily share data and hardware (e.g.,
a dock for a notebook computer, or a power adapter). To deal with this issue, many
companies adopt standardplatforms and software. As a firm operates in more geo-
graphic locations, fewer suppliers are able to provide support at all locations. This re-
duces the number of candidates on which to standardize. Additionally, a firm operat-
ing globally can be faced with high prices for local hardware, lack of hardware, lack
of local service for products, the absence of an authorized distributor, and long lead
times for acquiring equipment and spare parts. All of this needs to be taken into con-
sideration when deciding on standards.
(i) Central versus Distributed Systems. In the 1970s when there were significant eco-
nomic advantages to large main-frame computers, most corporate data processing
was centralized. What remote teleprocessing that did exist came from terminals con-
nected to the computer by leased telephone lines. While various schemes were de-
veloped to make better use of communications lines (such as combining the data
from a number of terminals using a multiplexer) setting up a worldwide computing
and communications network was an expensive proposition. It needed to be justified
by a large volume of business transaction processing. In the 1980s, the telecommu-
nications companies (telecoms) began to offer packet switcheddata services, that re-
duced the cost of sending data between machines. By the mid-1980s the power and
28 • 22 INTERNATIONAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS