E-business impact on society

The use of information technologies in business systems has had a major impacts on society, thus raises ethical issues in the areas of crime, privacy, individuality, employment, health, and working conditions.

However, everybody should realize that information technology has had beneficial results as well as detrimental effects on society and people in each of these areas.

For example, computerizing a manufacturing process may have the adverse effect of eliminating jobs, but also have beneficial result of improving working conditions and producing products of higher quality at less cost.

So the job as a manager or business professional should involved managing work activities and those of others minimizes the detrimental effects of e-business systems and optimize their beneficial affects.

Information technology has changed the way that most companies do business. It is hard to imagine to an era in which payroll accounting, check processing, airline reservations or stock exchange trades were handle without computer technology.
E-business impact on society

Introduction to application software

Application software is a subclass of computer software that employs the capabilities of a computer directly and thoroughly to a task that the user wishes to perform.

This should be contrasted with system software which is involved in integrating a computer's various capabilities, but typically does not directly apply them in the performance of tasks that benefit the user.

In this context the term application refers to both the application software and its implementation.

A simple, if imperfect analogy in the world of hardware would be the relationship of an electric light bulb (an application) to an electric power generation plant (a system).

The power plant merely generates electricity, not itself of any real use until harnessed to an application like the electric light that performs a service that benefits the user.

Typical examples of software applications are word processors, spreadsheets, and media players.

Multiple applications bundled together as a package are sometimes referred to as an application suite.

Microsoft Office which bundle together a word processor, a spreadsheet, and several other discrete applications, are typical examples.

The separate applications in a suite usually have a user interface that has some commonality making it easier for the user to learn and use each application. And often they may have some capability to interact with each other in ways beneficial to the user.

For example, a spreadsheet might be able to be embedded in a word processor document even though it had been created in the separate spreadsheet application.
Introduction to application software