Demystifying Information Systems.......

My cell phone reads - "Mom Calling...."

Hi Mom, I finally got my local no. working , hope you can memorize it!

Mom: Analyzing my voice the whole while - "Hmm..Sardi ho gayi hai! huh?"

ME: Nahi mom !!! Was just lying around, so my voice is all creepy; tell me wats new there?

Mom: "Baarish ho rahi hai wahan? Dekho beta..goodnite lagaya karo aur chavyanprash khana mat bhulna!!"

ME : Mom, agar roz pravachan hi dena hai to record kyun nahi kar deti (If you intend to lecture me everyday...why not prepare a CD and post it to me?)
Neways lemme tell ya something interesting today....its regarding Management Information Systems!

Mom: "Oh god,wasn't one jargon puking MBA enuf for me....that you gave me two of them!!"

ME: No mom..Don't worry, I 'll try and simplify it! Lets draw a direct correlation with your kitchen....k?

Mom: That reminds me son, your (interrupted)

ME: Ma, listen to me, Now lets go back to the old times when we used to prepare everything in the kitchen, I mean the masalas, the spices and even the vegetables (i mean grown in the backyard)..rite..that is when people were totally independent and believed only on their own skill...this is wat is a Single-Tier Architecture.It means rite from the data to be processed to the applications that would process it all resides on one system....i mean one kitchen!

Mom : Is it computers you are talking about?? What!! Aren't you supposed to study management over thr?

ME: Mom, please concentrate..Okay, so coming to the 1990's; we started purchasing/using the vegetables from the market but still trusted the masalas' that were home prepared..rite..so the same phenomenon happened when people began trusting their data on servers but still wanted the applications to be residing on their terminals.This was fondly called Two-Tier Architecture; There was no need to worry about storing the data anymore...and the servers ( a workstation ) took care of it! The users @ the other end used data from the servers....am i making any sense to you?

Mom: I told you, IITs' only gave Engineering degrees, You guys never trusted me....now you gonna study computer science again! I hope...at least the outgoing packages were true...varna shaadi kaise hogi..love marr...

ME: Mummy, please! Pay attn..now..if you allow me to continue we have migrated to a simpler system..by following the two-tier architechture..as we simplified our lives by going to the market for vegetables..but we were still tied up for the masalas'..this posed two problems - de quality of the food depended heavily on the cook (referred to as the software versioning problem) and the time/effort consumed in preparing the masalas' which was totally useless (same as the applications required to be stored on each workstation)..do you agree?

Mom : There's a lott of work pending son, can you please give this GYAN some other time. I need to light the diya..cook dinner..watch Balika..(interrupted)

ME: Mom, You do it everyday! M telling you something new here..I'll continue anyways, We evolved further and rethought our necessity to store applications on the workstations. That is what gave rise to Three-Tier-Architecture..The servers stored data..another middleware system stored a part of the applications and the workstations were reduced to a thin-client that contained only the GUI, etc. ;the rudimentary elements of the software.As we moved to the markets to get ready made masalas' and chutneys...the breads and the Ginger garlic pastes, the sauces and the puriees. Am i drawing a proper correlation here ?

Mom : You know Vishwakarma aunty called up today, she was asking about your sister's marriage proposal..are there any guys in your college, your seniors?

ME : Mom, please samajh lo, i hope i am making sense to you! This is the last part..i promise..We come to the very recent times when we rely heavily on the ready-to-serve receipes...like the MTR palak paneer and the punjabi chole..the idea is simple..to provide the user with a great taste and ensure availability at all times.Now we don't need to have a great cook (software ) at our disposal. That is taken care of! What we need is just one heater (browser) which can take care of heating the cooked food (running the application online) and we are ready to serve. Our information systems have also evolved at this rate & we have moved to Pay-per-use model of cloud computing. This would set us free of purchasing new softwares and upgrading our systems every now and then! Sounds interesting na ?

Mom: Haan, samajh gayi..mess ke khane se jee up gaya hai aur mummy ke khane ki yaad aa rahi hai..aur karo MBA..mai to pehle hi keh rahi thi..SIBM le le..par nahi..betajee ko IIT me hi padhna hai..ab bhukto!

Lesson learnt: You can make a mummy out of an MBA, but you can't make an MBA of a mummy..! Oops.....an overstatement probably ; Never Minddh IT Anna..!