Devices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years, probably initially in the form of a tally stick.[7] The Antikythera mechanism, dating from about the beginning of the first century BC, is generally considered to be the earliest known mechanical analog computer, and the earliest known geared mechanism.[8] Comparable geared devices did not emerge in Europe until the 16th century,[9] and it was not until 1645 that the first mechanical calculator capable of performing the four basic arithmetical operations was developed.[10]
Electronic computers, using either relays or valves, began to appear in the early 1940s. The electromechanical Zuse Z3, completed in 1941, was the world's first programmable computer, and by modern standards one of the first machines that could be considered a complete computing machine. Colossus, developed during the Second World War to decrypt German messages was the first electronic digital computer. Although it was programmable, it was not general-purpose, being designed to perform only a single task. It also lacked the ability to store its program in memory; programming was carried out using plugs and switches to alter the internal wiring.[11] The first recognisably modern electronic digital stored-program computer was the Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), which ran its first program on 21 June 1948.[12]
The development of transistors in the late 1940s at Bell Laboratories allowed a new generation of computers to be designed with greatly reduced power consumption. The first commercially available stored-program computer, the Ferranti Mark I, contained 4050 valves and had a power consumption of 25 kilowatts. By comparison the first transistorised computer, developed at the University of Manchester and operational by November 1953, consumed only 150 watts in its final version.[13]
12 IT takes too long to adjust plans to meet business needs. By the time IT is prepared, opportunities have passed and the plans are obsolete. IT doesn’t have the means to understand how it currently supports business strategy. The linkage between IT’s capabilities — and their associated costs, benefits, and risks — and business needs is not mapped out. Additionally, information gathering and number crunching hold the process back.[1]
IT makes plans that don’t reflect what IT will actually do or what the business actually needs. In the end, business doesn’t understand how IT contributes to the execution of strategy. IT doesn’t start planning with a clear picture of which demand is truly strategic or which actions will have the biggest impact. Information regarding business needs and the costs, benefits, and risks of IT
capabilities comes from sources of varying quality. IT then makes planning decisions based on misleading information.[1]
IT’s plans often end up rigid and unverifiable. Plans don’t include contingencies that reduce the impact of change, nor have they been verified as the best plan of action via comparison to alternatives and scenarios. IT simply doesn’t have the time and information for it. Manually preparing multiple plans and selecting the best one would take too long for most organizations — especially considering the availability of the information needed for a comparison.[1]
Strategies for Providing an Information Technology Planning Capability[edit] According to Forrester Research, there are several recognized strategies for providing an information technology planning capability.[1]
A repository of application data. Planning tools provide a common inventory of application data including costs, life cycles, and owners, so that planners have easy access to the information that drives their decisions.
Capability maps. Forrester recommends using capability maps to link IT’s capabilities to the critical business processes they support. These software tools provide a graphical tool that clearly outlines how the business capabilities that IT provides to the business are linked to IT’s efforts. This can also be known as an IT Roadmap or technology roadmap
Gap analysis tools. Alongside capability maps, planning tools capture information about the future state of business capabilities as dictated by business strategy. Users leverage this functionality to identify the areas where IT capabilities need to be built, enhanced, or scaled back — driving IT’s strategy.
Modeling and analytic capability. These tools enable planning teams to create a variety of plans, which can then be compared to one another to weigh the pros, cons, and risks of each. In addition, their impact on architecture and current initiatives becomes visible. This keeps plans relevant, provides teams with the foresight to plan holistically, and enables IT to communicate the plan clearly.
Reporting tools. Reports guide the planning team’s decisions — for example, which applications have redundant capabilities, have not been upgraded, or are plagued with costly issues. IT’s strategic decisions are therefore more easily justified. the management process are used in business policy and each person are able to promate the policy of data feeds and how much process are able to know the process is builed up in each and every process of management data
Results of Information Technology Planning[edit] Companies like Barclays Bank, Accenture and Vodafone as well as Government agencies like Department of Homeland Security and Los Alamos National Laboratory, have made investments in strategic IT planning capabilities and returns on investment as great as 700% have been validated for these kinds of projects.[3]