Software Impact

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Computers play a vital role in all aspects of business, and the two have become forever entwined. The choices of one profoundly influence the other and the underlying engine of computers is software, the programs used by the physical machines, or hardware. The three most basic categories of software are operating systems, and applications.

Operating systems is the layer between the electronic components of the machine and the applications used by people. This category includes the software package known as drivers that send and receives machine instructions from the physical devices such as printers, video cards, audio components, fax machines, scanners, hard drives, or even the humble mouse. Since every computer is required to have an operating system, this category represents the largest regarding reach. Android reports over 2.6 billion users, Microsoft based operating systems have over 1.4 billion users with 500 million running just windows 10, and Mac/iOS comes in last with 1.3 billion. Add in the vast array of devices that need communication software, and the numbers climb even higher.  While vital to the role of computer operations, Operating system based software functions invisibly and has little impact on business directly; instead, they enable other software that does.

Programming tools refer to the computer languages and software facilitating the creation of operating systems, applications, and even the tools themselves. Understanding how to use these computer languages requires specialized training and expertise. Experts in these tools are not as common as the users of their creations. The working environment of these tools, the computer language, is highly varied depending on the need for the finished product. There is also a specific preference among developers when there is no unique benefit of a particular computer language.  Most businesses development stay focused on a family of languages, while a few are more varied in their selection.

Applications are the tools end-users use and include everything from financial, education, publishing, and even entertainment venues. These represent the bulk of what most people see and use on a day to day basis. Application software has wholly transformed all business at every level.

In the days before Office meant Microsoft Office, Gargantuan sky-scrapers competing for the best spot on Manhatten Island projected power, safety, and stability to the outside world. In the new semantic economy, connected by the electrons of word processing, spreadsheets, and digitized documents your bank, corporation, or brokerage can be anywhere, anyplace, any size.

The sheer numbers of now global companies need software to manage large numbers of customers, project sales figures and track assets. Dedicated software applications have long replaced the Rolodex, card catalogs, green lined ledger portfolios, and the little black books of sales executives.

At one time, all a company needed to stay connected and relevant was a few television or radio ads and an entry in the phonebook. Now, they need visibility on all social media platforms; this requires publishing and graphics application software to present a strong look and maintain their corporate brand.

Within the category of applications, the clear distinction defining a software category is highly varied depending on the granularity desired. Microsoft Intune uses seven categories of Platform and Management, Education and Reference, Home and Entertainment, Content and Communications, Operations and Professional, Product Manufacturing and Service Delivery, Line of Business. The software review site, Capterra, has over 600 different categories.

While highly influential in both usage and revenue generation, both entertainment and education software categories have not had the same impact as other software packages on business, regardless of how the packages are designated. The remaining software used by a company can be constrained into five major areas:

1. Data Storage: SQL, MySQL, Oracle, Mongo, NoSQL, Access, DBIII+

2. Numerical Processing: Lotus, Excell, Quattro Pro, Google Sheets

3. Graphics Processing: Photoshop, Gimp, Illustrator

4. Word Processing: Word, Wordperfect, WordStar, Google Docs

5. Document Preparation: Acrobat, Publisher

Many of these categories are highly interconnected. Publishing software uses prose composed with word processors. Images created in photoshop finds its way into spreadsheets, word processing, and acrobat.  Word, Publisher, and Acrobat can use fonts crafted in Illustrator.

Under it all, is data...information. It is collected, stored, sold, and shared. Social media and its proprietary code written with public domain tools, confidential statistics on customers, sales numbers, employee records, fantasy football leagues, event planning information, all of it is saved to data files someplace, somewhere.

The server rack for storage and processing of this data has long replaced the file cabinet in the office. The large volume of information makes it impossible for a girl from the secretarial pool to pop down into the basement and pull a file. Data storage Applications can filter and search the behemoth amounts of aggregate information with the click or three of a finger.

Data now moves the world. Silicon Valley giants such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram buy, sell, and trade enormous amounts of personal data. The storage of all that information, the profit available from it, and even the metrics available have reshaped business at every level like no other software category.