The future of commercial computing

United States' business computing power is dedicated to the transaction-based activities of companies, not to the needs of senior executives responsible for critical corporate decisions. Software supporting current business systems is absolete and inflexible. Antiquated, inappropriate software undermines business ability to compete. Business requires new better systems that will provide external competitive data, as well as economic and research data vital to strategic decisions concerning products, operations, production, marketing, personnel and investments. There are four approaches to these future systems - redesign, package software, retrofitting, and prototyping. Retrofitting provides a unique approach to the immediate problem of prolonging the aging application portfolio while prototyping will likely be an important future direction in system design and development.