This situation meant that companies set up large IT departments to develop and maintain their data processing systems and operate them from day to day. Companies now face ever-increasing pressure to reduce costs. In addition, more and more mainframe computers are being replaced by globally-networked, decentralized systems with uniform software solutions. Information is another factor that is gaining ever greater significance, particularly in Western industrialized nations. Today, information is either the end product or the raw material even for manufacturing industries.
Information already represents a considerable amount of most countries' gross national product.
A company can then make the best possible use of these resources by means of the right communications media and infrastructures, so as to distribute them, and convert them into knowledge, new technologies, methods and procedures in the quickest, most effective way possible. In a company, information resources can be seen as the fourth production factor because they not only determine the quality of decisions but also influence other production factors. Commercial actions and events are viewed in terms of the information they contain, and are therefore directed towards information structures and information processing. To achieve this, a thorough understanding of the business is required. Because of modern developments in information technology, it is now possible to carry out more extensive computing tasks, and more data-intensive commercial processes, than ever before.