Information systems have evolved significantly over the past 50 years, from the earliest use of mainframe computers for transaction processing, to today's cloud and artificial intelligence technologies. Key developments included the rise of personal computers enabling decision support systems, client-server networks and executive information systems, and now cloud computing and expert systems using artificial intelligence.

1. Historical Development of Information System

2. Evolution of Information Systems
• Information Systems have been around a long time.
• People have always been the backbone of an IS
• Previous to computers, telephones were probably the
biggest innovation that improved information systems.
• Previous to telephones, Paper was the big innovation.
• And before papers various other things were used to
store information.

3. Evolution of Information Systems
• The modern Information Systems has made significant progress over the past 50
years.
• As the field has grown, new specialties and research communities have emerged,
and the level of research has increased dramatically.
• It is all taken up from “punch card”, electronic calculator and today, it has evolved
to e-business, e-commercialism and the latest innovation, mobile computing as
well as cloud computing.

4. Evolution of Information Systems
• The history of modern information systems parallels the evolution of computer
hardware and software.
• The main difference between one era to the next is in terms of the technology
used by them (hardware and software), computing characteristics (speed, i.e.,
number of instructions executed per second), and their applications, increase in
networking capability, speed etc.

5. Evolution of Information Systems
There are five era of information system:
 Pre-1965 (Huge mainframe computers)
 1965-1979 (Personal computers)
 1980- 1999 (Client/server networks)
 2000-Till Date (Cloud computing)
 Present & Beyond (Artificial intelligence)

6. First era: Pre-1965 (Huge mainframe computers)
– Pre-1965, was the period of huge mainframe computers that were housed in special
temperature-controlled rooms and required computer technicians to operate.
– During this period, most IS were mainly used for Electronic Data Processing (EDP).
– It performs activities like transaction processing, recordkeeping and accounting.
– EDP is often defined as the use of computers in recording, classifying, manipulating,
and summarizing data. It is also called Transaction Processing Systems (TPS)

7. Transaction processing systems
• It is a type of information that collects, stores, modifies and retrieve the data transactions of an organization’s day-
to-day transactions.
• Examples of outputs from TPS are cash deposits, payment, order, accounting systems and automatic teller machine
(ATM).
• Clerical staff typically performs the activities associated with TPS, for example, recording a business activity such as
client’s payment, customer’s order and so on.
• TPS is the first computerized systems developed to process business data – a function originally called data
processing.
• TPS were among the first computerized systems developed to process business data which function is originally
called data processing.

8. Second Era: 1965-1979 (Personal computers)
– Personal computers started with the introduction of the microprocessor.
– By the 1980s, it was in full bloom with the proliferation of the low-cost Apple I and II and the IBM personal
computer, or IBM-PC.
– This era also saw the development of GUIs, the mouse and handheld devices.
– This era started focusing on “interactive computer-based system” to aid decision-makers in resolving problems
– As a result of that, the concept of decision support systems (DSS) was born.
– The new role of information systems was to provide managerial end users with ad-hoc and interactive
support of their decision-making process

9. Decision support systems (DSS)
• Provide interactive ad-hoc support for the decision making process of
managers and other business professionals.
• DSS serves the management, operations, and planning levels of an
organization usually mid and higher management to make a decision.
• Examples of DSS are projected revenue figures based on new product sales
assumptions, product pricing and risk analysis systems.

10. Third Era: 1980- 1999 (Client/server networks)
– Client/server networks, As computing power and autonomy decentralized to ordinary employees
in the 1980s, a simultaneous need arose to share computer information with other employees
within the business enterprise.
– Communication and security to data has been increased
– Managing data is now much more easier.
– It became evident that most top executives did not use either MIS reports or the analytical
modelling capabilities of DSS, so the concept of executive information systems (EIS) was
developed.
– It is also known as an executive support system (ESS).

11. Executive information systems (EIS)
• It is a type of management information system intended to facilitate and support the
information and decision-making needs of senior executives by providing easy
access to both internal and external information relevant to meeting the strategic
goals of the organization.
• It is commonly considered as a specialized form of DSS.
• Examples of the EIS are systems for easy access to analysis of business performance,
actions of all competitors, and economic developments to support strategic
planning.

12. Fourth Era: 2000-Till Date (Cloud computing)
– The exponential growth in Internet bandwidth consumption is leading to the fourth era of cloud
computing.
– Cloud computing enables convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable
computing devices such as networks, servers, storage, applications and services that can be rapidly
provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interactions.
– Cloud computing unchains everybody from office-bound PCs, allowing access to Enterprise
Information System from anywhere with mobile devices.
– What has changed today is greater connectivity across similar and dissimilar system components,
much higher level of integration of system functions across applications, great network
infrastructure and powerful machines with higher storage capacity

13. Fifth Era: Present & Beyond (Artificial intelligence)
• Fifth era of information systems is based on artificial intelligence.
• The goal of this type of computing is to develop devices that respond to natural language input and
are capable of learning and self-organization.
• Information systems of this kind are called an Expert System.
• Expert system is a computer system emulating the decision-making ability of a human expert.
• Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning through bodies of knowledge,
represented mainly as if–then rules rather than through conventional procedural code
• An expert system is divided into two subsystems: the inference engine and the knowledge base.
• The knowledge base represents facts and rules. The inference engine applies the rules to the known
facts to deduce new facts. Inference engines can also include explanation and debugging abilities.

14. Expert systems (ES) & Knowledge management system (KMS)
• Expert systems (ES) – is a computer system that emulates the decision-making ability of
human experts.
• Some ES are designed to take the place of human experts, while others are designed to aid
them.
• For example, there are expert systems that can diagnose human illnesses, make financial
forecasts and schedule routes for delivery vehicles.
• Knowledge management system (KMS) – is a knowledge-based system that supports the
creation, organization and dissemination of business knowledge within the enterprise.
• Examples of KMS are intranet access and helpdesk systems.