The topic is open to a lot of interpretation as computers in business could be taken as "How do computers affect the business world?" - the answer explaining the different sectors of business that have arisen as a direct result of the rise of computers - for example the world of the solutions provider, which is climbing ever higher in the stock market, despite being nothing more than a group of third-party companies selling and maintaining bespoke packages of pre-made software to companies looking to revamp their systems. I could look at the rise of computer and software manufacture - again a fast moving sector that is

It is easy to see that the rise of computer use across the globe will continue unabated for many years to come. The World Wide Web certainly appears to be the way forward for the likes of Yates' that wish to both target customers in the home, and save time, money and labour in their day to day running.

However, with increased computing power there will always come a loss of reliability, and juggling the ratios of these two factors will prove to be a critical task to any business looking to progress the information technology they work with. A system can break down anywhere from the ground up, and if the rest of the system is not designed to cope with this, then the company could come crashing down. For example if the back office server in a shop were to either stop functioning, or lose communications with either the tills or the I.S. polling equipment, then the store would have to cease trading if the tills are not equipped with some kind of buffering system to store transaction information until the breakdown has been rectified. Such a fault would still have knock on effects on the weekly or monthly figures of a company or branch, and would, as such affect business analysis and decisions based thereon. Similarly, the retail network must be able to cope with the loss of one or more tills and still function. Until recently, all the tills were linked serially to one 'master' till which would then feed information to the back office server. This worked fine unless the master till itself went down, rendering the store useless, or the second or third till went down, taking the rest of the tills lower down the hierarchy out of action too, rendering a store crippled. The parallel network model was introduced so that each till made it's own connections with the back office PC, and this problem became a thing of the past.

If their web site contains an online ordering system, then this will need to be secure, providing encrypted credit card transactions so the company can assure the home user that they can purchase goods from their website without fear of a hacker capturing their credit card details for fraudulent use, and also some kind of card authentication so that previously stolen information cannot be used.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Wide Web, Plc Appendix, Systems Business, Bar Grill', Windows NT, Line ADSL, Misuse Act, Yates' Plc, Millennium Bug, Microsystems' Java, head office, web based, home user, computers business, rise computer, web site, pc based retail, office staff, rendering store, internet email, data warehousing system, credit card, head office staff, world wide web,
Approximate Word count = 2200
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)