FREE HISTORY OF COMPUTING COMPANIES LESSON
1972 — Encode the enterprise
SAP, Oracle, and standard business software
Encode the enterprise
SAP replaced repeated custom programs with integrated modules sharing current data; Oracle commercialized a general relational database. Packaged enterprise software is not neutral automation: its schema defines customers, materials, invoices, authority, and valid process. Standardization lowers repeated development cost, while customization, data gravity, and retraining can make replacement extraordinarily expensive.
Enterprise software scales by turning organizational reality into a reusable schema, but every standard model also redistributes authority and creates migration cost.
Institutional reconstruction
Trace an order through purchasing, inventory, shipment, invoice, and ledger. Identify the invariant gained from shared data, then name two local practices that the standard schema would erase or force to change.
Trace the scarce resource, coordination mechanism, power boundary, and newly possible failure.