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and organized
together into a database, data can become a powerful tool for businesses.
Organizations collect all kinds of data and use it to make decisions. These decisions can then be
analyzed as to their effectiveness and the organization can be improved.
Besides the components of hardware, software, and data, which have long been considered the core
technology of information systems, it has been suggested that one
other component should be
added: communication. An information system can exist without the ability to communicate – the
first personal computers were stand-alone machines that did not access the Internet. However, in
today’s hyper-connected world, it is an extremely rare computer that does not connect to another
device or to a network. Technically, the networking communication component is made up of
hardware
and software, but it is such a core feature of today’s information systems that it has
become its own category.
