Intelligent Systems Technology: Beyond the Enterprise

by Stephen J. Andriole

Some of you may remember artificial intelligence (AI) as the darling technology of the 1970s and 1980s. You may also remember the early decision support systems (DSSs) that populated vertical industries in the 1980s and early 1990s. Some of these applications were fueled by complex analytical methodologies such as Bayesian statistical models and statistical optimization algorithms. The users of these systems had to be fairly sophisticated just to understand what the applications did, let alone how they worked. Now a browser is a decision support system that permits you to search, execute transactions, and serve yourself data -- all by pointing and clicking. Browser-based applications are getting smarter and may just revolutionize the way you think about transaction processing of all kinds occurring both inside and outside your firewall.