Centralization/decentralization cycles in computing: Market evidence

Abstract Strategies concerning centralized and decentralized commercial computing have been major issues for more than two decades. Using longitudinal sales data consolidated into three major computer categories (mainframes, minicomputers, and microcomputers), we investigate whether historical market data show evidence of centralization and decentralization. Our finding of cyclic behavior leads us to conclude that computing sales data exhibits broadly cyclic characteristics. We suggest that computing strategies oscillate unevenly between domination of centralization and decentralization, and that commercial computing has already experienced two centralization/decentralization cycles. Currently, computing is nearing the end of the second cycle's decentralization period and is at the threshold of centralization in a third cycle.

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