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								Today’s IT infrastructure is composed of five major components:									 | 
								Computer hardware, computer software, data management technology, networking and telecommunications technology, technology services									 | 
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								System software									 | 
								Manages the resources and activities of the computer.									 | 
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								Application software									 | 
								Applies the computer to a specific task for an end user, such as processing an order or generating a mailing list.									 | 
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								Data management software									 | 
								Organizes, manages, and processes business data concerned with inventory, customers, and vendors.									 | 
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								Legacy systems									 | 
								Are generally older transaction processing systems created for older computers that continue to be used to avoid the high cost of replacing or redesigning them.									 | 
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								Workstation									 | 
								Desktop computer with powerful graphics and mathematical capabilities and the ability to perform several complicated tasks at once.									 | 
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								Server									 | 
								Computer specifically optimized to provide software and other resources to other computers over a network.									 | 
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								A mainframe									 | 
								 is a large- capacity, high- performance computer that can process large amounts of data very rapidly.									 | 
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								A supercomputer									 | 
								 is a specially designed and more sophisticated computer that is used for tasks requiring extremely rapid and complex calculations with thousands of variables, millions of measurements, and thousands of equations.									 | 
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								Grid computing									 | 
								 Applying the resources of many computers in a network to a single problem.(Or: a distributed network of computers)									 | 
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								Distributed processing									 | 
								The use of multiple computers linked by a communica-tions network for processing									 | 
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								Centralized processing									 | 
								All processing is accomplished by one large central computer, is much less common.									 | 
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								Client/ server computing									 | 
								A model for computing that splits processing between clients and servers on a network, assigning functions to the machine most able to perform the function.									 | 
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								The client									 | 
								The user point of entry for the required function and is normally a desktop or laptop computer.									 | 
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								A two- tiered client/ server architecture.									 | 
								The simplest client/ server network, consisting of a client computer networked to a server computer, with processing split between the two types of machines.									 |