Rihards Balodis

Inara Opmane
email: inara.opmane@lumii.lv

History of Data Centre Development

Keywords: Computing facilities, Data Centre, historical development

Computers are used to solve different problems. For solving these problems computer software and hardware are used, but for operations of those computing facilities a Data Centre is necessary. Therefore, development of the data centre is subordinated to solvable tasks and computing resources. We are studying the history of data centres' development, taking into consideration an understanding of this. In the beginning of the computer era computers were installed in computing centres, because all computing centres have defined requirements according to whom their operation is intended for. Even though the concept of 'data centre' itself has been used since the 1990s, the characteristic features and requirement descriptions have been identified since the beginning of the very first computer operation. In this article the authors describe the historical development of data centres based on their personal experience obtained by working in the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Latvia and comparing it with the theory of data centre development, e.g. standards, as well as other publicly available information about computer development on the internet.

1.

Basic Characteristics of Data Centre Facilities

Data centre definition

A data centre is a physical environment facility intended for housing computer systems and associated components. Data centres comprise the above-mentioned computer systems and staff that maintains them. The necessary physical environment facility encompasses power supplies with the possibility to ensure backup power, necessary communication equipment and redundant communication cabling systems, air conditioning, fire suppression and physical security devices for staff entrances. Usually data centres are created for specific task classes; it is particularly referable to computing facilities. Also, the development of other components' can be influenced by the class of tasks solved in the data centre; e.g. if computation result necessity is not so critical in time, then in the centre's equipment there is no duplication of resources used for electricity supply, i.e. according to present-day standards data centre's level from Tier1 to Tier4 is chosen.

Similarly, in the concept of a data centre, often, not only the data centre's maintenance staff is included, but also the centre's personnel that ensure functional actions. Frequently, such data centres are as a component in agencies, companies, institutes or even laboratories.

Historically the development of data centres has passed in a fluent way, growing from IT (information technology) departments or a computer building research laboratories' base. It is quiet problematic to determine a precise date in history when data centre was created: it could be taken from the documents of some data centre's creation or when the first computer was disposed in it, or when it began its work.

In our historical timelines we indicate the principal time, not going deep in defining precise dates. Examples of up-to-date data centre services:

 hardware installation and maintenance,  managed power distribution,  backup power systems,  data backup and archiving,  managed load balancing,  controlled Internet access,  managed e-mail and messaging,  server co-location and hosting,  virtual servers, GRID and Cloud computing services,  managed user authentication and authorization,  firewalls, data security,  etc.

Electricity supply system

Two aspects of energy use are critical for data centres. Firstly, both IT equipment and all supporting equipment are very energy consuming. Some data centres' facilities have power densities that exceed more than 100 times than in typical office use. For higher power density facilities, electricity costs are a dominant operating expense and account for over 10% of the total cost of data centre's ownership. Secondly, it is not less important to have guaranteed energy for IT equipment and also for other equipment like cooling, or access control systems used in the data centre. Backup power systems consist of one or more uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) and/or diesel generators. To prevent single points of failure, all elements of the electrical systems, including backup systems, are typically fully duplicated, and computing facilities are connected to both power feeds. This arrangement is often marked as N+1 redundancy. Static switches are sometimes used to ensure instantaneous switchover from one supply to the other in the event of a power failure. For comparing electro-effectiveness in different data centres and also to evaluate different solutions, power usage effectiveness (PUE) is introduced. The most popular measurement of that is the proportion between total facility's power and IT equipment's power.

In addition to IT equipment the other energy consuming equipment, mainly consists of cooling systems, power delivery and other facility's infrastructure, like lighting. Data centres support equipment recalled as overhead. Often IT equipment consumes only 33% of the power in the data centre.

The most popular power components are as follows:

 generators,  UPS,  grounding,  power and environmental control.

Low-voltage cable routing

Communications in data centres today are most often based on networks running Internet protocols and special protocols for computing equipment interconnection. Data centres contain a set of ports, routers and switches that transport traffic between data centres' computing equipment and the outside world. Redundancy of the Internet connection is often provided by using two or more upstream Internet service providers.

Network security elements are also usually deployed: firewalls, VPN gateways, intrusion detection systems, etc.

Data cabling is typically routed through overhead cable trays in modern data centres. But some are still recommending under raised floor cabling for security reasons and to consider the addition of cooling systems above the racks in case this enhancement is necessary. Structural cabling elements are:

 service provider cables  backbone cables (to data centre and in-between floors)  horizontal cables (within floors)  zone distribution (in data centre)

Raised floors

Data centres typically have raised flooring made up of 60 cm removable square tiles.

The trend is towards 80-100 cm void to cater for better and uniform air distribution. These provide a plenum for air to circulate below the floor, as part of the air conditioning system, as well as providing space for power cabling.

Raised floors have better a appearance than overhead cabling and allow higher power densities, better control of cooling, and more flexibility in location of cooling equipment. Most stand-alone computer systems are designed for cabling from below.

Overhead cable trays are less expensive than raised floor systems, cable trays can be attached to the top of racks (if they are uniform in height). Cable trays suspended from the ceiling provide more flexibility for supporting racks of various heights and for adding and removing racks.

Cable trays can be installed with several layers, for example, a cable tray system for low-voltage signals, a middle layer for power and a top layer for fibre.

Environmental control

The requisite physical environment for a data centre is rigorously controlled. Air conditioning is used to control the temperature and humidity in the data centre. The temperature in a data centre will naturally rise because electrical power used heats the air. Unless the heat is removed, the ambient temperature will rise, resulting in electronic equipment malfunction. By controlling the air temperature, the server components at the board level are kept within the manufacturer's specified temperature/humidity range. Air conditioning systems help control humidity by cooling the return space air below the dew point. In data centres there are several technologies being used to realize environmental control. The principles of data centre cooling-air delivery, movement, and heat rejection are not complex.

The under-floor area is often used to distribute cool air to the server racks. Eventually, the hot air produced by the servers recirculates back to the intakes of the CRAC units (the term 'Computer Room Air Conditioning' was introduced in 1960) that cool it and then exhaust the cool air into the raised floor plenum again.

This cold air escapes from the plenum through perforated tiles that are placed in front of server racks and then flows through the servers, which expel warm air in the back. Racks are arranged in long aisles that alternate between cold aisles and hot aisles to avoid mixing hot and cold air.

 Computer Room Air Conditioners (CRAC). Refrigerant-based (DX), installed within the data centre's floor and connected to outside condensing units. Moves air throughout the data centre via a fan system and delivers cool air to the servers, returns exhaust air from the room.  Computer Room Air Handler (CRAH). Chilled water based, installed on the data centre's floor and connected to outside cooling plant. Moves air throughout the data centre via a fan system: delivers cool air to the servers, returns exhaust air from the room.  Humidifier. Usually installed within CRAC / CRAH and replaces water loss before the air exits the A/C units. Also available in standalone units.  Chiller. The data centre's chiller produces chilled water via refrigeration process. Delivers chilled water via pumps to CRAH.  In-Rack Cooling. In-rack cooling products are a variant on the idea of filling the entire room with cool air and can also increase power density and cooling efficiency beyond the conventional raised-floor limit. Typically, an in-rack cooler adds an air-to-water heat exchanger at the back of a rack so that the hot air exiting the servers immediately flows over coils cooled by water, essentially short-circuiting the path between server exhaust and CRAC input. In some solutions, this additional cooling removes just part of the heat, thus lowering the load on the room's CRACs (i.e. lowering power density as seen by the CRACs), and in other solutions it completely removes all heat, effectively replacing the CRACs. The main downside of these approaches is that they all require chilled water to be brought to each rack, greatly increasing the cost of plumbing and the concerns over having water on the data centre's floor with couplings that might leak.  Different trends in Environmental control. Energy-saving technology -'green' data centres and rational cooling technologies.

Modern data centres try to use economizer cooling, where they use outside air to keep the data centre cool. Many data centres now cool all of the servers using outside air. They do not use chillers/air conditioners, which create potential energy savings.

A water side economizer uses the outside air in conjunction with a chiller system. Instead of compressors, the outside air cools the water, which is then pumped to data centre CRAHs. Water side economizers are marketed as either evaporative coolers or dry coolers.

The industry is exploring progressive cooling solutions because the current generation, discussed earlier, has proven insufficient and inflexible with increased computing requirements. (Chillers, for instance, are estimated to consume 33% of a facility's total power in current layouts).

To optimize the cooling in your data centre a good first step is an in-depth analysis of your current environment to gain a holistic understanding of your data centre's environment, increased awareness of your critical risk factors, benchmark of performance metrics, and generate a punch list of opportunities for cooling improvement.

Fire protection

Data centres feature fire protection systems, including passive and active design elements, as well as implementation of fire prevention programs in operations. Smoke detectors are usually installed to provide early warning of a developing fire by detecting particles generated by smouldering components prior to the development of flame. This allows investigation, interruption of power, and manual fire suppression using hand held fire extinguishers before the fire grows to a large size. A fire sprinkler system is often provided to control a full scale fire if it develops. Fire sprinklers require 46 cm of clearance (free of cable trays, etc.) below the sprinklers. Clean agent fire suppression gaseous systems are sometimes installed to suppress a fire earlier than the fire sprinkler system. Passive fire protection elements include the installation of fire walls around the data centre so a fire can be restricted to a portion of the facility for a limited time in the event of the failure of the active fire protection systems, such as making sure the door is not left open or if they are not installed. For critical facilities these firewalls are often insufficient to protect heat-sensitive electronic equipment, however, because conventional firewall construction is only rated for flame penetration time, not heat penetration. There are also deficiencies in the protection of vulnerable entry points into the server room, such as cable penetrations, coolant line penetrations and air ducts.

Security

Physical security also plays a large role in data centres. Physical access to the site is usually restricted to selected personnel, with controls including bollards and mantraps. Video camera surveillance and permanent security guards are almost always present if the data centre is large or contains sensitive information on any of the systems within. The use of finger print recognition mantraps is starting to be commonplace.

Data centre spaces

A data centre lies in a number of rooms: a computer room with computing facilities, a computer room for telecommunication equipment, an operation centre, entrance facilities, rooms outside computer rooms for mechanical and electrical spaces -for power generators, UPS, cooling refrigerants, structured cabling and communication entry cabling rooms etc. In data centres there are also stationed support staff offices and client service front office. The most important spaces in data centres are: computer room, computer room TR, operations centre, entrance facility.

Some of the spaces are illustrated by photos from IMCS UL.

Computer room

Framework of Data Centres Development

Computing facilities is a kernel of data centre and other conditions were adjusted so that it secured effective operation of computing. In the table below, we will summarize a short overview about the computing development history, mainly pointing out the information available on the Internet for further independent reader investigation. Often, to display historical development timelines are used, and they have different forms:  timelines as lists with parameters (time and description),  timelines as tables,  timelines with photos and videos,  interactive timelines with specially made software,  posters,  wiki descriptions,  museum descriptions.

Standardization for Data Centres

For ensuring computer operation we are using data centresappropriately equipped environment. Hardware that is deposited in data centres needs wires of power supply and communications, appropriate HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) climate conditions as well as fire safety, physical and logical security must be ensured. For all this, technological solutions were developed. Currently there are standards made up for data centres' equipping.

To ensure housing of computer systems in the data centre we are using a number of: continual research and development, their industrial production and standards among telecommunication, power usage, air conditioning, fire protection, prevention and suppression, physical premises' security systems etc. Necessary industrial solutions for data centres are used in many other economic areas. For example, ASHRAE was formed as the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers by the merger in 1959 of The American Society of Heating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHAE) founded in 1894 and The American Society of Refrigerating Engineers (ASRE) founded in 1904. The recommendations and standards worked out by those associations are taken into consideration when designing data centres, focusing on building systems, energy efficiency, indoor air quality and sustainability within the industry.

The development of data centres' provision technologies is facilitated by management of associations, research institutions and specific companies, for example:

 AFCOM (Association for Computer Operations Management), was originally established in 1980;  The Open Data Center Alliance was formed in 2010;  European Data Centre Association, (EUDCA), 2011;  Data Center University (DCU) offers industry-leading education;  etc.

The most important in data centres' standardization is the Tier level classification system. The Data Centre Tier Performance Standards are a user set of requirements used to clearly define expectations for the design and management of the data centre to meet a prescribed level of availability. The Tier Level Classification system is the foundation used by many data centres' users, consultants and design professionals in establishing a 'design-versus performance' ranking approach to today's data centre projects.

Established in 1993, the Uptime Institute is an unbiased, third-party data centre research, education, and consulting organization focused on improving data centre performance and efficiency through collaboration and innovation. The Uptime Institute serves all shareholders of the data centre industry, including enterprise and third party operation, manufacturers, providers, and engineers. This collaborative approach, completed with the Uptime Institute's capability to recognize trends on a global basis and to interface directly with owners, results in solutions and invocations freed from regional constraints for the benefit of the worldwide data centre industry.

Founded in 1993, the Institute pioneered the creation and facilitation of end-user knowledge communities to improve reliability and uninterruptible availabilityuptime-in data centre facilities and Information Technology organizations. Uptime Institute's activity began with UUUG. The establishment in 1989 of the Uninterruptible Uptime Users Group (UUUG) still left a need in the data centre community for the user's ability to disseminate information freely due to the open forum of the group meetings. Through a member-driven, collaborative learning experience, members have steadily achieved higher levels of site uptime.

Significant aspects for evaluation related to data centre performance are site selection and performance evaluation. The Tier I data centre has non-redundant capacity components and single nonredundant distribution paths (for power and cooling distribution, without redundant components) serving the site's computer equipment. The data centre has computer room cooling and power distribution but it may or may not have a UPS or and engine generator. The data centre must be shut down for annual predictive maintenance and repair work. Corrective maintenance may require additional shutdowns. Operation errors or spontaneous failures of infrastructure components will cause a data centre disruption. As an example, a Tier I data centre may be suitable for small businesses where IT is intended for internal business processes.

The Tier II data centre has redundant capacity components, but only single nonredundant distribution paths (for power and cooling distribution, with redundant components) serving the site's computer equipment. They have UPS and engine generators but their capacity design is Need plus One (N+1), with a single power path. Maintenance of the critical power path and other parts of the site infrastructure will require a shutdown of computer processes. The benefit of this level is that any redundant capacity component can be removed from service on a planned basis without causing the data processing to be shut down. As an example, a Tier II data centre may be appropriate for internet-based companies without serious financial penalties for quality of service commitments.

The Tier III data centre is concurrently maintainable and has redundant capacity components (dual-powered equipment) and multiple independent distribution paths serving the site's computer equipment composed of multiple active power and cooling distribution paths, but only one path active, has redundant components, and is concurrently maintainable. Generally, only one distribution path serves the computer equipment at any time. This topology allows for any planned site infrastructure activity without disruption of the computer systems operation in any way. An example of a Tier III application would include companies that span multiple time zones or whose information technology resources support automated business process.

The Tier IV data centre is fault tolerant and has redundant capacity systems and multiple distribution paths simultaneously serving the site's computer equipment, including uplinks, storage, chillers, HVAC systems, servers etc. Everything is dualpowered. All IT equipment is dual powered and installed properly to be compatible with the topology of the site's architecture. Fault-tolerant functionality also provides the ability of the site infrastructure to sustain at least one worst-case unplanned failure or event with impact to the critical load. Examples of a Tier IV requirement include companies who have extremely high-availability requirements for on-going business such as E-commerce, market transactions, or financial settlement processes.

As a rule, the overall Tier Level is based on the lowest Tier ranking or weakest component. For example, a data centre may be rated Tier 3 for electrical, but Tier 2 for mechanical performance evaluation and the data centre's overall Tier rating is then 2. In practice, a data centre may have different tier ratings for different portions of the infrastructure. Uptime Institute has awarded 129 certificates in 25 countries around the world. Another example of the Tier level system is presented by Syska Hennessy Group. The higher the Tier level is, higher the total costs of data centre are. A data centre's Tier level is defined by the business needs of a concrete data centre. Below, in the table, there are examples of businesses and Tier levels applied to them.  specifications for data centre pathways and spaces,  planning of data centres, computer rooms, server rooms, and other spaces,  defining a standard of telecommunications infrastructure for data centres,  structured cabling system for data centres,  recommendations on media and distance for applications over structured cabling,  establish a standard for data centres' Tiers,  requires infrastructure administration.

Informative annex with TIA-606-A standards compliant labelling scheme for all components. All cabinets, racks, patch panels, cables, and patch cords should be labelled. Labelling scheme extended for use in data centres. Cabinets and racks labelled by location using tile grid or row/position identifiers.

Data centre infrastructure management is the integration of information technology and facility management disciplines to centralize monitoring, management and intelligent capacity planning of a data centre's critical systems. Achieved through the implementation of specialized software, hardware and sensors, a data centre's infrastructure management enables a common, real-time monitoring and management platform for all interdependent systems across the data centre facilitys infrastructures. ISO 20000 is the world's first standard for IT service management. The standard specifies a set of inter-related management processes, and is based heavily upon the ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) framework.

However, the standards do not give answers to all questions, e.g. the Tier level of dual site data centres and redundancy in this situation. The history of data centres standards development is summarized in the image below: The concept of a data centre is related to industrial IT utilization. The beginning of data centre development is firmly involved with mainframe computer maintenance.

The first unique mainframe computers were produced in research laboratories and also disposed there. The data centres' initial period we associate with such computer disposing and maintenance that were manufactured outside of research laboratories at least in a couple of instances. The first industrially manufactured computers and the first data centres had accumulated previous experience in mechanical data processing with different tabulators, adding machine and other devices.

Early computer systems were room-sized machines and required a lot of space. The complexity of operating and maintaining these machines also led to the practice of secluding them in dedicated rooms. Historically, assessment of data centre physical infrastructure's business value was based on two core criteria: availability and upfront cost. A data centre is a building where the primary function is to house the computer room and its support area. Four functionalities must be ensured:

 hardware disposal,  power to maintain equipment,  HVAC temperature controlled environment within the parameters needed,  structured cabling in and out.

We recount examples of the first data centres formed in the following fields:  banking sector -digital banking;

During the 1950s, researchers at the Stanford Research Institute invented the Electronic Recording Method of Accounting computer processing system (ERMA). ERMA was first demonstrated to the public in 1955, and first tested on real banking accounts in 1956. Production models (ERMA Mark II) were delivered to the Bank of America in 1959 for full-time use as the bank's accounting computer and check handling system.

In By data centre we mean the physical environmentpremises and all the necessary equipment for effective operation. Data centre staff are qualified employees that ensure computer maintenance. Data centres historically have developed according to computer operation technical requirements that depend on computing facilities. As mentioned before, the data centres' initial period is connected with 1 st , 2 nd and 3 rd generation mainframe computers. During the computers' development they became smaller and smaller, but could ensure the same computing capacitiesminicomputers derived. Wherewith, by emergence of personal computers data centres' impressiveness and uniqueness entirely shrank. For personal computer usage data centres were not necessarythey could be used right there in the office. However, this IT development did not eradicate data centres entirelyother technological needs and data centres' applications derived. With the boom of personal computers started the growth of the internet and sharply in more extensive sense developed data transmission technologies, telecommunications transferring to digital technologies and a sharp merging of information and telecommunication technologies happened. Disposal of telecommunications hardware in data centres started, so they became internet nodes. Since the early 1960s, the design of data centre infrastructure has advanced through at least four clear stages:

 Tier I appeared in the early 1960s,  Tier II in the 1970s,  Tier III in the late 1980s and early 1990s,  Tier IV in the mid-1990s.

These stages provide the foundation for the Four Tier Classification system defined by owners and users in association with the Uptime Institute.

Supercomputing

With great computing capacities (supercomputers) it is rationale to dispose these in data centres. Supercomputing necessity was sustained by a growing need of digital data storage amounts and computing capacities. Technological solutions and standardization developed and allowed to dispose computers and telecommunication hardware in data centres in a unified way, rack standards for hardware disposal were developed.

Data centres were always important for disposal of supercomputers and high performance computing (HPC). Supercomputers and HPC are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, oil and gas exploration, molecular modelling and physical simulations. Below we show growth of computing capacities in correspondence with the maximal capacity assured.

1949: 1,000 (1 KiloFlop) 1961: 100,000 1964: 1,000,000 (1 MegaFlop) 1987: 1,000,000,000 (1 GigaFlop) 1997: 1,000,000,000,000 (1 TeraFlop)

Virtualization Timeline

Communications channels historically were not powerful enough and there was no vast penetration of them, therefore personal computers-servers had to dispose in data centres as internet nodes. In that way the new service packages -colocation and hosting services were offered by data centres. In the further development of data centres services, virtualization technologies development has an important role, which currently concludes in cloud computing functionality. A short timeline of virtualization is as follows:  1960s: IBM introduces virtualization as a way for mainframes to share expensive memory and split mainframes into multiple virtual machines, work out timesharing and hypervisor ideas;  1971: IBM begins commercial production of system S/370 and adds virtual memory as a standard feature;  1994: Colocation services started;  1999: Rackspace Hosting opens their first data centre to businesses;  1999: VMware launches its Virtual Platform product;  2009: start a transition to cloud computing structures.

Racks and/or blades

A portable modular data centre

Container-based data centres go one step beyond in-rack cooling by placing the server racks into a standard shipping container and integrating heat exchange and power distribution into the container as well. Similar to full in-rack cooling, the container needs a supply of chilled water and uses coils to remove all heat from the air that flows over it. Air handling is similar to in-rack cooling and typically allows higher power densities than regular raised-floor data centres. Thus, container-based data centres provide all the functions of a typical data centre room (racks, CRACs, PDU, cabling, lighting) in a small package. Like a regular data centre room, they must be complemented by outside infrastructure such as chillers, generators, and UPS units to be fully functional. Several large hardware vendors have developed mobile solutions that can be installed and made operational in very short time. Below we publish some photographs showing the exhibits from the museum. Manual punch hosting services. This allowed to rationally use the early data centre's premises and practical knowledge of scientists. If we are talking about the data centre provisions functionality (power, HVAC, fire, security), then the best knowledge was gained with requirement ensuring of GE-415. By the beginning of the 1990s, completely new equipment and modern technologies were used, but the functional equipment of the data centre was maintained. The latest in IMCS UL was introduced the structured cabling system (only from 2006). Mentioned statements are confirmed in the picture above.

Computing developments which have an influence for Data Centres

Conclusions

There are standards and theory about data centres in accordance with which data centres are classified. The latest generation of computing technique's maintenance requirements for environment are increasing, and as a result, every data centre in its development is tending to become the highest category data centre. To ensure such environment it is also necessary to modernize the components that form it, therefore investments in environment development are increasing. Scientific institutions do not have such resources to create the highest category data centres, although the development of data centres in them is necessary; as well as it is necessary to ensure sustainable exploitation of computing resources, it is not critical to turn-off data centre, e.g. during the time environment maintenance equipment is being changed.

Figure 1 .

 1 Figure 1. Back side of racks Figure 2. Front side of racks Support equipment (backup power)

  ) and bonding requirements Generic Telecommunications Bonding and Grounding (Earthing) for Customer Premises, REVISION B TIA 758-A Customer owned outside plant cabling (approved for publishing) TIA 862 Building Automation Systems cabling (approved for publishing) TIA 942 Data centres infrastructure TIA 1005 Industrial cabling infrastructure TIA 1152 Requirements for field test instruments TIA 1179 Development of a new Healthcare standard (TR 42.1) ISO/IEC NP 24764 Information technology --Generic cabling for data-centres IEEE1100-2005 -IEEE Recommended Practice for Powering and Grounding Electronic Equipment

Figure

  Figure 4: Timeline of Data Centre Standardization

Figure

  Figure 5: Development of Data Centres in relation to IT technology transformations

Table 1 : Historical development timelines Timeline content Link Type of timeline

 1

	Computer	http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/Time_Line.php	Timeline and photo
	science	http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~cfs/472_html/Intro/timelin	Timeline and photo
	timeline	e.pdf
		To commemorate the 50 th year of modern computing
		and the Computer Society
		http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Category:Com	Description and
		puters_and_information_processing	Photo, Interactive
		Category: Computers and information processing
		IEEE Global History Network
		http://cms.uhd.edu/Faculty/BecerraL/Mycourses/Histor Link

Table http :

 http //www.saburchill.com/HOS/technology/008.html History of science and technology industrial revolution timeline

Table http :

 http //cs-exhibitions.uni-klu.ac.at/index.php?id=187 The history of (computer) storage

	Developme	History of software engineering http://timerime.com/en/timeline/71986/History+of+Dat	Timeline and photo
	nt of	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:History_of_soft a+Storage/	WIKI
	Computable	ware History of Data Storage
	Knowledge	Category: History of software
	History of	http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/Articles/Miscella http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/timeline.asp	Description Interactive
	the Internet	neous/IEEE-Annals.pdf Brief Timeline of the Internet
		A Brief History of Software Engineering (Niklaus http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/	Timeline
		Wirth) Hobbes' Internet Timeline 10.2
		http://www.softwarehistory.org/ http://www.history-timelines.org.uk/events-	Description Timeline
		The Software Industry Special Interest Group at the timelines/11-internet-history-timeline.htm
		Computer History Museum Internet History Timeline
	Operating History of	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_operating_sy http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/the-history-and-	WIKI Interactive
	systems multimedia	stems development-of-multimedia-a-story-of-invention-
	timeline	Timeline of operating systems ingenuity-and-vision
		http://www.networkdictionary.com/Software/Computer http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave/Multimedia/node8.html	Timeline Timeline
		-Operating-Systems-Development-Timeline.php History of Multimedia Systems
	History of	Computer Operating Systems Development Timeline http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Category:Com	Timeline Interactive
	Telecommu	http://www.templejc.edu/dept/cis/ccollins/ITSC1305/os munications	Timeline and photo
	nications	http://www.slideshare.net/wizbee/timeline-of--timeline.html IEEE Global History Network	Timeline and photo
		computer-history-8498853 Operating System Timeline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_telecommunica	WIKI
		Slideshare http://www.scribd.com/doc/36626225/Timeline-of-tion	Timeline
	Timeline of	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_virtualization Operating-Systems History of telecommunication	WIKI
	virtualizatio	_development Timeline of operating systems http://www.telcomhistory.org/timeline.shtml	Timeline and photo
	n	Timeline of virtualization development http://wiki.jumba.com.au/wiki/List_of_Operating_Syst The Telecommunications History Group	WIKI
	developmen	http://www.hds.com/go/hds-virtualization-timeline/ ems	Interactive
	t	Storage Virtualization -Hitachi Data List of Operating Systems
	History of	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_computing http://trillian.randomstuff.org.uk/~stephen/history/timel	WIKI Timeline
	computing	Timeline of computing ine-OS.html
		http://www.history-timelines.org.uk/events-Brief History of Computing -Operating Systems	Timeline and photo
	Programmi	timelines/07-computer-history-timeline.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_programming	WIKI
	ng language	Computer History Timeline _languages
	timeline	http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/?category=c http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_programming_	Museum
		mpny languages
		Timeline of Computer History Timeline of programming languages
		http://www.warbaby.com/FG_test/Timeline.html http://oreilly.com/news/graphics/prog_lang_poster.pdf	Table Poster
		Full Timeline History of Programming Languages
		http://www.tnmoc.org/timeline.aspx http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Programmin	Museum WIKI
		The National Museum of Computing g%20language%20timeline
		http://www.askthecomputertech.com/computer-history-Timeline of programming languages	Timeline
		timeline.html http://oreilly.com/news/languageposter_0504.html	Poster
		Computer History Timeline The History of Programming Languages
	A Timeline	http://archives.icom.museum/vlmp/computing.html http://quickbase.intuit.com/articles/timeline-of-	Museum Timeline
	of Database	The Virtual Museum of Computing database-history
	History	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_hard A Timeline of Database History	WIKI
		ware_in_Soviet_Bloc_countries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Intgr/RDBMS_timeli	WIKI, poster
		History of computer hardware in Soviet Bloc countries ne
	The History	http://web-friend.com/help/general/pc_history.html RDBMS timeline	Timeline
	of the Timeline of	The History of Computers: From PC to mainframe http://www.wolframalpha.com/docs/timeline/	Table and photo
	Mainframe Systematic	http://store.wolfram.com/view/misc/popup/timeline.ht	Poster
	History of Data and	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_software_engi ml	WIKI
	software the	neering Timeline of Computable Knowledge Poster

Table 2 : Site selection and performance evaluation Site selection Factors Performance evaluation Factors

 2

	Location	Earthquake Zone	Electrical	Utility Service
		Flood Plains		Lightning
		Hurricanes or Tornadoes		Protection
		Proximity to Major		Power Backbone
		Highways		UPS Systems
		Proximity to Railway		UPS Batteries
		Lines		Engine Generator
		Proximity to Hazardous		Load Bank
		Areas		Critical Power
		Proximity to Airports or		Distribution
		Flight Corridors		Grounding
	Infrastructure	Availability of Electrical	Mechanical	Raised Floor

Table 3 : Tier Classifications according to the Uptime Institute

 3

		Tier 1	Tier II	Tier III	Tier IV
	Site availability	99.67%	99.75%	99.98%	99.99%
	Downtime (hours/yr)	28.8	22.0	1.6	0.4
	Operations centre	Not	Not	Required	Required
		required	required
	Redundancy for power, cooling	N	N+1	N+1	2(N+1)
	Gaseous fire	Not	Not	FM200 or	FM200 or
	suppression system	required	required	Inergen	Inergen
	Redundant	Not	Not	Required	Required
	backbone pathways	required	required
	UPS power outage			72 hours	96 hours

Table 4 : Businesses and Tier Levels

 4 Based on the four-Tier system of The Uptime Institute in April 2005, ANSI/TIA approved ANSI/TIA-942 Telecommunication Infrastructure Standard for Data Centers (see the list). Important purposes of TIA-942 are as follows:

	Applied Tier level	Business
	Tier 1	Professional services, Construction & engineering, Branch
		office (financial)
	Tier 1 or Tier 2	Point of sale, Customer Resource Management (CRM), 7x24
		support centres, University data centre
	Tier 1 or Tier 2 or Tier 3	Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Online hospitality & travel
		reservations
	Tier2	Local real time media
	Tier 2 or Tier 3	Online data vaulting and recovery, Insurance, Work-in-progress
		tracking (manufacturing), Global real time media, Voice over IP
		(VoIP), Online banking, Hospital data centre, Medical records,
		Global supply chain
	Tier2 or Tier3 or Tier4	E-commerce
	Tier3	Emergency call centre
	Tier 3 or Tier4	Energy utilities, Electronic funds transfer, Global package
		tracking
	Tier 4	Securities trading and settlement

Table 5 : Overview of Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) standards related to data centre housing (In Europe there are others, with prefix DIN).

 5

  1961 Barclays opened Britain's first computer centre for banking. The company, now called Automatic Data Processing, Inc. went public and leased its first computer in 1961, an IBM 1401.  Statistics. UNIVAC I, was signed over to the United States Census Bureau on 1951.  Climate data processing and weather forecasting. The Weather Bureau (USA) start in 1954-1955 with usage of an IBM 701.  Medicine. Usage of computerized citoanalyzer was started in 1954. In 1960 an IBM 650 was used to scan medical records for subtle abnormalities.

	 Universities and research laboratories.
	o CERN's first computer was installed in 1958.
	o M.I.T. Computation Center establishing from 1956 until 1966.
	o Russian Academia of Science Computing Centre established in
	1955.
	o Research Computing Center of Moscow State University was
	founded in 1955.
	o St.Petersburg University computer STRELA was installed in 1957.
	o In 1959 was established the Computing Center -now Institute of
	Mathematics and Computer Science University of Latvia (IMCS
	UL).
	 Civil aviation. The first passenger reservations system offered by Sabre,
	installed in 1960.
	 Military field, including space. The building of the USSR Ministry of
	Defence Computer Centre No1, created by A.I.Kitov in 1954. That was the
	first Soviet computer centre.

  There are several advantages for each solution, but every time we design anew, there are investigations we should think about and weight ...  RACKS: A 19-inch rack is a standardized frame or enclosure for mounting multiple equipment modules. Equipment module has a front panel that is 19 inches (482.6 mm) wide, including edges or ears that protrude on each side which allow the module to be fastened to the rack frame with screws.

	 BLADES: A blade server is a stripped-down server computer with a modular
	design. A blade enclosure, which can hold multiple blade servers, provides
	services such as power, cooling, networking, various interconnects and
	management. Cooling during operation, electrical and mechanical components
	produce heat, which a system must dissipate to ensure the proper functioning
	of its components. Most blade enclosures remove heat by using fans.
	Networking blade servers generally include integrated or optional network
	interface controllers. A blade enclosure can provide individual external ports to
	which each network interface on a blade will connect. Alternatively, a blade
	enclosure can aggregate network interfaces into interconnect devices (such as
	switches) built into the blade enclosure or in networking blades.
	Developers first placed complete microcomputers on cards and packaged them
	in standard 19-inch racks in the 1970s soon after the introduction of 8-bit
	microprocessors. Equipment designed to be placed in a rack is typically
	described as rack-mount, rack-mount instrument, a rack mounted system, a
	rack mount chassis, subrack, rack mountable, rack unit or U (less commonly
	RU). The industry standard rack cabinet is 42U tall.

  Literature 1. R. Balodis, J. Borzovs, I. Opmane, A. Skuja, E. Ziemele. (2010). Research directions profile in the Computing museum of the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Latvia (IMCS), p. 453-461,In IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology Volume 350, 2011, Springer, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-23315-9, History of Nordic Computing 3 Third IFIP WG 9.7 Conference, HiNC 3, Stockholm, Sweden, October 18-20, 2010, Revised Selected Papers. 2. Р. Балодис, И. Опмане. Институт и три социально-технологические волны ИТ.стр. 36-40,in International Federation for Information Processing Yaroslavthe-Wise Novgorod State University A.P. Ershov Institute of Informatics Systems, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Computer History Museum, CA, USA Scientific Council of the Russian Virtual Computer Museum Polytechnic Museum, Moscow SORUCOM-2011 PROCEEDINGS Second International.

Soviet economic planners decided to use the ES EVM design (IBM clones). Prominent Soviet computer scientists had criticized these ideas and suggested instead choosing one of the Soviet indigenous designs, such as BESM or Minsk. The first works on the cloning began in 1968; production started in 1972. After Latvia regained independence, operation of ES EVM was suspended in 1992 due to costly serviceelectricity and a great maintenance staff.

All together transition from BESM to ES EM and mini computers did not affect the institute's research, nor the data centre's development, because ES EVM were not smaller in their volume; they were even more exacting as for data centre facility's provision.

In the existence of the data centre, there was decadence for 5 years in the end of 1980s, because mainframe computers were disassembled and other computing resources of such scale were not set up. Technological reform of the data centre began when Latvia regained its independence and introduction of the internet in 1992. In the data centre there was disposed and further developed an international internet node with appropriate server connection; but in the mid-1990s collocation services were offered, but in 2000 -


Audra Lukaitis

Stasys Lukaitis

Bill Davey

Keywords: information systems curriculum, information systems history, information systems

This paper traces the birth of the Information Systems degrees offered by RMIT University in

Context: Australia, an Early Adopter

The environment in which this study commences is of broad experimentation with computers becoming widespread in both government and industry. A significant dearth of qualified personnel in the computing industry brought experts from all over the world to a vigorously growing Australia. People from this burgeoning area were also recruited into universities at a very early stage. At the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (now RMIT University) Brian O'Donahue (from the Commonwealth Public Service) was recruited to head the Data Processing Group. People like Cliff Forrester, who had become engaged by computers after working on EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) in England as a result of his aeronautical jobs at Farnborough, drifted from some part time teaching at Caulfield Institute (one of the first Colleges to offer formal degrees in Information Systems) into a full time role at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT).

These industry experienced academics reflected the early entry of the country into computing. Australia has a relatively long history of computing. The CSIR Mk1 (CSIRAC -Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Automatic Computer), built in the late 1940s was Australia's first internally-stored-program computer and is acknowledged to be the world's fourth (Tatnall & Davey, 2004b).

RMIT University Evolution

RMIT is quite old in Australian terms. The University opened for business on 7 th June 1887, as the Working Men's College with an initial enrolment of 600 students. In 1934 the Working Men's College was incorporated and its name change to 'The Melbourne Technical College' and in 1960 the 'Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology' was adopted as the new name by the council. Over the life of the institution the various names included:

 RMIT University (1992-)  Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (1960Technology ( -1991 The College offered classes in technical, business and arts subjects with an emphasis on applied skills relevant to trades including architectural and mechanical drawing, theoretical and applied mechanics, plumbing, carpentry and painting, as well as studies in arithmetic, algebra, bookkeeping, shorthand and physics.

Currently (2012) there are more than 75,000 enrolled students (with 19,600 Vocational Education and Training students) including 28,000 international students representing more than 100 countries. The heritage of starting as a union supported college for working men has seen the University orientate itself in such a way where curriculum and applied research are heavily influenced by current industrial practice.

The clear industrial orientation and interest in applied rather than pure research provides an interesting beginning and backdrop to the history of the creation of information systems programs. The story of curriculum development presented in this narrative involves academics who were recruited to the University because of their industrial experience rather than their traditional academic experiences such as research publications and grants success.

Research Method

The themes that form this paper were derived from text analysis and analysis of interview transcripts. To achieve some validity in the process the three researchers produced independent analyses from a subset of the sources used. These were then compared, and an iterative process of refinement used, to result in the themes presented here, sources included:  Documents: This history was constructed from original documents such as brochures, Faculty of Business handbooks, course guides and internal University documents, Australian State and Federal Government education reports, published policies and papers.  Interviews: Face to face interviews were also conducted with Cliff Forrester, Audra Lukaitis and Stasys (Stas) Lukaitis which were recorded.

Cliff Forrester was employed by the University after leaving Caulfield Institute in 1965 to help teach in the courses set up by Brian O'Donoghue as part of the then accounting degree. Audra Lukaitis and Stasys Lukaitis worked for different parts of the University, and were brought together by the formation of the new Department of Business Information Systems on the centenary of RMIT's opening in 1987 and were founding members of the new Business Information Systems Department. This means that they were able to observe the evolution of existing courses into degree programs in information systems first hand.

Australian Government Education Policy

Higher education policy, dictated by the national government, is the first major influence on the environment. The aims and missions of higher education institutions such as RMIT University and the birth of information systems education must be seen in the context of this environment. State and federal government higher education policy has influenced the mission and direction of higher education institutions throughout Australia particularly in the post-World War II era. How government has responded to population growth, economic boom times and recessions, labour market trends, upswings and downturns, university overcrowding, increasing demand for higher education, the financing of higher education, internationalisation of education provision and other various economic or political imperatives through higher education policy is critical to understanding most higher education institutions in Australia.

Where originally higher education was mostly funded by the state government, changes in funding mechanisms from state to the commonwealth government meant that control shifted away exclusively from state control to national control, from institutional autonomy to national government accountability. As demand for higher education increased, and traditional labour markets disappeared, the higher education system moved from an elite to a 'massified' system (today also about 50% selffunded).

The Murray Report (1957)

In post-World War II Australia, The Murray Report (1957) prompted far reaching changes to Australian universities "from largely undergraduate institutions to modern research universities" [START_REF] Lindsay | Doctoral Education: Continuity & Change[END_REF]. The Murray report is also significant in that it informed much of the higher education policy and debate for almost the next forty years. In his investigations, Murray found severe overcrowding in universities, initiating expansions in the sector via Commonwealth funding matching state funding.

The key outcomes of the Murray Report included the establishment of the Australian Universities Commission (AUC) in 1958, the Commonwealth Government helped fund universities for recurrent and capital purposes, the funding of scholarships particularly for teacher training was introduced, and Commonwealth funding of postgraduate education and research.

In his report Murray stressed the roles and functions of universities and technical collegesthe technical college is to produce technicians and craftsmen (of which there was an urgent national need), the function of universities is professional training including research, which should promote national interests and is vital to the academic health of staff and students.

In the 1960s the economic, demographic and social expansion started in the 1950s continued. Demand for university places and severe overcrowding, highlighted by Murray almost a decade earlier, increased. According to Meek, "political and social pressures to further expand higher education intensified" (1991:465).

The Martin Report (1964-1965)

The Martin Report recommended the creation of Colleges of Advanced Education (CAEs) rather than the expansion of universities, thus creating a new binary system for higher education. The CAE was "based on a new kind of institution, more applied and less research-oriented than universities" (Karmel, 1988:121). Martin reiterated and reaffirmed boundaries between academic and vocational education. Meek (1991:466) notes that despite the recommendation of the Martin Report the binary system transformed itself into a 'trinary' system in just over ten years with colleges of Technical And Further Education (TAFE) taking up apprenticeship training and subdiploma courses. RMIT's new status as a College of Advanced Education was reflected in a name change to the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology which it held from 1960-1991.

The 1970s

In 1974 the Whitlam Labor government initiated further major changes in higher education. Tuition fees were abolished and the generous Tertiary Education Assistance Scheme (TEAS) was introduced. Moreover, all recurrent and capital funding of universities and colleges of advanced education was taken over completely by the commonwealth government from the states. This meant that tertiary education could now be controlled nationally, policies would be set nationally, and funding would be controlled at the national level. According to Harman (1989:4) the federal government had now become the "dominant partner in policy determination and planning for higher education"

After the dismissal of the Whitlam Government after denial of 'supply', Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser's so called 'razor gang' tried to respond to increasing political and public pressure for funding constraints across the board nationally in the context of a global recession, industry shut downs and massive redundancies in the workforce across Australia. A climate of accountability and cost cutting prevailed, as the new agenda of restraint in government spending set in, particularly in education, the modus operandi became how patterns of post-secondary education satisfactorily matched labour markets.

The 1980s

The Malcolm Fraser Liberal government specified amalgamation rounds of targeted colleges of advanced education (CAEs) linking these to federal funding. One third of CAEs were told to amalgamate, and by 1983 all but four of the CAEs had amalgamated. In such a climate of economic restraint issues of quality and efficiency moved to the top of the higher education agenda. How could more be done with less?

By the 1980s continuing changes in the global economy and other factorsfor example the Bob Hawke/Paul Keating Labor government 'level playing field' policy of reducing tariffs, particularly in manufacturing and textile industriessaw a decline in Australia's manufacturing base and an erosion of traditional overseas markets, increasing global competition, resulting in the decline or disappearance of many skilled and unskilled jobs and industries, while other traditional skills were changing with the rise of technology in the workplace. Under this government, state sector industries were dismantled, the financial system deregulated and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia sold off.

In higher education, further major rationalisations were carried out through amalgamations. There was a rapid growth in advanced education and by the mid-1980s CAE students outnumbered university students. Until the late 1980s the commonwealth continued to provide 90% of higher education funding.

By the early 1980s Australia was again in recession, and by the end of the term of the Fraser government, unemployment topped 10%. With government cutbacks in higher education funding, CAEs and universities began to seek ways to raise revenue and make up government funding shortfalls through full-fee short courses, international student revenue and initiating partnerships running off-shore accredited education programs. CAE academics in particular were encouraged to become involved in consultancy work and full-fee overseas students were enrolled in greater numbers across campuses in Australia. As demand for tertiary education continued following on from increasing school retention rates, Australia mirrored other comparable OECD countries in the provision of tertiary education from an elite to mass system (the next transition being a 'universal' provision).

Dawkin's Green Paper 1987

In late 1987-1988 further influential and far reaching changes to higher education were proposed and ratified by Dawkins in the so called 'Green Paper 'of 1987 (Higher Education: a policy discussion paper) and ratified by the 'White Paper' of 1988 (Higher Education: a policy statement). The report noted that industry had increased its demand for postgraduates in the areas of management, business and commerce, proposing that education and training would play a central role in responding to Australia's major economic challenges. Dawkins abolished the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission introduced by the Fraser government and formed the National Board for Employment, Education and Training.

Perhaps the most dramatic of Dawkins' reforms (under the Hawke/Keating Labor government) concerned the further amalgamations of many universities and CAEs throughout Australia, effected through funding allocations based on institutional profiles and students numbers, giving rise to large multi-campus universities and CAE institutions across Australia, via the so-called 'Unified National System'. The distinction between colleges of advanced education and universities was removed, in effect granting former colleges of advanced education university status. The catch cry of Hawke/Keating government was that they were setting up conditions to foster a 'clever country'. In effect this led to today's 'corporatisation' of universities.

Dawkins further introduced the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS). Through this scheme students paid university fees via the Australian tax system, either upfront receiving a discount or later through deductions from their wages. There was a fixed charge for various programs with arts and humanities at the cheaper range of the spectrum, computer science and information technology in the middle spectrum, and medicine, dentistry and law at the most expensive end.

With a change in government, Amanda Vanstone (under the Howard liberal coalition government) increased HECS charges to students, and reduced grants to universities.

Simon Marginson (2001) in analysing trends in the funding of Australian Higher Education and concludes:

"The Dawkins reforms remade higher education as a competitive system of self-managing institutions with control over their own resources, while subject to accountability requirements and limits on numbers in relation to government-funded places. The underlying objectives of the shift to mixed funding were to provide fiscal relief for the government, and to strengthen economic relationships between universities and industry so that higher education would contribute to national competitiveness. The first objective was successfully achieved.

The HECS was introduced in 1989 at an average 20 per cent of course costs; later, in several stages, the level and rate of repayment were increased. The DETYA data also record a rapid increase in incomes from international student fees, vocational postgraduate fees, especially in Business Studies, and continuing education ... The number of international students grew from 21,112 in 198921,112 in to 83,111 in 199921,112 in .... By 1998, 33., 33.2 per cent of all income received by higher education institutions was derived from the HECS plus university-determined fees and charges, compared to about 2 per cent derived from fees and charges in 1983. In 1998 income from international students constituted 8.3 per cent of all income, and more than one dollar in five in institutions with greatest exposure to the market. Whereas governments provided 90 per cent of funding in 1983 and 70.3 per cent in 1989, by 1998 the public share was down to 51.9 per cent ... Though most OECD countries saw increases in private funding during this period (Williams 1992), the Australian change was remarkable in its speed and universality." These influences are critical in understanding the development and growth of RMIT University and the school as it is today. Autonomy, direction, funding and control have shifted from the school to the university as the university now relies heavily on international tuition fees, general tuition fees and other fund raising activities in order to operate in the face of diminishing government fiscal support and heavy reporting and assurance activities.

Computing Before the Inception of Information Systems

The history of computing at RMIT commences in 1962 with the lease of an Elliot computer [START_REF] Tatnall | Curriculum Cycles in the History of Information Systems in Australia[END_REF]. In 1986 the Faculty of Business (subsequently the Business Portfolio and now College of Business) was composed of the Department of Accountancy, the Department of Administrative Studies and the Department of Applied Economics.

Noel Anthony was appointed Foundation Dean of the Faculty of Business in and encouraged the Faculty of Business Computing group to acquire and deploy a new HP250 minicomputer, funding the setup of the first terminal labs in the Business Faculty. Noel Anthony retired in 1986, with the new Dean Dr. J. Milton-Smith appointed 1986, commencing in 1987. In the first instance the Department of Accountancy employed some people from industry to deal with the problem of students, particularly rising numbers of postgraduate students, wanting to be able to design, manage, oversight, implement or participate in the introduction of data processing equipment and systems into their organisations.

Eventually there were enough people to create a data processing group and for a leader of that group to be employed. The first leader was Cliff Forrester who became so disenchanted with organisational administrative tasks that he applied for leave to undertake a Masters in Computing at the University of Texas. His replacement, Brian O'Donaghue, took the data processing group, now considerably enlarged because of the demand for courses, into the newly created Department of Administrative Studies.

The group provided significant service teaching throughout the Faculty of Business as well as offering streams into some degrees. Eventually the Department of Administrative Studies offered graduate diploma degrees, starting first with computing programing: the Graduate Diploma in Commercial Data Processing. This timeline compares with the creation of the RMIT Department of Computer Science in 1981 [START_REF] Tatnall | Curriculum Cycles in the History of Information Systems in Australia[END_REF]. In 1984 the information systems group was created in the Department of Administrative Studies under the leadership of Tony Adams (replacing George Sutherland), co-opted from the Department of Computer Science. By the end of 1984 the data processing group consisted of Tony Adams (Principal Lecturer), Neville Stern and Nigel Thomas (Senior Lecturers), and lecturers Cliff Forrester, Hugh Ballantyne, Philip Crutch and Stasys Lukaitis [START_REF] Tatnall | Curriculum Cycles in the History of Information Systems in Australia[END_REF].

5.

-The Department is Created

In 1988 the Faculty of Business under Noel Anthony saw the demand for information systems courses to be too large (with demand growing) for a group within the Administrative Studies department. The Department of Business Information Systems was created under the leadership of Tony Adams. Tony had previously worked in the Department of Computer Science at RMIT, and before that had come from industry where he was the Data Processing Manager for Monash University in Melbourne.

It was also in 1988 that Stas Lukaitis was tasked with the replacement of the HP250 minicomputer and a new technology DISC symmetric multiprocessor UNIX minicomputer was acquired.

The first Windows Personal Computers were being deployed along with early Apple Macintosh computers.

1988 -Secretarial Studies Fights Back

By the mid-1970s and 1980s Australian university places were created and mostly funded by the federal government. This funding arrangement was especially important for the formation of undergraduate degrees at that time. A new degree could only be created by taking student places away from other programs (or courses as they were called then).

RMIT had very successfully run secretarial business studies degrees and graduate diplomas in the 1960s and 1970s and had an outstanding reputation in this area. The first secretarial business studies degree was launched in 1976, and 1979 saw the first students graduate in the three year Bachelor of Business in Secretarial Studies course where students studied sociology or psychology, general accounting, macroeconomics, commercial lawcontracts, company law, principles of finance, marketing, data processing, labour relations in addition to secretarial studies and supervised professional practice.

According to the secretarial studies group, these graduates readily found employment in secretarial/administrative positions and many had multiple job offers. The secretarial undergraduate degree brochure recognised that technological change in the office was a challenge to management to understand and seek out the advantages of technology for their organisations and personnel; they were challenged as to whether they would "let it happen" or "make it happen" emphasising that RMIT is producing people "to make it happen".

In the late 1970s the University hierarchy attempted to close down the secretarial studies degrees, wanting to release the funding for other purposes. RMIT had underestimated the 'fight back' response of the secretarial studies group who galvanised a large number of alumni, many of whom worked for powerful people in powerful places, including leading business leaders, politicians, and members of Parliament. There was a large 'penultimate' city protest/demonstration with news coverage.

The secretarial group consisted mostly of a small number of older (not too far off from retirement) women who had given good service to the Tech (as RMIT was fondly referred to), students and the community. Their educational standards were rigorous and their group was run along 'traditional' lines, from another era. The women were well educated and had various backgrounds including experience in industry. There was a strong hierarchy, a very strong commitment to 'standards' from which the group did not swerve; there were many students who would never graduate as they could not meet specified required minimum skill standards (which were actually quite 'high' by today's standards). In their way they kept up with technology (for example they had championed and overseen the installation of memory typewriters, then a dedicated word processing laboratory stocked with a small number of IBM dedicated word processors and a laboratory of dictaphone machines and electric typewriters, however, were finally stumped by the introduction of the personal computer (PC) and the new software. The Tech had to 'back down' from the total shutdown of the secretarial group, reviewing their position regarding redundancies.

The impact of the PC on secretarial studies

There was much happening during the 1980s in respect of the impact of personal computers and changes to work processes. Fine old business traditions such as typing pools, comptometrists and ledger machine operators were being slowly replaced with electric typewriters, memory typewriters, word processing centres, dedicated word processing machines then the ubiquitous personal computers with their cheap and user-friendly word processors; calculators had arrived and instead of ledger cards we saw the arrival of departmental computing and database systems.

The secretarial staff mostly had accounting qualifications, two staff members had extensive industry experience but no university qualifications. One particular staff member, Eileen Gueho, was also very active in the Australian Institute of Management, and other business organisations. She also had a large network of important industry contacts that were beneficial to courses, subjects, staff, students and the RMIT all round.

Eileen Gueho was also a cooperative education pioneer, the pathfinder who sourced, negotiated, coordinated and supervised industry job placements for students' cooperative education year (one year of work in industry) drawing on her vast network of contacts and alumni to place students in jobs. She was also a champion public speaker winning competitions in national toastmaster events; she had originally trained as a concert pianist and had worked in industry.

Needless to say, in the context of a seeming upheaval in how office tasks were now being accomplished in industry, particularly the larger global institutions and the rapid changes in technology and the encroachment of personal computers, there were some tensions between the traditionalists and the change agents who could see what was happening in industry.

New Bachelor of Business -Office Systems/Business Information Systems Streams

With RMIT's re-evaluation of its position due to publicity and unexpected fight back response, the old secretarial undergraduate degree was incorporated into a new hybrid Bachelor of Business degree offering two streams: the Bachelor of Business (Information Systems) and (Office Systems). Therefore the new Department was built on the secretarial studies government funding. The funding was split 50/50 between two streams: Office Systems and Business Information Systems (each stream consisting of 8 full semester units). It is important to remember that running an undergraduate degree was determined by the Government funding allocated to the University and divided amongst the competing Departments. These changes were championed by Tony Adams, who lead the dramatic changes and instigated the new undergraduate business information systems degree, incorporating the secretarial group into the office systems streams. Much of the curriculum and course philosophy of the office systems stream was founded on the research and writings of Rudi Hirsccheim and Enid Mumford, and from the beginning were founded on a human factors perspective.

In the office systems program, explanations of the trend towards automating office functions and the need to educate personnel to meet the demands of this evolving business function to "analyse office activities, plan for and design appropriate office systems, implement new office technologies; evaluate and manage the new office systems" was made explicit. However, to differentiate themselves from information systems the program emphasised the human side of the office "remembering that all offices depend on people, how they work and interact and people cannot yet be automated. Thus the education of office employees for all levels is viewed with technology, communication and management all given equal focus in the curriculum." (Department of Business Computing postgraduate programs brochure 1995:8)

New Department Built on Large Compulsory Core Subject Enrolment

Equally important, the school was also built on the large compulsory enrolment of all Faculty of Business students into the business computing foundation subject 'Computer Applications in Business'. At that time over 1,300 students were enrolled in this subject. The whole Department taught into this subject, including the Head and the Principal Lecturer both on campus and overseas, and every staff member contributed content, direction and teaching, including lectures and laboratory sessions. Curriculum included word processing, spreadsheets, database, expert systems and was for a time 'bilingual'teaching software on Microsoft Windows PCs and Apple Macintosh computers. A series of supporting lectures expounded on the latest developments in information systems and technology, raising issues about security and ethics from the very beginning. In fact, Tony Adams, the founding Head of Department, pioneered the Australian Computer Abuse Research Bureau (ACARB), which was visionary for its time. It was also at this time that the Faculty of Business started to experience a leap in enrolments. Demand was burgeoning across all business programs and courses.

A fresh paradigm of working with new technology in business

This introductory computing subject was always considered with some importance to the Department, as it was the cornerstone and portal to other information systems and business computing subjects offered, also it was an important source of university funding. It was a core subject of all Faculty of Business degrees. Incidentally the content and style of the subject was built on industry consultancies delivered by RMIT's Australian Microcomputers Industry Clearing House (AMIC)a consulting arm of the University staffed by department academics (who also were required to consult in industry) and other computer specialists. It was through this organisational group that RMIT and the Department were able to generate income to fund resources, software and equipment.

The basis of this subject was that it addressed the impact of the (then) new technology Personal Computer and its associated personal productivity software and how working in business would change forever. The term 'paperless office' was also coined about that time.

Although generally the software and other concepts have changed with natural developments and in computing in business, the framework is essentially the same as it was 25 years ago. Like the London underground map, the introductory computing subject map put together by the data processing and office systems groups has stood the test of time.

One of the reasons for its success is its elegance and simplicity addressing the way people would think and work with this new technology in a business context.

1988 -The first Bachelor of Business (Business Information Systems) Degree and Growth in Postgraduate Diploma Enrolments

By 1988 the new Bachelor of Business (Business Information Systems) consisted of two major streams: Business Information Systems and Office Systems. The new program extended over four years (of which there was a one year work placement component). The office systems stream looked at the human factors in and around the implementation of information systems, whereas the business information systems specialised in the technical design and implementation of information systems. Each stream also offered a one year full-time, or two-year part-time, graduate diploma (a postgraduate qualification) consisting of eight subjects. The jobs the Office Systems postgraduate course targeted for their graduates were Systems Training Officer, Market Planning Manager, Information Manager, Personnel Officer, Projects Coordinator, Change Management Consultant, Office Technology Consultant, Database Systems Officer, International Marketing Specialist and such like. Business Information Systems targeted jobs such as Systems Analyst, Database Programmer/Analyst/Administrator and information technology consultant and advisor.

The Postgraduate Diploma in Secretarial Studies continued (with large numbers of students still applying), though the program was to be rebadged and restructured as the Graduate Diploma in Business Systems reflecting its predominantly business curriculum of accounting, marketing, law and management.. The Postgraduate Diploma in Commercial Data Processing also still continued (with large numbers of students applying and growing).

Close ties with industry

The Department and its academic staff had arisen from demands of industry for job specific training. This was (and is) reflected in working conditions and priorities. Until recently PhD qualifications were seen as irrelevant as the role of the College of Advanced Education (CAE) was "more applied and less research-oriented than universities" (Karmel, 1988:121). The Martin Report tabled in 1964-65 recommended the creation of Colleges of Advanced Education rather than the expansion of universities to cope with the demand for more universities places. The mission of the college of advanced education was therefore very different from that of a university.

Rather than research, RMIT CAE academics were required to teach and consult into industry and maintain close links with industry. In her interview Audra Lukaitis describes this priority:

"It was a very heavy load to work in industry as a consultant and then work full-time as an academic. Nevertheless this experience was to prove absolutely invaluable to me and has informed my whole approach to computing education. To industry I was able to bring fresh ideas, concepts and theories garnered from research in my fields, and from industry I was able to bring back real world case studies that informed all assignments, approaches and curriculum content. I was able to see firsthand what really went on in industry as a participant and bring it back to the classroom, enlivening the student educational experience."

In an interview, Stasys Lukaitis remarks:

"It might be of interest to note that AMIC -Australian Microcomputer Industry Clearinghouse -was created by an enterprising Tony Adams and others in response to the 'sudden' arrival of microcomputers onto the scene, much like the recent 'cloud and mobile computing' phenomena. The demand for short courses and consultancies on the use and deployment of micros, their software e.g. -Visicalc, Lotus, MultiMate, WordStar, Dbase was huge and AMIC blossomed. Several BIS staff were recruited from the ranks of the industry experienced consultants who worked at AMIC (e.g. Peter Viola who was a Manager at AMIC for many years).

Academics who worked at AMIC were actually paid at standard industry consulting rates. It was this that created issues with the Chancellery who were concerned that academics were being paid too much. That was the start of the demise of AMIC, the birth of the MDC 1 and the end of academic input into University industry education engagement." Thus in the past under the leadership of Tony Adams and Eileen Gueho and the academic staff at the time there was considerable engagement with industry almost on a day-to-day basis. There was a prevailing atmosphere of excitement and anticipation. 1 MDC: The Management Development Centre -the University's official window to business and industrial education. The MDC was more structured and bureaucratised and the role and influence of academics somewhat reduced.

Overseas Demand

Right from the formation of the Department of Business Information Systems (now School of Business Information Technology and Logistics) the founding Head, Tony Adams along with others in the Faculty began to pioneer and establish international education initiatives onshore and offshore, namely in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong; particularly with Barry Cooper from Accountancy and James Hurley from Administrative Studies who set up the original Malaysian offshore business degree at Taylors College. Hugh Ballantyne was also instrumental in promoting the Department's courses overseas at education fairs and such like.

In retrospect it can be seen that this was partly a response to changes in government higher education policy and early decline in government funding, and in parallel the new demands for 'research' and computer equipment which had to be funded.

Staff were now required to teach overseas (in addition to consulting in industry), which certainly added another challenge, but without a doubt yet another valuable dimension. Groups of students from around the world appeared in classrooms in increasingly large numbers. This brought many new challenges for which many staff were unprepared -academic standards, assumptions, English language proficiency, writing and comprehension, extremes in diversity, cultural differences -all had to be dealt with. The international student market was grown very aggressively and successfully by Barry Cooper from Accountancy, Colin Bent from Economics and Finance and Tony Adams from Business Information Systems (onshore enrolments and offshore partnerships). They were initially the ones who had the vision to expand RMIT's activities globally; they were the pathfinders, the global thinkers and doers. Once again, teaching overseas was considered to be 'above load', so academics were paid separately for overseas teaching while still putting in full time work back home, nevertheless all academics were required to teach overseas.

In hindsight it is clear why RMIT Business, and Business IT in particular, were so successful in recruiting overseas students and in expanding offshore education. The answer lies in the type and quality of the academic staff who engaged with the students. Staff almost entirely deeply understood and were experienced in industry and business and enthusiastically transferred that quintessentially Australian educational experience to the overseas students. As one student remarked in a survey at the time "the most interesting thing about this course is listening to the war stories and experiences from the real world".

Heads of School -The Champions

It is useful to view the evolution of the School of Business Information Technology in terms of the Heads of Schools who have contributed so much to its continued success and continuing relevance in terms of the context of the times and developments in communication and information systems technologies, also in the context of evolving national government higher education policies and RMIT University's response to changing times. On the other hand Information Systems and Office Systems arose from the demand of industry to provide education and training for staff required to understand and implement new technologies in business. In the late 1960s and early 1970s there was a plethora of courses aimed at producing workers in business capable of playing a part in the data processing of the business. The early programs offered by the data processing group and by the Information Systems Department were heavily skewed towards postgraduate education. Vast numbers of students enrolled in postgraduate programs part-time so as to gain the business-oriented computing skills and education needed in their new jobs.

It is also of interest that it was the office systems group that introduced a human factors perspective in the design, implementation and management of information systems education at RMIT. In hindsight, the basis for this is quite obviousit was in fact the office systems group who had the most extensive business contacts and experience with professional engagement.

It is no coincidence that the Accounting Department was an early sponsor of these courses and the creation of the data processing group. The Accounting Department would be the first to understand the changes happening in business due to the introduction of computers in business data processing.

When the first head of the Information Systems Group, Tony Adams came from Computer Science he may have been tempted to import some computer science flavour into the courses. His recruitment record clearly indicated that he understood the difference between computer science and information systems. He hired senior people from IBM, HP and other businesses who would understand the needs of the graduates of these courses. This meant that the courses developed by the Information Systems Group were heavily biased towards current business practice in industry. The programming languages were Cobol and forms of business oriented Basic rather than FORTRAN, C and Pascal. Systems subjects were prominent in many subject names and used the words data processing.

The use of business-oriented databases was pre-eminent and was the foundation of much curricula. A key difference between the Computer Science view of databases and that of Information Systems was that IS was concerned with modelling the business and its processes rather than the calculus and mathematical aspects of the database.

With the foundation of the business information systems degree incorporating office systems curricula a stronger 'human factors' and sociotechnical systems design dimension was added to business computing studies in and around human computer interactions, end-user systems, useability and accessibility of human systems, the impact of computerisation on work processes, management and change management.

Data communications was taught from the business perspective of connectivity and ubiquitous data access rather than queuing theory and sliding window protocols.

Today's Information Systems is the result of blending the best from the modernised Office Systems program which was concerned about how a business operates effectively and from the old data processing that was concerned with the modern business and the technology-enablement of its processes and operations. This outcome is the result of a 25 year old vision of Tony Adams who foresaw the importance of academia and industry working together with new technologies to solve tomorrow's business problems. Tony Adams also had the experience and vision to understand the impact of computing on work processes and that the 'human factor' was of vital consideration in the design and implementation of computer systems in business. Both Tony Adams and Eileen Gueho understood the importance of industry engagement very early on, seeing a vital link between theory and practice, industry engagement is today RMIT's enduring brand.

Their vision was able to be brought into being because the University at that time encouraged leadership, innovation and creativity to flourish at a local level. Adams and Gueho recruited and employed talented individuals with extensive industry understanding and experience. Individuals who had deep links with industry and who nurtured and grew them. The Dean at that time was Noel Anthony who trusted his staff with the responsibility of keeping RMIT abreast and indeed ahead of those heady days.

This paper recounts the history of a single university's information systems degrees. It would be interesting to look at the history of other information systems programs to see if similar backgrounds have produced an environment similar to that of the current information systems programs at RMIT.

Table 1 : RMIT Department of Business Information Systems Timeline

 1

	Period	Head	Events
	1984-1990	Tony	Information Systems Group formed inside the Department of
		Adams	Administrative Studies, amalgamated with Secretarial Studies and
			eventually becomes an Independent Department of Business
			Computing. The PC and Macintosh become ubiquitous, local area
			networking starts becoming popular and desktop software becomes
			accessible and user friendly. AMIC and external consulting extensive.
			Staff appointments from experienced industry sources. Global
			education initiatives. Ever increasing demand for business information
			systems education, particularly at the postgraduate level.
	1990-1993	Neville	Adams becomes Acting Dean of Business, while Stern becomes
		Stern	acting head. Turmoil in Australian academia as Universities forced to
			amalgamate by government as cost cutting measure. RMIT's
			proposed amalgamation with Victoria University aborted, Philip
			Institute (PIT) amalgamation alternative proposed. The Internet is
			born. More industry sourced staff appointments. AMIC ceases and the
			MDC is born, industry consulting at its peak. Student demand
			continues.
	1993-2001	Ken	PIT amalgamation proceeds and PIT's Ken Millar becomes Head of
		Millar	Department. Department moves from LaTrobe Street campus into
			central business district. Amalgamation with Department of
			Information Management and Library Studies. Forced amalgamation
			with VET (Vocational Education and Training) sector computing
			group. Staff appointments now from both industry as well as career
			academics (research and publications experience alone). MDC
			demise, industry consulting diminishes and is eventually discouraged
			in favour of research and publications. Various attempts to create a
			Faculty of Information Technology amalgamating Computer Science
			and Information Systems, fail. BIS Department creates business
			oriented networking subjects.
	2001-2002	Tom	Yardley appointed as acting Head upon Millar's retirement. Ongoing
		Yardley	failed attempts to create a Faculty of Information Technology.
	2002-2003	Kevin	Adams appointed as acting Head from Department of Accountancy.
		Adams	Staff appointments are now only academic with no further industry
			experience considered appropriate. The demise of the postgraduate
			programs Information Systems and Office Systems, all postgraduate
			programs amalgamated into the Master of Business Information
			Technology. Prerequisite of prior industry experience dropped.
	2003-2005	Carolyn	Career academic Dowling appointed from Australian Catholic
		Dowling	University as Head. Subsequent staff appointments now only career
			academics. VET sector amalgamation abandoned. University policy
			phases out postgraduate diplomas (8 courses) and slims down 16
			course Master degrees to 12 courses. All graduate diplomas in the
			school amalgamated into the one Masters of Business Information
			Technology.
	2005-2005	Barry	McIntyre from the original Information Management and Library
		McIntyre	Studies Department appointed acting head.

Conclusion

This paper has presented the creation of Information Systems programs form the viewpoint of the significant forces that shaped events. The demise of secretarial studies and the degree programs that emerged with the creation of the information systems department seem illogical. Managers continue to have executive assistants and support staff who in addition to a sound business education in accountancy, economics and finance, marketing, business law, human resources and management need to have particular additional skills in using technology and an understanding of information systems. The argument used against programs for these types of people seems to have been based upon a belief that secretarial studies consisted of training in technology that had been completely replaced by the computer. This argument concentrates on the replacement of the typewriter and shorthand with the word processor and dictaphones.

Another outcome may be reflected in the nature of information systems curriculum. At RMIT Information Technology based courses took two paths right from the beginning. Computer science was developed from the machine, its design, and programs that could run on it. Computer Science was based in the disciplines of mathematics and applied physics and electronics and, as such, could be seen as a valid integration of those two areas. The Computer Science Department arose from the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, originally just Mathematics. It is of interest that most Computer Science people originated from the maths and science disciplines where it was based. Much of the curriculum was scientific and mathematical with scant regard paid to business and 'commercial data processing'. Computer Science degrees in the 1970s studied compiler design, the solutions of differential equations, operations research, calculus, artificial intelligence and a form of software engineering. This, of course, was to be expected given that the academic staff of Computer Science was either scientists or mathematicians.