ABSTRACT
The widespread assumption of the late 1980s that downsizing from mainframes would reduce IS costs for just about any business sparked what has come to be an increasingly confusing debate about the costs of computing. Today, evidence from a wide range of sources challenges this assumption. Users have become increasingly disturbed about the high costs of decentralizing IS resources. There is also a growing realization that the cost structures of mission-critical systems have remarkably little to do with underlying technologies.
