The primary audience for Keen’s book is business managers who require an executive briefing on the key concepts, issues, and trends in the areas of computing, telecommunications, and the construction of information technology (IT) infrastructure. Technical staff and managers who want a business briefing on using IT to provide customer service, to market products, and to compete based on information can also profit from exploring this text.

Although at first glance this text seems to be intended for readers to dip into periodically or use as a reference, I found that it merited a cover-to-cover reading. In this sense, the book provides an extended glossary that does more than define terms; it provides context, relevance, and the mechanisms by which IT drives business processes--in short, an executive briefing. Keen states, “This book presents a subset of IT terminology across all specialties that has relevance for business managers who need to be conversant in the discipline” (p. 177).

Consider, for example, the entry under “client/server.” The usual distinctions between a front-end client graphical user interface and a back-end database server are found here. If one follows the links to “cooperative processing” and “distributed processing,” a third layer of application servers also becomes available.

The challenge for Keen is to provide both sides of the Socratic dialogue. Polemically, he points out that “senior managers’ awareness of client/server is about what it should be: zero” (p. 100). Then he offers the reasoning that makes client/server relevant: the shift from centralized, closed computing to open access for real people; the building-block approach to systems development (the “object-oriented” entry elsewhere in the glossary needs to be referenced here); and the integration of the components to provide flexibility and simplicity across the enterprise. Along the way, additional cross-references to Windows, OS/2, UNIX, and the Macintosh require consolidation (and are available).

Then we get the essential, tell-it-like-it-is Keen. Unlike client/server evangelists who come near to causing the technology to be oversold, with the inevitable disappointment and reaction, Keen is a master of managing expectations. He says that client/server is the information equivalent of electricity. The electrification of America did not happen overnight; nor will the client/serving of America. Nevertheless, “the mainstream movement is towards client/server computing” (p. 128).

Keen was originally an expert in telecommunications. Thus, this book includes useful discussions of asynchronous transfer mode (fast packet switching), AT&T, frame relay, MCI, Switch, and TCP/IP.

Those familiar with Keen’s other writing will find references to many important themes mixed in with the glossary entries. A firm’s IT architecture is its strategy (p. 49; see Keen [1]). The cost of the proliferating microcomputers and the information center function is three to four times the cost of the initial purchase (see Keen [2]). When executives realize that IT represents half of US firms’ annual capital expenditures, the costs of delegation and abdication of responsibility may be properly perceived and corrected. When technology and tools are available as a commodity in a given industry, it is management that makes the difference. Software requires management as a “major capital asset” (p. 249). Banking ATMs were a decisive, even runaway, success, whereas videotext was not, because the ATM offered a “self-justifying, immediate benefit” (p. 275) characteristic of a technology that affects everyday life.

Keen’s use of language is excellent. He has a gift for coining pithy sayings. He also has the breadth and depth of learning to unpack and develop these sayings. The book is superbly produced, and this second edition contains some 40 additional terms and concepts. A useful and detailed index is provided. By way of criticism, we may debate whether “middleware” now requires a separate entry of its own, or whether Keen’s treatment of it under “NOS” (network operating system) is sufficient (p. 198). Likewise, I could find no mention of the X.500 global directory service standard, an idea whose time has come. Still, these are relatively minor matters.

To whet your appetite and create a bit of suspense, if you want to learn how IT will continue to shape the future of business, check out the entries under “image technology,” “multimedia,” and “VSAT.” Keen’s goal is to stimulate an “effective dialogue” between business managers and technical specialists. I think he succeeds. Keen is convinced this dialogue is possible based on a “shared understanding of a relatively small number of key concepts and terms” (p. 7). He furnishes them here.