gly competitive environment caused computer service organizations to become non contributing cost drains on the organization's bottom line.
An obvious solution to this situation might appear to be to simply discontinue the computer service organizations. Such a solution, however, disregards the tremendous investments in human, financial, and physical resources represented by compu ter service operations. A preferable solution, therefore, would be one which would permit the redirection of these inves ted resources into productive, revenue generating activities. This problem of how to deal with the cost ineffective computer service organization will be investigated in the proposed
research study, which will also propose a solution for the effective use of invested resources.
A significant organizational need with respect to computer use at the beginning of the 1990s is computer security. The research question which will be investigated in the proposed research study is stated as follows: Can computer service organizations be successfully transformed into revenue gener ating operations providing computer security services to compu ter users?
The purpose of the proposed research study will be to demonstrate to organizational managements that invested resources whose purpose has been eclipsed by events may still be applied to useful, revenue generating purposes. The study will show that investments need not necessarily be written off, when their original function is no longer required by an organization.
Most of the terms which will be used in the proposed study are known to general readers, and they will be used as they are typically understood by the general reader. In those instances where either specialized terms or unique definitions of more common terms are used, they will be defined in the text of the proposed study.
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