Office automation: Most of the pieces of the automated business puzzle now exist, but they have yet to be fitted together

The slow pace of office automation is not due to a lack of adequate hardware for clerical workers, middle managers, and executives, according to industry observers. Rather, it is caused by the difficulty of putting together workable systems from that hardware. Although software packages exist for word processing, financial planning, and other office tasks, effective turnkey systems to perform all office functions are still unavailable. Another major hurdle is getting devices from different manufacturers to communicate effectively with one another. Although printers and disk drives can generally be adapted to work with a number of different computers separately, getting several computers from different manufacturers to share information may be a stumbling block.