By tying computing resources together, networks create a whole greater than the sum of the parts. You can share more and better options — printers, tape-backup devices, CD-ROM towers, and Internet access — than you could afford to outfit each computer with individually. And you can access the disk of any computer in your office or home as if it were attached to your own PC, with no noticeable delay. Using a "sneakernet" to walk files back and forth on floppy disks becomes a thing of the past.

Without some type of network in your office, you will find that you have inadvertently created a "sneakernet." You find yourself literally running around to each PC to move files from one to another.

What holds up SIAC's processing more than anything else…is the "sneakernet" of stock accounting data.