Chapter 10

Q1: What is the goal of information systems security?

Major elements of IS security is when person or organization seeks to obtain data or other assets illegally, without owner’s permission and often without owner’s knowledge. Vulnerability is the opportunity for threats to gain access to individual or organizational assets; for example, when you buy online, you provide your credit card data, and as data is transmitted over Internet, it is vulnerable to threats. Safeguard, measure individuals or organizations take to block threat from obtaining an asset; not always effective, some threats achieve their goal in spite of safeguards. Target is the asset desired by threat and sources of security threats. Human error examples: (1) employee misunderstands operating procedures and accidentally deletes customer records; (2) employee inadvertently installs an old database on top of current one while doing backing up; (3) physical accidents, such as driving a forklift through wall of a computer room. Computer crime is an intentional destruction or theft of data or other system components Natural disasters are fires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, avalanches, other acts of nature; includes initial loss of capability and service, and losses recovery costs. Unauthorized Data Disclosure are common threats associated with unauthorized data disclosure. Faulty service are problems caused by incorrect system operation Usurpation, occurs when computer criminals invade a computer system and replace legitimate programs with their own unauthorized ones that shut down legitimate application and substitute their own processing to spy, steal and manipulate data, or other purposes. Denial of service, humans inadvertently shut down a Web server or corporate gateway router by starting a computationally intensive application. Denial-of-service attacks first starts with malicious hacker intentionally floods a Web server with millions of bogus service requests; secondly, user unintentionally shuts down Web server or corporate gateway router by starting computationally intensive application. Goal of Information Systems Security finds appropriate trade-off between risk of loss and cost of implementing safeguards. In addition, make appropriate trade-offs to protect yourself and your business.

Q2: How big is the computer security problem?

Right now malicious insiders are an increasing problem. Many computer crime studies are based on dubious sampling techniques, and some seem to be written to promote a particular safeguard product.

Q3: How should you respond to security threats?

Computer security professionals run intrusion detection systems to detect attacks. An intrusion detection system (IDS) is a computer program that senses when another computer is attempting to scan or access a computer or network. IDS logs can record thousands of attempts each day so its encourage for companies to fix product vulnerabilities. Serve as educational forum for hackers, developers, manufacturers, and government agencies. Or what Dan recommends The right to be forgotten, “the right under certain conditions to ask search engines to remove links with personal information about them.”

Q4: How should organizations respond to security threats?

Senior management creates company-wide policies and manages risks: what sensitive data will be stored? How will data be processed? Will data be shared with other organizations? How can employees and others obtain copies of data stored about them? How can employees and others request changes to inaccurate data? Specifics of a policy depend on whether the organization is governmental or nongovernmental, publically held or private, organization’s industry, relationship of management to employees, and other factors. An easy way to remember information systems safeguards is to arrange them according to the five components of an information system. Understand the legal requirements, ethical considerations, and business consequences of data acquisition, storage, and dissemination. Use the knowledge of this class to demonstrate two possible ways that data could be stolen at a coffee shop. Then formulate personal principles with regard to data acquisition, storage, and dissemination. In addition, Large, reputable organizations are likely to endorse ethical privacy policy, and have strong and effective safeguards to support that policy. But individuals and small organizations might not.

Q5: How can technical safeguards protect against security threats?

Technical safeguards involve the hardware and software components of an information system or single Sign-on for Multiple Systems. Summary of how SSL/TLS works when you communicate securely with a Web site. Either, your computer obtains public key of Web site to which it will connect, your computer generates a key for symmetric encryption, your computer encodes key using Web site’s public key, then sends encrypted symmetric key to Web site. Also, web site decodes symmetric key using its private key or your computer and Web site communicate using symmetric encryption. With asymmetric encryption, two keys are used; one key encodes the message, and the other key decodes the message. Symmetric encryption is simpler and much faster than asymmetric encryption. Organizations normally use multiple firewalls. Perimeter firewall sits outside organizational network; is first device that Internet traffic encounters. Packet-filtering firewall examines each part of a message and determines whether to let that part pass. To make this decision, it examines source address, destination address(es), and other data. Packet-filtering firewalls can prohibit outsiders from starting a session with any user behind firewall, prohibit traffic from legitimate, but unwanted, addresses, such as competitors’ computers, and filter outbound traffic. No computer should connect to the Internet without firewall protection. Many ISPs provide firewalls for their customers. By nature, these firewalls are generic. Large organizations supplement such generic firewalls with their own. Most home routers include firewalls, and Microsoft Windows has a built-in firewall as well. Third parties also license firewall products. Payload is program code that causes unwanted activity. It can delete programs or data, or modify data in undetected ways. Spyware programs are installed on the user’s computer without the user’s knowledge or permission. It resides in background and, unknown to the user, observes user’s actions and keystrokes, monitors computer activity, and reports the user’s activities to sponsoring organizations. Some malicious spyware, called key loggers, captures keystrokes to obtain usernames, passwords, account numbers, and other sensitive information. Other spyware supports marketing analyses such as observing what users do, Web sites visited, products examined and purchased, and so forth. Most adware is benign in that it does not perform malicious acts or steal data. It does, however, watch user activity and produce pop-up ads. Adware can also change the user’s default window or modify search results and switch the user’s search engine. PRIDE with security in mind; PRIDE will store users’ privacy settings in a database, and it will develop all applications to first read the privacy settings before revealing any data in exercise reports. Most likely, PRIDE will design its programs so that privacy data is processed by programs on servers, which means data need be transmitted over the Internet only when it is created or modified. SQL injection attack SQL code becomes part of database commands issued and improper data disclosure, data damage and loss possible

Q6: How can data safeguards protect against security threats?

Data safeguards protect databases and other organizational data. Two organizational units are responsible for data safeguards. Data administration refers to an organization-wide function that is in charge of developing data policies and enforcing data standards. When organizations store databases in the cloud, all of the safeguards should be part of the service contract. Or a trusted party should have a copy of encryption key/key escrow.

Q7: How can human safeguards protect against security threats?

First thing is to separate duties and authorities, determine least privileges or document position sensitivity. Then Development of human safeguards for employees and need to be made aware of the security policies, procedures, and responsibilities they will have. Companies must establish security policies and procedures for the termination of employees. Public users web sites and other openly accessible information systems must have safeguards. Hardening is a special versions of operating system that lock down or eliminate operating systems features and functions not required by application. Protect such users from internal company security problems. Account management is to create new user accounts, modify existing account permissions, remove unneeded accounts. Improve your relationship with IS personnel by providing early and timely notification of needed account changes. Password management is where users should change passwords every 3 months or less. Help desk management helps set policy for means of authenticating a user. Definition and use of standardized procedures reduces likelihood of computer crime and other malicious activity by insiders. It also ensures system’s security policy is enforced. Security Monitoring Server activity logs or firewall log of Web activities and honeypots for computer criminals to attack.

Q8: How should organizations respond to security incidents?

Every organization should have an incident-response plan as part of the security program. No organization should wait until some asset has been lost or compromised before deciding what to do. The plan should include how employees are to respond to security problems, whom they should contact, the reports to make, and steps to reduce further loss. Finally, identify critical personnel and their off-hours contact information

Q9: 2026?

In 2026, APTs more common so the concern about balance of national security and data privacy could be high. Security on devices will be improved so the skill level of activity increases substantially. In addition, improved security at large organizations and big local “electronic” authorities.

Chapter 9

This chapter considers business intelligence (BI) systems: information systems that can produce patterns, relationships, and other information from organizational structured and unstructured social data as well as from external, purchased data. BI systems to identify patterns, relationships, and other information in organizational structured and unstructured social data, as well as purchased external data. In addition to this data, another rich source of knowledge is employees themselves. Including, vast amounts of collective knowledge exist in every organization’s employees. Business intelligence is the key technology supporting such marketing technology.

Q1: How do organizations use business intelligence (BI) systems?

BI systems are information systems that process operational and other data to identify patterns, relationships, and trends for use by business professionals and other knowledge workers. Five standard IS components are present in BI systems: hardware, software, data, procedures, and people. The boundaries of BI systems are blurry. Typical Uses for BI, identifying changes in purchasing patterns, important life events change what customers buy, entertainment and Netflix has data on watching, listening, and rental habits. Classify customers by viewing patterns, predictive policing and analyze data on past crimes - location, date, time, day of week, type of crime, and related data. Just-in-Time Medical Reporting, Example of real time data mining and reporting. Injection notification services, software analyzes patient’s records, if injections needed, recommends as exam progresses and blurry edge of medical ethics.

Q2: What are the three primary activities in the BI process?

These activities directly correspond to the BI elements and the four fundamental categories of BI analysis are reporting, data mining, BigData, and knowledge management. Push publishing delivers business intelligence to users without any request from the users; the BI results are delivered according to a schedule or as a result of an event or particular data condition. Pull publishing requires the user to request BI results. Data broker/aggregator acquires and purchases consumer and other data from public records, retailers, Internet cookie vendors, social media trackers, and other sources. Data for business intelligence to sell to companies and governments

Q3: How do organizations use data warehouses and data marts to acquire data?

For a small organization, the extraction may be as simple as an Access database. Larger organizations, however, typically create and staff a group of people who manage and run a data warehouse, which is a facility for managing an organization’s BI data. Functions of a data warehouse: obtain data from operational, internal and external databases. Also cleanse data, organize and relate data, catalog data using metadata. The components of a data warehouse. Programs read operational and other data and extract, clean, and prepare that data for BI processing. An organization might use Oracle for its operational processing, but use SQL Server for its data warehouse. Other organizations use SQL Server for operational processing, but use DBMSs from statistical package vendors such as SAS or SPSS in the data warehouse. Purchase of data about other organizations is not unusual or particularly concerning from a privacy standpoint.  However, some companies choose to buy personal, consumer data (like marital status) from data vendors like Acxiom Corporation. The data analysts who work with a data warehouse are experts at data management, data cleaning, data transformation, data relationships, and the like. However, they are not usually experts in a given business function. A data mart is a subset of a data warehouse. A date mart addresses a particular component or functional area of the business.

Q4: How do organizations use reporting applications?

A reporting application is a BI application that inputs data from one or more sources and applies reporting operations to that data to produce business intelligence. Create meaningful information from disparate data sources. Deliver information to user on time through basic operations: sorting, filtering, grouping, calculating and formatting. RFM considers how recently (R) a customer has ordered, how frequently (F) a customer ordered, and how much money (M) the customer has spent. Produce an RFM score, a program sorts customer purchase records by date of most recent (R) purchase, divides sorts into quintiles, and gives customers a score of 1 to 5. Process is repeated for Frequently and Money.

Q5: How do organizations use data mining applications?

Sources of discipline in data mining are AI machine learning, data management technology, sophisticated marketing, finance and other business professionals. Also cheap computer processing and storage, huge databases and statistical mathematics.  Unsupervised data mining consists of a hypothesis or model. Findings obtained solely by data analysis and hypothesized model created to explain patterns found. Cluster analysis is statistical technique to identify groups of entities with similar characteristics; used to find groups of similar customers from customer order and demographic data. Supervised data mining uses a priori model and prediction such as regression analysis. Market-basket analysis is an identify sales patterns in large volumes of data, identify what products customers tend to buy together. Computes probabilities of purchases, identify cross-selling opportunities and ssociation analysis important part in shopping basket data analysis. Basic idea of a decision tree is to select attributes most useful for classifying entities. Select attributes most useful for classifying “pure group” and hierarchical arrangement of criteria to predict a value or classification.

Q6: How do organizations use BigData applications?

Big Data is a term used to describe data collections that are characterized by huge volume, rapid velocity, and great variety. Huge volume is a petabyte and larger then rapid velocity is generated rapidly. Great variety is structured data, free-form text, log files, graphics, audio, and video. Technique for harnessing power of thousands of computers working in parallel. BigData collection is broken into pieces, and hundreds or thousands of independent processors search these pieces for something of interest. BigData has volume, velocity, and variation characteristics that far exceed those of traditional reporting and data mining. Experts are required to use it; you may be involved, however, in planning a BigData study or in interpreting results.

Q7: What is the role of knowledge management systems?

Knowledge Management (KM) is creating value from intellectual capital and sharing knowledge with those who need that capital. Preserving organizational memory by capturing and storing lessons learned and best practices of key employees. Benefits of Knowledge Management is to improve process quality, increase team strength. The goal is to nable employees to use organization’s collective knowledge. Expert systems are rule-based systems that encode human knowledge as If/Then rules and programs that process a set of rules. The few expert systems that have been successful have addressed more restricted problems than duplicating a doctor’s diagnostic ability. They address problems such as checking for harmful prescription drug interactions and configuring products to meet customer specifications. These systems require many fewer rules and are therefore more manageable to maintain. Content Management Systems Support management and delivery of documents, other expressions of employee knowledge.

Q8: 2026?

In 2026, exponentially more information about customers, better data mining techniques. As companies buy and sell your purchasing habits and psyche. Singularity are when computer systems adapt and create their own software without human assistance. In the end, Machines will possess and create information for themselves

Chapter 8

The chapter discusses rapid technological change is to learn and understand underlying principles. It also focuses on principles, conceptual frameworks, and models that will be useful to address the opportunities and risks of social media systems in early years of your professional career.

Q1: What is a social media information system (SMIS)?

Social media IT is for sharing content among networks of users, enables communities of practice and people related by a common interest. Social media information system (SMIS) is sharing content among networks of users. Social has several convergences of many disciplines such as psychology, sociology, computer science, MIS, marketing and organizational theory.  There are three SMIS roles that are consist within social media. Social Media Providers such as Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest platforms are attracting, targeting demographic groups, users, individuals and organizations and communities. In addition, mutual interests that transcend familial, geographic, and organizational boundaries. Companies hire staff to maintain their SM presence, promote their products, build relationships, and manage their image. Depending on how organizations want to use SM, they can be users, providers, or both. Five components of SMIS and the SM User communities start with Community A - first-tier community of users with direct relationship to the site.  User 1 belongs to three communities — A, B, and C. Communities B–E - second-tier communities intermediates by a first-tier user.  Then the number of second and higher tier community members grows exponentially. After, exponential nature of relationships offers sponsoring organizations both a blessing and a curse. If social media site wants pure publicity, will need viral hook to relate to as many communities as possible.

Q2: How do SMIS advance organizational strategy?

Learn the relationship of information systems to organizational strategy because Strategy determines value chains, Value chains determine business processes, processes determine SMIS requirements. How do value chains determine dynamic processes? Dynamic process flows cannot be designed or diagrammed. SM fundamentally changes balance of power among users, communities, and organizations. Social media contributes to five primary value chain activities and to human resources support activity. General framework by which organizations can accomplish their strategy via a dynamic process supported by SMIS. Organizations controlled their relationships with customers using structured processes and related information systems. In fact, the primary purpose of traditional CRM was to manage customer touches. Customers search content, contribute reviews and commentary, ask questions, create user groups, and not centered on customer lifetime value. Social Media and Customer Service as many organizations struggle to make the transition from controlled, structured, traditional CRM processes to wide-open, adaptive, dynamic social CRM processes. Relationships emerge from joint activity, customers have as much control as companies. Product users freely help each other solve problems, selling to or through developer networks most successful. Peer-to-peer support risks loss of control. Social Media and Manufacturing and Operations Improves communication channels within organization and externally with consumers, design products, develop supplier relationships, and operational efficiency.

Q3: How do SMIS increase social capital?

The Value of social capital is number of relationships, strength of relationships, resources controlled and adds value in four ways: information, influence, social credentials, personal reinforcement, capital, investment of resources for future profit. The types of business capital are physical capital: produce goods and services. Human capital is human knowledge and skills investments. Social capital is social relations with expectation of marketplace returns. Relationships in social networks can: Provide information about opportunities, alternatives, problems, and other factors important to business professionals. Provide an opportunity to influence decision makers who are critical to your success. Be a form of social credential. Reinforce a professional’s image and position in an organization or industry and using Social Networking to increase the number of relationships growing social networks organizations have social capital just as humans do. Discuss how could a photographer use SM to communicate a wedding experience using text, pictures, and video instantly to everyone in your social network. Growing social networks uses organizations have social capital just as humans do. Discuss how could a photographer use SM to communicate a wedding experience using text, pictures, and video instantly to everyone in your social network, Strength of a relationship is the likelihood other entity will do something that benefits your organization. Positive reviews, post pictures using organization’s products or services, tweet about upcoming product releases, and so on. Strengthen relationships by asking someone to do you a favor. Frequent interactions strengthen relationships will weaken the strength social relationships by continually freeloading, declining requests for help, and failing to spend time with friends. Using Social Networks to connect to those with more resources Social Capital = Number of Relationships × Relationship Strength × Entity Resources. Huge network of people with few resources less valuable than a smaller network of people with substantial resources. Resources must be relevant and most organizations ignore value of entity assets.

Q4: How do (some) companies earn revenue from social media?

Processing time, data communication, and data storage may be cheap, but they still cost something. Hyper-social organization Transform interactions with customers, employees, and partners into mutually satisfying relationships with them and their communities. The two most common ways SM companies generate revenue are advertising and charging for premium services. Revenue models for social media Pay-per-click use to increases value. Freemium offers users a basic service for free, and then charges a premium for upgrades or advanced features. Also sales that use apps and virtual goods, affiliate commissions, donations. Conversion rate frequency someone clicks on ad makes a purchase, “likes” a site, or takes some other action desired by advertiser.

Q5: How do organizations develop an effective SMIS?

Focus on being cost leader or on product differentiation, industry-wide or segment focus and premeditated alignment of SMIS with organization’s strategy. Create a process of developing a practical plan to effectively use existing social media platforms. Success metrics or key performance indicators (KPI). Metrics are simply measurements used to track performance and don’t improve your decision making are commonly referred to as vanity metrics

Q6: What is an enterprise social network (ESN)?

ESN is a software platform uses SM to facilitate cooperative work of people within an organization. Improve communication, collaboration, knowledge sharing, problem solving, and decision making. Enterprise 2.0 uses of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies, partners or customers. The application of social media to facilitate cooperative work of people inside organizations. Can be used to enable people to share knowledge and problem-solving techniques. Communication channels within corporations changed in equally dramatic ways and using ESNs, employees can bypass managers and post ideas directly for CEO to read. Quickly identify each organization, still learning how to use and deploy ESNs. Develop strategic plan for using SM internally via same process as used for external social media use and assess likelihood of employee resistance.

Q7: How can organizations address SMIS security concerns?

Organizations and executives no longer plan and control organizational messaging. Such messaging emerges via a dynamic, SM-based process. Ask students what they think about that. Develop and publicize social media policy. Delineate employees’ rights and responsibilities: disclose, protect, use common Sense and managing the risk of Inappropriate content. Organizations should regularly monitor the site and remove objectionable material.  Monitoring can be done by employees or by companies, which offer services not only to collect and manage ratings and reviews, but also to monitor sites for irrelevant content. For example: User-generated content (UGC), problems from external sources, junk and crackpot contributions, inappropriate content, unfavorable reviews and mutinous movements. Its monitor by employees or use outsource service who are responding to Social networking problems responses are best reserved for when the problematic content has caused the organization to do something positive as a result. Comments by crackpots, have nothing to do with the site, or contains obscene or otherwise inappropriate content. Internal Risks from Social Media are threats to information security, increased organizational liability, decreased employee productivity Directly affect ability to secure information resources

Q8: 2026?

Social media means customers use all the vendor’s touch points they can find to craft their own relationships. New mobile devices with innovative mobile-device UX, coupled with dynamic and agile information systems based on cloud computing and dynamic virtualization. Organization the endoskeleton, supporting the work of people on the exterior. Employees craft own relationships with their employers. Big Data = Big Money, personal data illegally accessed by criminals and sold on black market to other nefarious characters; or legally accessed by companies and sold to other companies. Understand importance and value of personal brand, social media presence one component of a professional brand. Traditional sources of personal branding, like personal networks of face-to-face relationships, important.

Chapter 6

The chapter begins with why the cloud will be utilize more and more in the future. It will also discuss how technology makes the cloud work and the ways organizations can use it. The chapter goes overs local networks and how it functions with the web. This also includes the purpose of the cloud and its basic technologies. Finally, it will review how each organizations use the cloud, the basic steps of setting up the cloud and its security.
Q1: Why is the cloud the future for most organizations?

Organizations are moving their computing infrastructure to the cloud.  Leasing computing infrastructure from the cloud will become common practice. The cloud itself is an elastic leasing of pooled computer resources via Internet. Elastic means it automatically adjusts for unpredictable demand and limits financial risks. Now pooled is the same physical hardware itself or economies of scale, for instance like Amazon.com’s CloudFront. Without increase in servers, response time of seconds or more, is far too long to maintain attention of viewer. So economies of scale consider the average cost decreases as size of operation increases. The major cloud vendors operate enormous data centers such as web farms. The cloud is preferred to in-house hosting because of the small capital requirements, speedy development and known cost structure. This also includes no obsolescence, superior flexibility and adaptability to grow or fluctuating demand.  However, the negatives of the cloud are dependency on vendors, loss of control over data location and little security measures. The cloud is used now because of cheap processors, essentially free data communication and storage. The cloud also uses virtualization technology, internet-based standards enable flexible and standardized processing capabilities. The cloud doesn’t make sense when the law or standard industry practice require physical control or possession of the data. For instance, a financial institution is legally required to maintain physical control over its data.

Q2: What network technology supports the cloud?

There are four basic types of computer network technology that support the cloud. Personal area network helps devices connected around a single person. The local sear network are computers connected at a single physical site. Wide area network are computers connected between two or more separated sites. Finally, another basic type of network is the internet and internets which is networks of networks. For example, a typical small home office LAN like most computers today would support 10/100/1000 of Ethernet. There are thee various LAN Protocol with different speeds and connections, such as wired or wireless LAN. Also Bluetooth transmits data short distances and can connect to a computer, keyboard, mouse, printer, smartphones and cars. Communications speeds expressed in bits, memory sizes in bytes. For example, communications equipment can be represented by K(ilo) = 1,000, M(ega) = 1,000,000 and G(iga) = 1,000,000,000.  Connecting your LAN to the internet how important ISP functions. The three are to provide legitimate Internet address, provide gateway to Internet and pay access fees and other charges to telecoms. Gateway function is when a ISP receives the communications from your computer and passes them on to the Internet, and receives communications from the Internet and passes them to you.

Q3: How does the cloud work?

The cloud resides in the internet so assume you send a message to a server somewhere. The message is too big to travel in one piece, so it’s broken into packets and each packet passes along from WAN to WAN until it reaches destination. Once all packets arrive, message reconstructed, delivered to server for processing. All accomplished by computers and data communications devices that most likely have not interacted before. Now the hop is the movement from one network to another. Carriers are messages, broken into packets. These Packets move across the Internet, passing through networks owned by telecom carriers. So peering agreements are carriers that freely exchange traffic amongst themselves without paying access fees. Net neutrality principle considers all data is treated both equally however the problem is some people use more bandwidth than others.

IP Addresses and Domain Names:

There are two internet addressing, Public IP addresses and Private IP addresses. Public IP addresses Identifies a unique device on Internet and is assigned by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Private IP addresses identifies a device on a private network, usually a LAN and the assignment LAN is controlled. The purpose is these protocols manage traffic as it passes across an internet /Internet. Most important protocol in transport layer is TCP. Private/public IP address scheme two major benefits attackers cannot send attack packets to private IP addresses. Most common IP addresses format is IPv4. A domain name is a unique name affiliated with a public IP address, dynamic affiliation of domain names with IP addresses and can have multiple domain names for same IP address. A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is an Internet address protocol, such as http:// or ftp:// followed by a domain name or public IP address. ICANN administers system for assigning names to IP addresses. Domain name a worldwide-unique name affiliated with a public IP address. Affiliation of domain names with IP addresses is dynamic. Owner of domain name can change affiliated IP addresses at its discretion.

Three Tier Architecture:

Almost all e-commerce applications use a three-tier architecture. First, user tier consists of computers, phones, other devices with browsers that request and process Web pages. Second, a server tier consists of computers running Web servers and application programs. Finally, a database tier consists of computers running a DBMS that processes SQL requests to retrieve and store data. So a commerce server is an application program that runs on server-tier computer. Receives requests from users via Web server, takes some action, and returns a response to users. Typical commerce server functions are to obtain product data from a database, manage items in a shopping cart, and coordinate checkout process. Only Internet protocols a business professional likely to encounter are at application layer. These are four standards that are used extensively for Web services and the cloud: WSDL, SOAP, XML and JSON. 

Four Standards of Web Services and Cloud

Web Services Description Language (WSDL) is the standard for describing services, inputs, outputs, other data supported by a Web service. Documents coded machine readable and used by developer tools for creating programs to access the service. SOAP is a protocol for requesting Web services and for sending responses to Web service requests. Extensible Markup Language is used for transmitting documents. Contains metadata to validate format and completeness of a document, includes considerable overhead. JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is a markup language used for transmitting documents. Contains little metadata. Preferred for transmitting volumes of data between servers and browsers. While notation in format of JavaScript objects, JSON documents can be processed by any language

Q4: How do organizations use the cloud?

Organizations can use the cloud in several different ways. By far most popular, is to obtain cloud services from cloud service vendors. The three fundamental of cloud types are SaaS, PassS and laaS. Content delivery networks from cloud vendors stores user data in many different geographical locations and makes data available on demand. It also can have specialized type of PaaS, but usually considered in its own category, minimizes latency and is used to store and deliver content seldom changed.

Q5: How can Falcon Security use the cloud?

Absent some unknown factor such as a federal tax on Internet traffic. Individuals on iCloud or Google Grid, to small groups using Office 365, to Small companies like Falcon Security Parts using PaaS, to huge organizations using IaaS.

Q6: How can organizations use cloud services securely?

Organizations realize the benefits of cloud technology without succumbing to those threats. VPN technology uses public Internet to create appearance of a private connection on secure network. Virtual means something that appears to exist but, in fact, does not. Remote Access using VPN is an apparent connection as it appears to the remote user. Accessing a private cloud over a virtual private network is when a VPN client software encrypts messages so their contents are protected from invasions. Private clouds provide security within the organizational infrastructure but do not provide secure access from outside that infrastructure. In order to provide such access, organizations set up a VPN and users employ it to securely access the private cloud. Organization can store most sensitive data on own infrastructure, and store less sensitive data on VPC. Thus, organizations required to have physical control over some of their data can place it on own servers and locate rest on VPC.

Q7: 2026?

Cloud services new categories of work that is faster, more secure, easier to use, cheaper. Fewer organizations own their computing infrastructure. More pooling of servers across organizations and overall size of the cloud gets bigger. Individuals, small businesses, large organizations obtain elastic resources at very low cost. Remote action systems: Telediagnosis, Telesurgery and Telelaw enforcement which provide services in dangerous locations.

Chapter 7

Chapter 7 discusses the process and supporting on information systems in the levels of an organization. It explores the way organizations uses three types of processes and how they use information systems. The chapter talks about process quality and how it can improve the information system. Then explains information systems in one level of an organization and how it leads to problems in silos. Also how these silo problems can be solved at the next level of the organization. The chapter also goes into enterprise systems such as CRM, ERP and EAI. Then how these inter enterprise IS can solve enterprise level silos. Last, how the future in implications of mobility and the cloud of the future enterprise and interenterprise IS.

Q1: What are the basic types of processes?

First, they’re a network of activities that generate value by transforming inputs to outputs. The basic types of processes are human only processes, human processes with computer help, computer only processes. There’s a difference between structured processes and dynamic processes. Structured processes are formally defined, standardized processes involving day-to-day operations. This also includes accepting a return, placing an order, purchasing raw materials, and so forth. Dynamic processes are flexible, informal, and adaptive processes normally involving strategic and less structured managerial decisions and activities. Now processes that use the three levels of organizational are workgroups, enterprises and inter-enterprises. Workgroup help a workgroup to accomplish a goal.  Workgroup IS used to support one or more IS processes. Enterprise processes spanning multiple departments. Enterprise IS support enterprise processes. Inter-enterprise processes that require cooperation amongst different entities. The workgroups represent six of the nine value-added activities. There are various characteristics of information systems. Characteristics of departmental information systems are summarized in Workgroup. Often, procedures are formalized in documentation, and users frequently receive formal training in use of those procedures.

Q2: How can information systems improve process quality?

Processes are means people use to organize an activity to achieve organization’s goals. Two dimensions of process quality are efficiency and effectiveness. Information systems can improve by process efficiency which is the ratio of outputs to inputs. Better quality can be achieved by process effectiveness which is how well a process achieves organizational strategy. So processes can be improved either by change process structure, change process resources and change both. In addition, process quality can include performing an activity, meaning partially automated or completely automated. Also, augmenting human performing activity or controlling data quality to ensure data is complete and correct before continuing process activities.

Q3: How do information systems eliminate problems of information silos?

First what are the problems of information silos? The problems of information silos are data duplicated, data inconsistency, data isolated, disjointed processes, lack of integrated enterprise information., inefficiency: decisions made in isolation, increased cost for organization. The reason an information silo exist, is to isolate data in separated information systems. Information system silos arise when either IS supports departmental processes rather than enterprise-level processes. Also when personal and workgroup support applications are created over time. This includes growing organizations, especially by merger and acquisitions. The problems of information silos are duplicated or inconsistent data. Which may be separate supporting applications causing difficulty for two activities. These activities are to reconcile their data, getting approvals will be slow and possibly erroneous Another problem is the lack of integrated enterprise data as a consequence of disjointed systems. The problem of inefficiency results from making decisions in isolation. Finally, Information silos increase costs because of duplicated data, disjointed systems, limited information, and inefficiencies. Information silos solve problems in organizations by isolating data created by workgroup information systems and integrates using enterprise-wide applications. It also isolates data created by information systems at an enterprise level and are integrated into inter-enterprise systems using distributed applications. So it integrates into a single database, revise applications and allows isolation.

Q4: How do CRM, ERP, and EAI support enterprise processes?

Over time, three categories of enterprise applications have emerged: customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning and enterprise application integration. Business Process Reengineering (BPR) is supported by CRM, ERP and EAI because it integrates data. CRM, ERP and EAI uses enterprise processes systems to create stronger, faster, more effective linkages in value chains. It is also difficult, slow, exceedingly expensive to support enterprise processes. Key personnel determine how best to use new technology so it requires high-level expensive skills and considerable time. For instance, a business needs to determine how best to change its processes to take advantage of new capability. Enterprise Application Solutions uses inherent processes which can be consider “Industry Best Practices” and is a predesigned process for using application. Organizations can license software and obtain prebuilt procedures. Customer relationship management is the suite of applications, database, set of inherent processes. It also manages all interactions with customer through four phases of customer life cycle. This includes marketing, customer acquisition, relationship management, loss/churn and supports customer-centric organization. The customer life cycle is an application process of a common customer database. This system eliminates duplicated customer data and removes the possibility of inconsistent data. ERP Applications primary purpose is integration and are an IS based on ERP technology. ERP is a database and a set of inherent processes for consolidating business operations into a single, consistent, computing platform. Enterprise Application Integration connects systems, enables communicating and sharing data. It also provides integrated information, integrated layer on top of existing systems while leaving functional applications “as is and enables gradual move to ERP.

Q5: What are the elements of an ERP system?

There are 5 elements to an ERP system, which includes hardware, ERP application programs, ERP databases, business process procedures and consulting. ERP applications integrate supply chains, manufacturing, CRM, human resources and accounting. There are various ERP solution components such as applications and databases. ERP application programs configurable vendor applications compare to ERP databases. Vendor applications can be altered without changing program code. Set configuration parameters specifying how ERP application programs will operate. ERP databases uses a computer program within database to keep database consistent when certain conditions arise. ERP enforces business rules and stores business processes and procedures.

Q6: What are the challenges of implementing and upgrading enterprise information systems?

 There are five challenges to implementing and upgrading enterprise information systems. The challenges are collaborative management, requirement gaps, transition problems, employee resistance and New technology. Also, implementation is challenging, difficult, expensive, and risky. It is not unusual for enterprise system projects to be well over budget and a year or more late.

Q7: How do inter-enterprise IS solve the problems of enterprise silos?

Q8: 2026?

Companies want to move to lower costs of the cloud, but cannot plunge into new cloud-based solutions without causing considerable organizational turmoil, if not failure. Delicate balance between risk of loss and improvement to processes. Machines able to employ ERP system to schedule own maintenance. ERP customers store most of their data on cloud servers managed by cloud vendors and store sensitive data on their own servers

Chapter 2

Q2-1 What are the Two Key Characteristics of Collaboration?

The difference between cooperation and collaboration is cooperation handles group of people working together on the same task and accomplishing the same objective. Collaboration are groups of people working to achieve a common goal with feedback and iteration. Cooperation lacks those traits so it’s crucial for critical feedback. It’s important to figure out what collaboration characteristics you lack and are great at. The two key characteristics of collaboration is iteration and feedback.

Q2-2 What Are Three Criteria for Successful Collaboration?

The three primary criteria for considering a team’s success is by the outcome, growth in team capability and a meaningful and satisfying experience. Successful outcome is achieving the objectives, make decisions, solve a problem or create a work product. Next is improving the team’s capability overtime by improving overtime on task and asking did we get better? Finally, having a meaningful and satisfying experience by being recognition or having a blast.

Q2-3 What Are the Four Primary Purposes of Collaboration?

The four primary purposes of collaboration are becoming informed, making decisions, solving problems and managing projects. In order to become informed, its required to share data and communicate through interactions. Also to document the data being communicated.

Now decision making has three levels: operational, managerial, and strategic decisions. Operational decisions are about day to day interactions or activities. Managerial decisions decide on the allocation and utilization of resources and strategic decisions support a broad scope, organizational issues. Managerial decisions are sometimes collaborative and strategic decisions mainly are.  The decision process of information systems is classified as structure or unstructured. A structure decision process understands and accepts the method for making the decision. For example, a formula computing the quantity of a reorder item in inventory. Unstructured decision process includes one for which is no agreed on decision making method. For example, predicting the future of the economy or stock market.

Next primary purpose of collaboration is to solve problems; a problem is known as a perceived difference between what is against what ought to be. So it’s crucial to define the problem, identify alternative solutions, specify evaluation criteria, evaluate alternatives, select an alternative and implement solution. Finally, is to manage projects by doing the four phases, the major task of each kind of data a team needs to share. First is the starting phase, by stating the purpose, the roles and ground rules of the project. Second is the planning phase, which is to define activities of who will do what and by when; also the resources that are available. The doing phase are project task that are being accomplished. The finalize phase is to determine completion and write down all feedback or close down project.  

Chapter 1 The Importance of MIS

Chapter 1

Q1-1 Why Is Introduction to MIS the Most Important Class in the Business School

Computers used to be the thing people didn’t like or thought to be abnormal. Now technology is changing the business world fundamentally in its own way.

The Digital Revolution

The information age is a period where primary force in economy is through the production, distribution and control of information. Now the digital revolution is what we are experiencing because we are converting from mechanical devices to actual digital devices. Switching over to digital devices changed everything, from companies to individuals and some weren’t ready for that change. Bells law says these digital devices will evolve every 10 years and create new environments, platforms, programming and networks. Even though digital technology is growing and changing businesses so it’s important to understand what these devices will do. In order to understand the evolving capabilities of digital devices, is knowing every years something is always changing and affecting everything around it.

Fundamental Forces Changing Technology

Moore’s Law: “The number of transistors per square inch on an integrated chip doubles every 18 months” So Bell’s law was misunderstood and Moore’s law concluded that isn’t the computer evolving, its actually the processing power.

Metcalfe’s Law: says as digital devices grow and start to connect together, the network value in those devices will increase. The dramatic rise of the inter web is a great example.  

Nielsen’s Law: States network connections that are used by high speed users will increase by 50 percent a year.

Kryder’s Law: Claims the storage density on digital disks and memory will drastically increase.

This Is the Most Important Class in the School of Business:

If you ever want to become a future business professional, it’s important to know how to be able to access, evaluate and apply IT.

Q1-2 How Will MIS Affect Me?

First thing to know is that technology is changing at an accelerating rate. Since there is technological constantly changing it can affect your job security. So it’s important to develop non-routine cognitive skills and the ability to adapt. There’re 4 non-cognitive routine skills, abstract, systems, collaboration and ability to experiment. Abstract reasoning is constructing a model or representation, like a prototype or something. Systems thinking is when system components show how the components inputs and outputs relate to each other. Collaboration is developing ideas or plans with others and giving or receiving any feedback.  The ability to experiment creates or test using new alternatives and consistent with available resources.

Q1-3 What Is MIS?

Management information systems are used to manage information systems which help organizations help to achieve their strategies. Now information systems (IS) are hardware, software, data, procedures and people that produce information. Compare to information technology where it’s products, methods, inventions, and standards used for the purpose of producing technology. MIS has three key elements: management and use, information systems and strategies. The goals is to manage IS in order to achieve business strategies.

Computer of an Information System:

A system is group of components that interact to achieve some purpose and IS uses a group of components to interact in order to produce information. There are five components: computer hardware, software, data, procedures and people. For example, when you are writing a research for class, you utilize all 5 of these components. These five components are common among all systems and are to mean, develop and maintain.

Q1-4 How Can You Use the Five Component Model

The outermost components hardware, and people can take action and the software and procedure components are both set of instructions. Data is what bridges the gap between human side to computer side. The people or you are the important in the model because we produce the information and not manipulate it. Also another thing is that all component must work together and by using all five components you locate problems and find better solutions. However, going from the computer side of hardware and software to the human side of procedures and people; increases the degree of difficulty of change.

Q1-5 What Is Information?

The common definition is information comes from knowledge derived from data. However, it can also mean when information is presented in a meaningful context. Also information means processing data or data being processed by different means of operations. Lastly, information can be defined as a difference that makes a difference. Graphs are not information because it has data people perceive and use to conceive information.

Q1-6 What Are Necessary Data Characteristics?

The first data characteristic is accuracy, information that needs to be correct and completed data which is process correctly. Secondly, its required that data is timely so it’s available when needed and to keep up the information. Next the data must be relevant both to the context and to the subject. Fourth, it’s necessary to be just sufficient for its purpose but not overloading. Finally, data isn’t free so there cost for developing an IS and operating and maintaining that system.

Q7: 2026

By 2026 most the computer won’t look ordinary computers and smartphones will be changing. In addition, technology will grow so much people may be able to work at home, utilize new technology and access to vas amounts of data. 

Chapter 5

The chapter discusses the topics of what is database processing, why data processing is use and how data processing is use. The chapter starts by describing what’s the purpose of a database and its system components. Part of the sections in the chapters, shows how data models are used to design database structure. These database systems are used to solve problems and who knows where database technology will be in the future.

Q5-1 What Is the Purpose of a Database

Database are used to keep track of things, for example many professionals use spreadsheets to keep track of their inventory. Spreadsheets are used to keep track of a single theme, such as only the inventory. However, a database can be used to keep track of multiple tasks or items. Database can contain multiple themes, such as inventory, emails and tasks. These are both consider a general rule when it comes to the purpose of a database.

Q2: What Is a Database?

Self-describing collection of integrated records is called a database. A database consists of bytes, these characters of data. Bytes in a database are grouped into columns which can be also called fields. Records are grouped into rows and correlate with the fields. So the collection of data in these columns and rows, are grouped together into a table. Files are tables, that display’s the collection of data in both the fields and records. So the structure of the database is a collection of tables or files that correlate with the records and special data called metadata. These databases are sometimes stored on disks. Now the “among the relationship on rows” is where the rows of different tables correlate together. A unique row in one of these tables crosses over to a primary key, which is column or group of columns. These columns can be foreign keys that resides in a foreign table. Relational databases carry data in the form of tables and uses the relationship of foreign keys. Metadata in a database makes the database much more useful. Since the database can use the metadata to remember and record. Now the format of metadata relies on the software which processes the database.

Q5-3 What Is a Database Management System (DBMS)?

A database management systems are the programs creating, processing and administering a database. DMBS are not developed by any organizations and instead are licensed out to organizations from different vendors. A database management system is different from a database and is a software program.

Creating the Database and Its Structures

DBMS is use by database developers to create these tables, relationships and most structures in the database. The developer creates a new table; the metadata fills the table in the form.

Processing the Database

Processing the database is the 2^nd function to the database management system, which is complicated. However, the DBMS are the fundamentals and is using four different processing operations. These operations are to read, insert, modify or delete data. Database Management System rely on these operations, especially when the users either enter new or change the data.

Administering the Database

Now administering the database is the third function to the database management system. The database administration are assistant tools and include various activities to its database. For example, think of security when a user needs to log onto its account. These functions can include recovering past database data. Additionally, improving the structure, performance of database’s and removes unnecessary data.

Q5-4 How Do Database Applications Make Databases More Useful?

 Data in database tables are only useful when the information is conceptual and place in the correct forms. Specifically, there’re four elements of a database application program: forms, reports, queries, application programs. Traditionally databases are shared among many users and serve their purpose. The browser applications in a database are also shared among its users. These applications on the internet are thin-client applications, which aren’t pre-installed on those computers. So the applications forms, reports and queries run through javascipt and html codes. Besides traditional queries, graphical queries are criteria’s created when a user clicks on graphic displays.  Now, multi-user processing commonly does have problems that are difficult to understand. So make sure to be cautious and aware of these multi data conflicts.

Q5-5 How Are Data Models Used for Database Development?

There’re two topics being consider when it comes to database development, both data modeling and database design. The design of the model relies on the user involvement and business environment. Database developers must know what the user wants and what to include. Data models are constructed as database data in a logical representation. It represents the data and what it’s supposed to store in the database.

Entities

An entity is when user wants to track something and can represented in many variations. Attributes are part of entities because they describe the characteristics of the entity. An identifier is what recognizes an attribute’s value which is associated with only one entity.

Relationships

Each entity has a relationship to one another, for example: An “order” is related to a “customer” entity and a “salesperson” entity. So database designers use diagrams to show these type of relationships. Entity-relationship (E-R) diagrams where one type of all the entities are showed in a single rectangle. Lines are used to show the relationship between two separate entities, vertical bars to represent one type of entity and crow’s feet. Crow’s feet are shorthand for multiple lines between different entities and are in one-to-many relationships. Since these type of relationships has one entity correlating with multiple entities however going the other way around doesn’t work.  Many-to many relationships represent different entities that have relations between each other and correlate with other entities too. Crow’s-foot diagram shows the relationships of both maximum and minimum cardinalities.  Maximum cardinality is the maximum number of entities in a relationship. Vertical bar on a line means at least one entity required. Minimum cardinality is the minimum number of entities in a relationship. Small oval means entity is optional so the relationship does not need to have an entity of that type.

Q5-6 How Is a Data Model Transformed into a Database Design?

By converting a data model into tables, relationships and data constraints is what transforms into a database designed. There’re two kinds of database design concept, normalization and the representation of two kinds of relationships. Normalization is processing a poor constructed data table into two or more efficient tables. Since data integrity problems arise when a table is poorly managed and constructed; causing incorrect results.  Normalizing the table is using the various normal forms to take out duplicated data and other problems that could arise. So normalization is well constructed table and has only one type of theme. Representing relationships are turning a data model into a relational database design. Step 1 is to create a table for each entity then the identifier of the entity becomes normalize. Resulting in each table having a single theme and finally represent the relationship between the tables. The users’ role in the development of databases must thorough look through the data tables and devote the time to final judging.

Q5-8 2026?

So in the year 2026, it’s said the amount of databases will drastically increase. It will also have cheaper and unlimited storage in these databases which will have fast processing speeds. Then ACID transactions will come into play and are critical to original commercial applications. Either all of a transaction is processed or none of it is. Transactions are processed in the same manner whether processed alone or in the presence of millions of other transactions. Once a transaction is stored it never goes away, even in the presence of failure. There’ll be new categories of DMBS, such as NotRelational DBMS which supports high transaction rates and processes simple data structures. NewSQL DBMS processes higher level transactions and provide ACID support. Last, In-memory DBMS uses high volume ACID transactions which have complex relational query processing.

Chapter 4 Hardware, Software and Mobile devices

Chapter 4: Hardware, Software and Mobile Systems

This chapter discusses basic hardware terms, software concepts, open source software development and how innovated hardware made an impact on businesses.  The chapter will also talk about native and web applications which included mobile systems and what challenges it brings.

Q4-1 What Do Business Professional Need to Know About Computer Hardware?

Computer hardware is being integrated in so many devices these days, the concept as computer hardware is evolving. Computer hardware are electronic components in various devices. These devices are allowed to communicate with other devices through different channels of networks. Software programs encodes certain instructions to store data and memory on computer hardware.

Hardware Components: In order for computer hardware to work, it needs hardware components such as a CPU. The brain of a computer is the central processing unit. This intelligent electronic brain instructs the operation of the computer to perform arithmetic and logical comparisons. Dual processor and Quad processor are types of CPUs that computers have. Both the CPU and Main Memory work simultaneously as one reads the data and the other stores the data. Ram is main memory which in computers is called store hardware.

Types of Hardware: The basic hardware types are computing devices such as personal computers, tablets, smartphones, servers and server farms. Servers purpose is to process request from PCS and PC users. When there is a collection of servers, its typical called a server farm. The infrastructure of these servers can provide and create a cloud.

Computer Data: Bits are used in computers which is represented by binary digits. Bits are typically either a zero or one since its easier read. These numbers represent a move or a function that the computer is trying achieve.

Computer Data Sizes: Bits are then grouped into 8-bit chunks called bytes. Bytes typically represent main memory, disk and computer devices. Data storage capacity use these bytes such as kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, petabyte, Exabyte and zettabyte. Computer disk capacities are used to store a specific amount of data that is either volatile or nonvolatile.

Q4-2 How Can New Hardware Affect Competitive Strategies?

There are three new hardware developments that have affect competitive strategies, such as internet of things, self-driving cars and 3D Printing. Both new and current organizations think these new innovations generate opportunities, revenue and threats.

Internet of Things: The idea of object’s being connected to the internet and interface with other devices, applications or services. For instance, smart devices are now wired to process, sense and transmit data. Now we are moving towards an age of Augmented reality, which combines the real world and virtual reality together. This new innovation will disrupt the market. The impact of the internet of things for example: GE focused on smart devices which allowed them reduce waste, increase efficiency and made better decision making. This transferred to make an impact in hospitals, railroads and manufacturing plants from using smart devices.

Self-Driving Cars: Another disruptive force which uses sensors to drive the car itself and integrates advance hardware and software programs. These self-driving cars will make things easier, cheaper and safer. The cars will be able to move and drive all around, allowing humans to be more productive and save time during the day. This new innovation will disrupt the auto industries.

3D Printing: These printers create plastics, metals, ceramics, foods and biological material. 3D printing is able to provide certain opportunities for aerospace, defense, automotive, entertainment and healthcare industries.

Q4-3 What do Business Professional Need to Know About Software?

You need to know every computer needs an operating system, a program which controls a computer resources. The functions of an operating system are to read and write data, allocate memory and creates/manages the user interface. Both client and server computers need an operating system so it can process app programs. Clients are programs and applications which controls and processes on a computer.  In the end, the application design determines if the client or server should process it.  It’s require to know a version of an operating system is directly correlated with specific hardware. Native applications also called thick-client applications are particularly written to be use by an operating system. For instance, Microsoft word is a program that can work on both Windows and MAC systems however 1 program cannot work for both systems but needs to be purchase separately for each system.  Web applications known as a thin-client application are programmed to run on computer browsers from any type of computer.

What are the Major Operating Systems? Microsoft windows is an example of a nonmobile client operating system. There’re different mobile client operating systems, for example: IOS operates IPhones and Android or Windows 10 operates most mobile phones. There are three types of server operating systems: Windows servers and IBM servers which includes Linux and Unix.

Virtualization: Is a process when many computers appear on one server, an operating system dedicated to run multiple operating systems as applications. These host operating systems control the virtual machines activities and interfering with each other. PC virtualization will host several different operating systems on a personal computer. Server virtualization acts as a server to host multiple server computers. However, the potential of desktop virtualization allows a server host different versions of desktop operating systems.

Own Versus License: Licenses give you the right to use the program, such as when you buy a Windows license. However, large organizations purchase a site license which is a flat fee to install a software product on all company computers.

What Types of Application Exist and How Do Organizations Obtain Them? There are three types of applications and can be develop by any individual or hire a development vendor. Horizontal-market applications are examples of word processors, which is a software that’s provided common capabilities across the organization. Vertical-Market application is a software that uses programs to serve the need for a specific industry. Lastly, one-of-a-kind application is software made for a specific reason or a unique task. In addition, software source can be found off-the shelf, off-the-shelf and then customized and custom-developed.

What is Firmware? It’s a computer software installed on read-only memory devices because it becomes part of the device memory. IS professionals can change, upgrade or adapt firmware software.

Q4-4 Is Open Source Software a Viable Alternative?

After Richard Mathew Stallman develop the GNU and the GNU general public license agreement, it provided a great source for the open source movement.

Why Do Programmers Volunteer Their Services? Programmers engaged in an intense combination of art and logic when creating a complicated computer program. Programmers are sometimes allowed to exercise creativity on projects their interested in. Programmers can freely choose a project they want to work on and have a chance to practice their skills. Some programmers even have the chance to create their own business or intellectual property.

How Does Open Source Work?  Source code is a number code in a computer that was written by humans and understand by humans. Open Source means the program of the source code is available to the public. The source code is processed and compiled by a computer through the machine code. A closed source code is a restrictive code that is use and available for organizations and their employees. Open source can be viable depending on the requirements and constraints of the situation. However, even though open software may be free, it’s still possible be charged for operational cost or licensing fee.

Q4-5 What Are the Differences Between Native and Web Applications? The difference between Native and Web applications is Native runs on just one operating system. Web applications run in browsers which handles both the operating system and hardware through a hidden code. Native applications can only run on the operating system it was program too and the cost running these applications in house is high. Native applications are typically dealing with Java, IOS, Android and Windows. Web applications are usually easy to build by low entry level technicians. However, web applications are limited by web browser capabilities but these applications can run on any operating system.  Web applications are cheaper to develop but depending on your requirements Native may be just as viable.

Q4-6 Why Ae Mobile Systems Increasingly Important?

Well mobile systems are an information system which supports users in motion and can be anywhere to access the system. The major elements are users in motion, mobile devices, wireless connectivity and cloud-based resource. These mobile devices are small, lightweight, power conserving and is capable to connecting to WiFi. The impact of mobile devices is changing the technological industry and creating opportunities for both businesses and career wise. Hardware will be sold to create more mobile devices and use software to compact more interface. Mobile devices will generate data and is convenient to use anywhere on the go. Mobile systems are providing a just-in-time data which allows user to receive information at a precise time when needed.

Q4-7 What Are the Challenges of Personal Mobile Devices at Work?

Businesses now face the challenge of having their own employees on their mobile device and having to figure out a solution to balance the bridge. Organizations enjoy the low cost saving of having their own employees purchase the hardware. However, scared that the company will be vulnerable and lose some type of control. The advantage is employees now feel more satisfy using their own devices so creating higher productivity and it will reduce the cost of training. The disadvantage is the chance of losing data, risk of infection or losing control over employees using their device. Then the organization can’t update any software that is required or upload any application because it’s their own personal device.

Q4-8 2026?

In 2026, our world will see our people always on their device, always connected and communicating. The internet of things will be bigger and the technology will be integrated in so many more objects. Possibly better paying jobs using both native and web applications; which will have translated from us being better problem solvers, using better judgment and using our creativity or desire to learn new things.

Chapter 3 Strategy and Information Systems

Chapter 3 Strategy and Information Systems

Chapter 3 shows a competitive strategy which is supported by information systems and it helps other collaborate. Using IS will generate a body of knowledge for organizations to analyze and choose a competitive advantage. When structuring information systems, its crucial to survey any type of knowledge and know how to interpret that knowledge. In the end, businesses use the knowledge in information systems to gain a competitive advantage.

Q3-1 How Does Organizational Strategy Determine Information System Structure?

When comparing information system and MIS, the two exist for businesses to use in their strategies. When a company decides on a competitive strategy, it determines the information system structure, features and functions. An organization strategy determines an information system by starting at its industry structure, competitive strategy, value chains, business processes and ends with information system.

Q3-2 What Five Forces Determine Industry Structure?

Industry structure in an organizational strategy starts with reviewing any fundamental characteristics. When accessing an organization industry structure, Porter’s five forces model is one model to consider. Porters five forces model uses five competitive forces to determine how much industry profitability. The five forces model consist of: bargaining power of customers, threat of substitutions, bargaining power of suppliers, threat of new entrants and rivalry among existing firms. When using this model, it’s good to understand both strong and weak examples of each examples. Use the model to consider different forces of each category and how these five forces create a competitive advantage. Porters five forces model characteristics basically shows how profitable the industry is and if the industry can sustain those profits. After examining these fiver forces, the organizations must decide what they intend to do next and choose a competitive strategy.

Q3-3 How Does Analysis of Industry Structure Determine Competitive Strategy?

Competitive strategy is begun when the company has decided on its industry structure. In Porter’s five forces model consist of a four competitive strategies model. It is assumed that most organizations focus on at least one of these strategies. One strategy a firm can use is a cost leader strategy by having low prices or competitive prices. The firm can also use a differentiation approach, by making their products different from their competitors. These type of strategies can be utilized and focused on the whole firm itself or use those strategies on a certain market segment.  For example, car rental companies can compete either on providing low cost rental fees throughout the company or low cost fees to particular consumers. The rental company can provide the most range of high/low end cars and rent those type of cars to all individuals or towards particular consumers. Therefore, in order to be an effective firm, an organization strategy and its information system must comply with its competitive strategy.

Q3-4 How Does Competitive Strategy Determine Value Chain Structure?

After an organization sets up its industry structure then analyzes the industry and comes up with a competitive strategy.  After, the firm must use it competitive strategies to organize and structure its organization; creating a value chain structure. Resources, products and services have a money value which consumers are willing to pay for. Therefore, a value chain is a network chain of value creating activities and consist of: five primary activities and four secondary activities.

Primary Activities: These five primary activities are inbound logistics, operations/manufacturing, outbound logistics, customer service, sales and marketing. The first primary task deals with receiving, storing and disseminating inputs to the products. The secondary task transforms those inputs into final products and collecting or storing then distributing those products to buyers. Now the sales and marketing departments get buyers to purchase those products and a given value for purchase. Finally, customer service will enhance the products value by providing assistance and maintenance.

Supporting Activities: These four secondary activities indirectly deal with the production, sale, procurement and service of the product. Any supporting functions in the generic value chain will add value however it also adds cost. Even though it’s hard to calculate the margin of value but value is added and there is a cost.

Value Chain Linkages: These linkages interact with value chain activities, which derived from an integrated, cross-department business system called process design. Organizations should create new, more efficient functional systems rather than automating or improving existing ones. It’s prefer to use a business process that integrates both the value chain activities of all departments.

Q3-5 How Do Business Processes Generate Value?

Business processes uses a network of activities which create value from converting inputs to outputs. Each of these activities are business functions that receives inputs and outputs. Business process generate value by using outputs and the costs. The cost of these business activities are the cost of inputs and cost of the activities. Now to generate a profit margin, you must use the business process value of outputs minus the cost. After its required to generate a repository of data and a raw material repository.

Q3-6 How Does Competitive Strategy Determine Business Processes and the Structure of Information Systems?

When structuring an information system, value generating activities are on top of the chart and compare those activities competitive strategy. For example, choosing a low price cost competitive strategy vs high price cost competitive strategy. Depending on the competitive strategy, a business will choose what information system is best for the company. For instance, the low price cost competitive strategy may require a very simple IS structure for basic business transactions.  Possibly the high price cost competitive strategy may require a large complicated information system.

Q3-7 How Do Information Systems Provide Competitive Advantage?

Competitive Advantage via Products: Organizations can gain a competitive advantage by generating new, by enhancing existing and by differentiating products/services. Information systems will help achieve competitive advantages either for a product or by providing support to a product.

Competitive Advantage via Business Processes: Organizations can establish high switching costs which makes it harder or expensive for consumers to switch to another product. Companies can also lock down suppliers by making it just as difficult to switch to another organization; since it’s easy to connect and work with the current organization.  In addition, creating entry barriers is another competitive advantage by making it more competitive and difficult for new competitors. Another competitive advantage is by establishing alliances and reducing cost.

How Does an Actual Company Use IS to Create Competitive Advantages?

For example, when a company maintains a customer account data, which includes the customer name, address and billing info. An information system will read the customers contact data from its database and saves time by not having to write their information again. A company can turn its product from a package delivery service to a package and information delivery service.  In addition, information systems can generate shipping labels for a company and reduces any shipping errors.

How Does This System Create a Competitive Advantage?

Information systems can also help a company have a different delivery service compare to other similar competitors.  For instance, a new service can be a generated email that’s sent out when a company picks up and delivers a package. An information system both stores and generates data on the consumers and lock in all that data. These systems raise the bar for new barriers in market entry and generates a competitive advantage. Also these systems bring net saving costs, will reduced errors and any printing cost. 

IT Doesnt Matter

Growing up in both the late 90’s and 2000’s, I’ve seen technology boom overtime. I remember going to my first computer class in middle school to teach me how to type and how quickly can I type. However, progressing with technology has cause so many to rely on it. After reading “IT Doesn’t Matter” Nick Carr raised an interesting question; he thinks the U.S. economy or companies should reexamine the usage of both proprietary and infrastructural technologies. In my opinion, I don’t agree with Nick Carr point. He does make some points I do agree on but not his overall opinion.

In the article “IT Doesn’t Matter” Nick Carr discusses how IT is becoming more of commodity and how it takes away the competitive advantage for. All these type of technologies provides companies with different competitive advantages and help exploit new markets very quickly. Those competitive advantages that allow companies to grow quicker and making it harder for smaller businesses. Technology does matter however it’s how you use technology and make sure humans grow with it. If the economy allows IT to replace jobs run by humans, this creates a reliance on technology. IT doesn’t matter when the economy or companies have to rely on it. However, if humans grow with technology and learn how to use or develop IT then it does matter.

Mr. Carr can claim information technology will eventually become a standardize commodity and be able to access it much easier. However easier access to IT may diminish a competitive advantage for some but it also creates a different approach. This approach is a strategic advantage that uses both technology and the human skill sets. IT does matter because technology is rapidly growing but the focus should be on individuals and companies. The real competitive advantage is what individuals and companies can do with that technology.