Bus 101 Information Systems Midterm

Moore’s Law

The number of transistors per square inch on an integrated chip doubles every 18 months

Moore’s Law Implications

Computers are getting exponentially faster. The cost of data processing is approaching zero.

Metcalfe’s Law

The value of a network is equal to the square of the number of users connected to it

Metcalfe’s Law Implications

More digital devices are being connected together. The value of digital and social networks is increasing exponentially.

Nielsen’s Law

Network connection speeds for high-end users will increase by 50% per year.

Nielsen’s Law Implications

Network speed is increasing. Higher speeds enable new products, platforms, and companies.

Kryder’s Law

The storage density on magnetic disks is increasing at an exponential rate.

Kryder’s Law Implications

Storage capacity is increasing exponentially. The cost of storing data is approaching zero.

Bell's law

Today’s highly successful business could be bankrupt quickly because technology changed and it didn’t.

How Can Intro to MIS Help You Learn Non-Routine Skills? (Systems Thinking)

• Model system components and show how components’ inputs and outputs relate to one another

  • Ability to discuss, illustrate, critique systems; compare alternative systems; apply different systems to different situations

How Can Intro to MIS Help You Learn Non-Routine Skills? (Abstract Reason)

• Ability to make and manipulate models

  • Learn how to use and construct abstract models

How Can Intro to MIS Help You Learn Non-Routine Skills? (Collaboration)

People working together to achieve a common goal, result, or work product

How Can Intro to MIS Help You Learn Non-Routine Skills? (Ability to experiment)

Make reasoned analysis of an opportunity; develop and evaluate possible solutions

Difference between IT and IS

You cannot buy an IS: Can buy, rent, lease hardware, software, databases, and predesigned procedures

IS involves IT, people, and procedures.

Information

• Knowledge derived from data.

• Meaningful context.

• Processed data, or data processed by summing, ordering, averaging, grouping, comparing, or similar operations.

Characteristics of Data

Accurate, timely, relevant (to context/subject), sufficient, worth its cost

2 key characteristics of collaboration

• Successful collaboration

  • People working together to achieve a common goal

  • Feedback and iteration

• Importance of critical feedback

  • members learn from each other

  • provide constructive criticism

  • Be willing to express different ideas

  • Avoid groupthink

Hackman’s Criteria for Judging Team Success

• Successful outcome

• Improve team capability over time

• Meaningful and satisfying experience

4 primary purposes of collaboration

• Become informed

  • Share data & communicate interpretations

  • Develop & document shared understandings

• Make decisions

• Solve problems

• Manage projects

Requirements for a collaboration information system

• Hardware

• Software

• Data / metadata

• Procedures

• People

Requirement for making decisions

Share decision criteria, alternative descriptions, evaluation tools, evaluation results, implementation plan

Requirement for solve problems

Share problem, solution alternatives, cost/benefits, alternative evaluations, solution implementation plan

Requirements for manage projects

Support starting, planning, doing, and finalizing project phases

Collaboration tools to improve team communication

• Virtual Meetings

  • Skype, Google Hangouts, etc

• Shared content w/ version control

• Microsoft Sharepoint

  • large/complex app for collaboration

Five Forces Determine Industry Structure

• Bargaining power of customers

• Threat of substitutions

• Bargaining power of suppliers

• Threat of new entrants

• Rivalry

Porter’s Four Generic Competitive Strategies

• Industry-wide

• Cost

• Focus

• Differentiation

Primary Activities of the value chain

• inbound logistics

• operations/manufacturing

• outbound logistics

• sales and marketing

• customer service

inbound logistics (value chain)

receiving, storing, and disseminating inputs to the products

operations/manufacturing (value chain)

transforming inputs into the final products

outbound logistics (value chain)

collecting, storing, and physically distributing the products to buyers

sales and marketing (value chain)

inducing buyers to purchase the products and providing a means for them to do so

customer service (value chain)

assisting customers use of the products and thus maintaining and enhancing the products’ value

Using IS to create competitive advantages

• Enhance existing products

  • differentiate products

    • lock in customers

      • raise barriers to market entry

        • increase profit margins by decreasing costs and decreasing errors

Ex: maintain customer account data (IS collects info and saves customer time by automatically filling in part of form)

package & information delivery system: Helps customer to select delivery address and generate shipping labels

Why use a database?

Organize and keep track of things. If there are multiple themes.

Rows and columns are equivalent to…

Records and fields

Components of a database

tables or files + relationships among rows in tables + metadata

Database Management System (DBMS)

program to create, process, administer a database. licensed from vendors (IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, etc)

Processing the database

DBMS Process Operations

• Read

• insert

• modify

• delete data

Structured query language (SQL): international standard used by nearly all DBMS

Forms (database)

view data; insert new, update existing, delete existing data

Queries (database)

Search using values provided by user

Reports (database)

Structured presentation of data using shorting, grouping, filtering, other operations

Application programs (database)

Provide security, data consistency, special purpose processing (ex: handle out-of-stock situations)

Entity-Relationship Data Model

• Entities

  • Something to track (order, customer, item, donation)

• Attributes

  • Describe characteristics of entity (OrderNumber, CustomerNumber, PhoneNumber)

• Identifier

  • Uniquely identifies one entity instance from other instances (StudentIDNumber)

1:N (DB Relationship)

One department may have many advisers, but an adviser may be in only one department

N:M (DB Relationship)

Adviser may have many students, and one student may have many advisers

Crow’s-Foot Diagram (What do the arrows mean)

1: Maximum cardinality─maximum number of entities in a relationship. Vertical bar on a line means at least one entity required.

2: Minimum cardinality—minimum number of entities in a relationship. Small oval means entity is optional; relationship need not have entity of that type

Database Normalization

• Converting poorly structured tables into 2 or more well-structured ones

  • Goal: construct table w/ single theme or entity

  • purpose: minimize data integrity problems

Cloud

elastic leasing of pooled computer resources over the internet

• elastic: automatically adjusts for unpredictable demand, limits financial risks.

• pooled: same physical hardware, economies of scale.

Benefits of the cloud

• lower costs

• ubiquitous access

• improved scalability

• elasticity

• virtualization technology

• internet-based standards enable flexible, standardized processing capabilities

In-House Hosting Benefits

• control of data location

  • in-depth visibility of security/disaster preparedness

In-House Hosting Negatives

• significant capital required

• significant development effort

• difficult to accommodate fluctuating demand

• ongoing support costs

• maintenance costs

• obsolescence

SaaS - software as a service (cloud service)

users are employees and customers. allows users to connect to and use cloud-based apps over the Internet (ex: iCloud)

PaaS - platform as a service (cloud service)

users are app developers/testers. software and hardware that provides an operating system on which developers can create and deploy solutions without administrating the underlying system software. (ex: AWS)

IaaS - Infrastructure as a service (cloud service)

users are network architects and system admins. It provides scalability, servers, data storage, and network hardware upon which a company can install and manage its operating system and database management to host its applications on the cloud. (ex: Amazon EC2)

content delivery network (CDN)

stores user data in many different geographical locations and makes data available on demand

• specialized type of PaaS

CDN Benefits

• decreased loadtime

• reduced load on origin server

• increased reliability

Personal area network (PAN)

Devices connected around a single person

Local area network (LAN)

computers connected at a single physical site

Wide area network (WAN)

Computers connected between two or more separated sites

Router

Device that forwards data packets along networks. A router is connected to at least 2 networks located at gateways, the places where two or more networks connect. Use headers and forwarding tables to determine best path for forwarding the packets, and use protocols such as ICMP to communicate with each other and configure the best route.

Switch

Device that filters and forwards packets between LAN segments. LANS that use switches to join segments are called switched LANs or, in the case of ethernet networks, switched ethernet LANs

Hub

common connection point for devices in a network. Commonly used to connect segments of LAN. Contains multiple ports. When a packet arrives at one port, its copied to all other ports so that all segments of LAN can see all packets

Switches vs routers

Switches create a network. Routers connect networks.

Domain Name System (DNS)

unique name affiliated with a public IP address. multiple domain names for same IP address.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator)

internet address protocol, such as http://

Public IP address

identifies a unique device on internet. assigned by ICANN. one public IP address per LAN.

Private IP address

identifies a device on a private network, usually a LAN. Assignment is controlled by LAN. Eliminates registering public IP with ICANN. Protects against direct attack.

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)

communications standard for delivering data and messages through networks

Virtual Private Network (VPN)

a mechanism for creating a secure connection between a computing device and a computer network, or between two networks, using an insecure communication medium such as the public Internet.

Structured Processes

formally defined, standardized processes that involve day-to-day operations.

Dynamic Processes

flexible, informal, and adaptive processes that normally involve strategic and less specific managerial decisions and activities.

Workgroup

Support one or more _____ processes. 10–100 users; procedures often formalized; problem solutions within group; workgroups can duplicate data; somewhat difficult to change (ex: doctors office)

Enterprise

Support one or more _______ processes. 100–1,000+ users; procedures formalized; problem solutions affect enterprise; eliminate workgroup data duplication; difficult to change (ex: hospital)

inter-enterprise

Support one or more _______ processes. 1,000+ users; systems procedures formalized; problem solutions affect multiple organizations; can resolve problems of duplicated enterprise data; very difficult to change (ex: healthcare exchange)

information silo problems

• data duplicated

• data inconsistency

• data isolated

• disjointed processes

• lack of integrated enterprise information

• inefficient (decisions made in isolation)

Solving problem of information silos

• integrate into single database

• revise applications

Business Process Reengineering (BPR)

Integrated data, enterprise systems create stronger, faster, more effective linkages in value chains.

• difficult, slow, expensive

• requires high-level and expensive skills/time

Customer relationship management (CRM)

suite of applications, database, set of inherent processes. manage all interactions with customer through four phases of customer life cycle. supports customer-centric organization.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

software system that helps you run your entire business, supporting automation and processes in finance, human resources, manufacturing, supply chain, services, procurement, and more.

Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)

• connects system islands

• enables communicating and sharing data

• provides integrated information

• provides integrated layer on top of existing systems while leaving functional application as is

• enables gradual move to ERP

True ERP Have Application that Integrate:

• supply chain

• manufacturing

• CRM

• Human resources

• Accounting

challenges of implementing and upgrading to ERP

• collaborative management

• requirement gaps

• transition problems

• employee resistance

• new technology

Social media information system (SMIS)

sharing content among networks of users

3 SMIS Roles

• Social media providers

  • FB, Google, etc

• Users

  • individuals/organizations

• Communities

  • Mutual interests that transcend geographic boundaries

Five Components of SMIS

• Hardware

• Software

• Data

• Procedures

• People

Social CRM

• Customers craft own relationship.

• Wikis, blogs, discussion lists, frequently asked questions, sites for user reviews and commentary, other dynamic content.

• Customers search content, contribute reviews and commentary, ask questions, create user groups, etc.

• Not centered on customer lifetime value.

How do social networks add value to businesses

Progressive organizations have social media

• encourage customers and interested parties to leave comments

• risk - encouraging excessively critical feedback

• klout score - measure of individuals social capital

Earning revenue from social media

• transform interactions w/ customers, employees, and partners into mutually satisfying relationships with them and their communities

• you are the product (renting your eyeballs to an advertiser)

• monetization

Revenue models for social media

• Advertising

  • pay per click

• freemium

  • offers user basic service for free, charge for premium features

• sales

  • apps and virtual goods, donations, affiliate commissions

Enterprise Social Networks (ESN)

software platform uses SM to facilitate cooperative work of people within an organization. improve communication, collaboration, knowledge sharing, problem solving, decision making.