BUS 311 Midterm #1

AWS

Concepts: 

4. Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of compute power, database, storage, applications, and other IT resources via the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. These resources run on server computers that are located in large data centers in different locations around the world. When you use a cloud service provider like AWS, that service provider owns the computers that you are using. These resources can be used together like building blocks to build solutions that help meet business goals and satisfy technology requirements.

8. There are three main cloud service models. Each model represents a different part of the cloud computing stack and gives you a different level of control over your IT resources:

•Infrastructure as a service (IaaS): Services in this category are the basic building blocks for cloud IT and typically provide you with access to networking features, computers (virtual or on dedicated hardware), and data storage space. IaaS provides you with the highest level of flexibility and management control over your IT resources. It is the most similar to existing IT resources that many IT departments and developers are familiar with today.

•Platform as a service (PaaS): Services in this category reduce the need for you to manage the underlying infrastructure (usually hardware and operating systems) and enable you to focus on the deployment and management of your applications.

•Software as a service (SaaS): Services in this category provide you with a completed product that the service provider runs and manages. In most cases, software as a service refers to end-user applications. With a SaaS offering, you do not have to think about how the service is maintained or how the underlying infrastructure is managed. You need to think only about how you plan to use that particular piece of software. A common example of a SaaS application is web-based email, where you can send and receive email without managing feature additions to the email product or maintaining the servers and operating systems that the email program runs on.

9. There are three main cloud computing deployment models, which represent the cloud environments that your applications can be deployed in:

•Cloud: A cloud-based application is fully deployed in the cloud, and all parts of the application run in the cloud. Applications in the cloud have either been created in the cloud or have been migrated from an existing infrastructure to take advantage of the benefits of cloud computing (see https://aws.amazon.com/what-is-cloud-computing/). Cloud-based applications can be built on low-level infrastructure pieces or they can use higher-level services that provide abstraction from the management, architecting, and scaling requirements of core infrastructure.

•Hybrid: A hybrid deployment is a way to connect infrastructure and applications between cloud-based resources and existing resources that are not located in the cloud. The most common method of hybrid deployment is between the cloud and existing on-premises infrastructure. This model enables an organization to extend and grow their infrastructure into the cloud while connecting cloud resources to internal systems.

•On-premises: Deploying resources on-premises, using virtualization and resource management tools, is sometimes called private cloud. While on-premises deployment does not provide many of the benefits of cloud computing, it is sometimes sought for its ability to provide dedicated resources. In most cases, this deployment model is the same as legacy IT infrastructure, but it might also use application management and virtualization technologies to increase resource utilization.

12.

13.Advantage #1—Trade capital expense for variable expense: Capital expenses (capex) are funds that a company uses to acquire, upgrade, and maintain physical assets such as property, industrial buildings, or equipment. Do you remember the data center example in the traditional computing model where you needed to rack and stack the hardware, and then manage it all? You must pay for everything in the data center whether you use it or not.

By contrast, a variable expense is an expense that the person who bears the cost can easily alter or avoid. Instead of investing heavily in data centers and servers before you know how you will use them, you can pay only when you consume resources and pay only for the amount you consume. Thus, you save money on technology. It also enables you to adapt to new applications with as much space as you need in minutes, instead of weeks or days. Maintenance is reduced, so you can spend focus more on the core goals of your business. 

14.Advantage #2—Benefit from massive economies of scale: By using cloud computing, you can achieve a lower variable cost than you can get on your own. Because usage from hundreds of thousands of customers is aggregated in the cloud, providers such as AWS can achieve higher economies of scale, which translates into lower pay-as-you-go prices.

15.Advantage #3—Stop guessing capacity: Eliminate guessing about your infrastructure capacity needs. When you make a capacity decision before you deploy an application, you often either have expensive idle resources or deal with limited capacity. With cloud computing, these problems go away. You can access as much or as little as you need, and scale up and down as required with only a few minutes’ notice.

16.Advantage #4—Increase speed and agility: In a cloud computing environment, new IT resources are only a click away, which means that you reduce the time it takes to make those resources available to your developers from weeks to just minutes. The result is a dramatic increase in agility for the organization because the cost and time that it takes to experiment and develop are significantly lower.

17. Advantage #5—Stop spending money on running and maintaining data centers: Focus on projects that differentiate your business instead of focusing on the infrastructure. Cloud computing enables you to focus on your own customers instead of the heavy lifting of racking, stacking, and powering servers.

18. Advantage #6—Go global in minutes: You can deploy your application in multiple AWS Regions around the world with just a few clicks. As a result, you can provide a lower latency and better experience for your customers simply and at minimal cost.

19. The key takeaways from this section of the module include the six advantages of cloud computing:

•Trade capital expense for variable expense

•Massive economies of scale

•Stop guessing capacity

•Increase speed and agility

•Stop spending money on running and maintaining data centers

•Go global in minutes

22. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a secure cloud platform that offers a broad set of global cloud-based products. Because these products are delivered over the internet, you have on-demand access to the compute, storage, network, database, and other IT resources that you might need for your projects—and the tools to manage them. You can immediately provision and launch AWS resources. The resources are ready for you to use in minutes.

AWS offers flexibility. Your AWS environment can be reconfigured and updated on demand, scaled up or down automatically to meet usage patterns and optimize spending, or shut down temporarily or permanently. The billing for AWS services becomes an operational expense instead of a capital expense.

AWS services are designed to work together to support virtually any type of application or workload. Think of these services like building blocks, which you can assemble quickly to build sophisticated, scalable solutions, and then adjust them as your needs change.

30. Each organization’s cloud adoption journey is unique. However, in order for any organization to successfully migrate its IT portfolio to the cloud, three elements (that is, people, process, and technology) must be in alignment. Business and technology leaders in an organization must understand the organization’s current state, target state, and the transition that is needed to achieve the target state so they can set goals and create processes for staff.

The AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF) provides guidance and best practices to help organizations identify gaps in skills and processes. It also helps organizations build a comprehensive approach to cloud computing—both across the organization and throughout the IT lifecycle—to accelerate successful cloud adoption.

At the highest level, the AWS CAF organizes guidance into six areas of focus, called perspectives. Perspectives span people, processes, and technology. Each perspective consists of a set of capabilities, which covers distinct responsibilities that are owned or managed by functionally related stakeholders.

Capabilities within each perspective are used to identify which areas of an organization require attention. By identifying gaps, prescriptive work streams can be created that support a successful cloud journey.

Econ:

4.There are three fundamental drivers of cost with AWS: compute, storage, and outbound data transfer. These characteristics vary somewhat, depending on the AWS product and pricing model you choose.

In most cases, there is no charge for inbound data transfer or for data transfer between other AWS services within the same AWS Region. There are some exceptions, so be sure to verify data transfer rates before you begin to use the AWS service.

Outbound data transfer is aggregated across services and then charged at the outbound data transfer rate. This charge appears on the monthly statement as AWS Data Transfer Out.

5. This philosophy is what underlies AWS pricing. While the number and types of services offered by AWS have increased dramatically, our philosophy on pricing has not changed. At the end of each month, you pay for what you use. You can start or stop using a product at any time. No long-term contracts are required.

AWS offers a range of cloud computing services. For each service, you pay for exactly the amount of resources that you actually need. This utility-style pricing model includes:

•Pay for what you use

•Pay less when you reserve

•Pay less when you use more

•Pay even less as AWS grows

You will now take a closer look at these core concepts of pricing.

7. For certain services like Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), you can invest in reserved capacity. With Reserved Instances, you can save up to 75 percent over equivalent on-demand capacity. Reserved Instances are available in three options:

•All Upfront Reserved Instance (or AURI)

•Partial Upfront Reserved Instance (or PURI)

•No Upfront Payments Reserved Instance (or NURI)

When you buy Reserved Instances, you receive a greater discount when you make a larger upfront payment. To maximize your savings, you can pay all upfront and receive the largest discount. Partial Upfront RIs offer lower discounts, but they give you the option to spend less upfront. Lastly, you can choose to spend nothing upfront and receive a smaller discount, which enables you to free capital to spend on other projects.

By using reserved capacity, your organization can minimize risks, more predictably manage budgets, and comply with policies that require longer-term commitments.

21. Hard benefits include reduced spending on compute, storage, networking, and security. They also include reductions in hardware and software purchases; reductions in operational costs, backup, and disaster recovery; and a reduction in operations personnel.

Cloud Total Cost of Ownership defines what will be spent on the technology after adoption—or what it costs to run the solution. Typically, a TCO analysis looks at the as-is on-premises infrastructure and compares it with the cost of the to-be infrastructure state in the cloud. While this difference might be easy to calculate, it might only provide a narrow view of the total financial impact of moving to the cloud.

A return on investment (ROI) analysis can be used to determine the value that is generated while considering spending and saving. This analysis starts by identifying the hard benefits in terms of direct and visible cost reductions and efficiency improvements.

Next, soft savings are identified. Soft savings are value points that are challenging to accurately quantify, but they can be more valuable than the hard savings. It is important for you to understand both hard and soft benefits to understand the full value of the cloud. Soft benefits include:

•Reusing service and applications that enable you to define (and redefine solutions) by using the same cloud service

•Increased developer productivity

•Improved customer satisfaction

•Agile business processes that can quickly respond to new and emerging opportunities

•Increased global reach

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4. Definition:

A coordinated collection of data, processes, people, and technology aiding decision-making, operations, and strategic goals of organizations.

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Key Components:

1. Data & Information: Raw material from internal and external sources.

2. Processes: Rules and procedures for handling data.

3. People: System designers, administrators, and end-users.

4. Information Technology: Hardware, software, networks enabling IS functions.

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Impact:

- Informed decision-making

- Enhanced operational efficiency

- Enables innovation & insights

- Facilitates global communication & collaboration

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Note: Evolution from manual systems to globally connected digital platforms.

6. Some of these categories or types of IS’s are relatively well-known or easy to figure out by the name, but others are not. You should be aware of all of these but in particular:

TPS

MIS

ERP

GIS

CRM

ERP

SCM

1. TPS (Transaction Processing System)

Summary: Systems that record and process routine transactions in real-time or batch processing.

Examples: Oracle Tuxedo, IBM CICS, SAP.

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2. MIS (Management Information System)

Summary: Systems providing middle management with reports on organizational performance to aid decision-making.

Examples: Microsoft Excel, Tableau, QuickBooks.

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3. ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)

Summary: Integrated systems that manage core business processes, often in real-time and mediated by software and technology.

Examples: SAP ERP, Oracle ERP Cloud, Microsoft Dynamics.

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4. GIS (Geographic Information System)

Summary: Systems used to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of geographical data.

Examples: ArcGIS, QGIS, MapInfo.

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5. CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

Summary: Systems to manage a company's interactions with current and potential customers.

Examples: Salesforce, HubSpot CRM, Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales.

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6. SCM (Supply Chain Management)

Summary: Systems that manage and optimize the flow of goods, data, and finances in a supply chain.

Examples: SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP), Oracle SCM Cloud, JDA SCM.

7. Data, Information, and Knowledge: A Distinction

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1. Data

Definition: Raw, unprocessed facts or figures without context.

Example with SSN: A random nine-digit number: 123-45-6789.

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2. Information

Definition: Processed data that has been given meaning through relational connection.

Example with SSN: Knowing that 123-45-6789 is an SSN and belongs to John Doe.

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3. Knowledge

Definition: The understanding and interpretation of information; it’s data or information that has been internalized and contextualized based on experience or reflection.

Example with SSN: Understanding that John Doe's SSN 123-45-6789) is a unique identifier for tax and employment purposes in the U.S., and using or protecting it appropriately in different scenarios.

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In summary, while data is just raw facts, information gives those facts meaningful context, and knowledge is the deep understanding and actionable insight derived from that information.

9.**- IS are ubiquitous**

Information Systems (IS) are everywhere in today's world. From smartphones in our pockets to sophisticated systems in global corporations, IS play a vital role in daily operations and strategic planning. Their omnipresence has reshaped how businesses operate, people communicate, and decisions are made.

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- Digital connection of people, things, and organizations

The digital age has interconnected people, devices (or "things"), and entire organizations in an unprecedented manner. This interconnectedness fosters real-time communication, data sharing, and collaboration, making geographical boundaries increasingly irrelevant. Platforms like social media, IoT devices, and collaborative tools have knitted the global community closer than ever before.

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- Digitization driving innovation

The process of converting information into a digital format has been a primary driver for innovation. Digitization not only streamlines processes but also opens avenues for new business models, products, and services. From cloud computing to artificial intelligence, the digital transformation has paved the way for advancements that were once considered the realm of science fiction.

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Each bullet highlights crucial facets of the digital age, emphasizing the profound influence of IS on our evolving global landscape.

12.Lowering transportation and telecommunication costs has promoted globalization. People can ship items cheaply across the world and easily communication via video or voice conference to anyone around the world. This allows companies to draw on a large pool of skilled professionals from all over the globe. Countries such as India, Russia, and China offer high-quality education, leading to an ample supply of well-trained people at low cost. This has opened up many opportunities while also creating new ways and areas of conflict within and between workforces.

Outsourcing:

Outsourcing involves delegating certain business processes or tasks to external firms, often to achieve cost savings or tap into specialized expertise. This approach allows companies to focus on their core competencies while benefiting from external proficiency.

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Offshoring:

Offshoring refers to relocating business processes or services to another country, usually to capitalize on lower operational costs. While similar to outsourcing, offshoring specifically involves cross-border movement.

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Opensourcing:

Opensourcing is the practice of releasing previously proprietary software code to the public, allowing for collaborative development and enhancement. This method promotes innovation and community engagement in software evolution.

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Crowdsourcing:

Crowdsourcing leverages the collective intelligence of a large group, often an online community, to solve problems or generate ideas. By tapping into diverse perspectives, businesses can gain insights and solutions faster and often more creatively.

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Supply-chain-ing:

This refers to the optimization and management of end-to-end supply chain processes. By digitally connecting suppliers, manufacturers, and consumers, businesses can enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction.

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Insourcing:

Insourcing involves performing business functions or tasks internally rather than contracting them out. Companies might choose this to retain control, protect intellectual property, or leverage internal expertise.

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Informing:

In the context of globalization and collaboration, informing pertains to the ability of individuals to harness digital tools to seek out information autonomously. It emphasizes the self-directed search for knowledge, unbounded by organizational or geographical barriers.

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These concepts underscore the transformative impact of globalization on business operations, emphasizing the myriad ways companies can collaborate, operate, and innovate in a connected world.

13.In most developed countries, the vast majority of adults have a mobile phone, typically within reach 24/7. For organizations, this increase in mobility has a wide range of implications, from increased collaboration to the ability to manage a business real-time – any time, from anywhere – the changes in the way new or existing customers can be reached. With the increase in mobile devices, organizations not only have to create mobile-device-friendly versions of the websites, but often have to build mobile apps. And, then they have to deal with whether they allow personal mobile devices to access potentially sensitive corporate information.  The main mobile device management in use are:

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device):

BYOD refers to the policy of allowing employees to use their personal devices (like smartphones, tablets, laptops) for work purposes. This trend has gained popularity due to increased employee satisfaction and potential cost savings for the organization. However, it introduces challenges in securing corporate data and ensuring compatibility with enterprise systems.

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COPE (Corporate-Owned, Personally Enabled):

COPE is a model where the organization provides employees with devices that are meant for both work and personal use. This allows companies to have tighter control over the devices, ensuring better security and compliance, while still offering flexibility to the employees to use the device personally, striking a balance between security and user freedom.

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CYOD (Choose Your Own Device):

CYOD is a middle-ground approach where employees can choose their preferred device from a list of pre-approved options provided by the organization. This allows for some personal preference while maintaining a level of standardization, making it easier for IT departments to manage and secure the devices.

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COBO (Corporate-Owned, Business-Only):

COBO refers to devices that are owned by the company and are intended strictly for business use, with no personal use permitted. This model offers the highest level of security and control for the organization as it can lock down the device, ensuring sensitive data is protected, but might be less favorable for employees looking for flexibility.

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These trends highlight the evolving strategies organizations employ to manage the influx of mobile devices in the workplace. Each comes with its own set of advantages and challenges, especially concerning balancing security with usability and employee satisfaction.

22. In 1959, Peter Drucker predicted that information and information systems would become increasingly important and coined the term knowledge worker.

Druckers prediction about knowledge workers was accurate – they are generally paid better and rely on skills developed from formal education and real-world experience.

KWs make up about a quarter of the workforce in the U.S. and in other developed nations.

Drucker also predicted that, with the growth in the number of knowledge workers and with their rise in leadership, a knowledge society would emerge.

He argued that possessing knowledge would be as important as possessing land, labor, or capital. This appears to be true. Those with a college education earn, on average, more than those without. Those with a master’s degree earn more than those with a bachelors.

Knowledge Worker: professionals who are relatively well educated and who create, modify, and/or synthesize knowledge as a part of their job.

Knowledge Society: generates, shares, and makes available to all members of the society knowledge that may be used to improve the human condition.

  Other terms used: knowledge economy, the new economy, the digital society, the network era, the internet era.

24. Some have argued that in the new economy, we’ve created a digital divide, where those with access to information systems have a great advantage over those without access to information systems.

Computer-related occupations have evolved as computers have become more sophisticated and more widely used.

Knowing how to use a computer – called computer literacy – can not only open up myriad sources of information, but can also mean the difference between being employed and being unemployed.

“We now see a new class structure divided by those who have information and those who must function out of ignorance. This new class has its power not from money, not from land, but from knowledge.”  Gabraith, 1987

Digital divide is a major ethical concern facing society today, considering the strong linkage between computer literacy and a person’s ability to compete in a digital world.

For example, access to raw materials and money fueled the Industrial Revolution, but in the informational society, the fuel and the power is knowledge. “We now see a new class structure divided by those who have information and those who must function out of ignorance. This new class has its power not from money, not from land, but from knowledge”

People may separated as the ‘information haves’ and the ‘information have nots’

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5. Understanding how organizations are structured helps to illustrate how different types of information systems can support various business processes and provide different levels of value to the organization.

Each level of an organization (operational, managerial, and executive) has different responsibilities and, therefore, different informational needs.

The three levels of management consist of top, middle, and lower management professionals. These leaders have varying levels of authority and decision-making power as well as different daily duties. The top level of management, also called the administrative or managerial level, typically comprises the CEO or managing director and board of directors, which represent a committee of stakeholders in a company. The top level of management is often the person who started, founded and/or owns the company, and they have the most decision-making power and authority out of everyone in an organisation. The middle level of management is responsible for carrying out the plans and goals set by top-level management2. The bottom layers of management are responsible for making operational decisions. These decisions are routine in nature and involve the day-to-day operations of the business.

6. Operational planning typically has a timeframe of a few hours or days, and the managers at the operational level (foreman or supervisors) make day-to-day decisions that are highly structured and recurring. Structured decisions are those in which the procedures to follow for a given situation can be specified in advance.

At the operational level, IS are typically used to increase efficiency (faster, cheaper, and with little effort) by optimizing processes and better understanding the underlying cause of any performance problems.

IS keep processes clearly delineated and well-focused.

IS at this level are designed to automate repetitive activities, such as processing sales transactions and improving customer-interface.

Goal: Improve efficiency

IS systems can support Structured Decisions – decisions that are straightforward  and can be programmed with little to no human intervention.

Ex: when to reorder supplies or how many people are required for a specific project. 

7. Managers at this level are mid-level managers who focus on problems within a specific business function (such as marketing or finance).

Decisions at this level may be moderately complex and be required within a few days to a few months.

Not as structured or routine as operational-level decision-making.

IS at this level help functional managers focus on monitoring and controlling operational-level activities and providing information to higher levels of the organization.

Goal: Improve Effectiveness

Semi-structured Decisions – solutions and problems are not clear-cut and often require judgement, experience, and expertise.

8. At this level, managers focus on long-term strategic questions facing the organization, such as which products to produce, which countries to compete in, and what organizational strategy to follow.

Managers at this level include the president, CEO, CIO, VP, COO, etc.

Executive-level decisions deal with complex problems with broad and long-term ramifications for the organization.

IS can be used to obtain aggregate summaries of trends and projections of the future. Must take into account various types of unstructured data, such as data related to global economic factors, demographic changes, or changing customer tastes and preferences.

IS at this level are designed to help improve strategy and planning by providing summaries of past data and projections of the future.

Unstructured Decisions – decisions that are complex and non-routine with few or no procedures to follow. Have long-term effects on organization’s livelihood.

Ex: which products to produce, which to change, and which to get rid of.

9. When deploying IS across organizational levels and functions, there are three general ways the system can provide value: to enable automating activities, to enable learning, and to enable the execution of organizational strategy.

Organizational strategy is a firm’s plan to accomplish its mission and goals as well as to gain or sustain competitive advantage over rivals

1.  Automating: using technology as a way to help complete a task within an organization faster and more cheaply.

2.Learning: using past behavior and data to improve business processes.

3.Strategy: using IS to innovate, streamline operations, optimize the supply chain, or better understand customers.

Examples of automation: loan processing, industrial IoT can help improve manufacturing performance.

Loan example: Automating – taking loan applications and automatically placing them in a database for DMs to access easily; Learning – identifying seasonal trends in types of loan applications (auto, home, credit lines, etc.) so that management can adequately prepare staff/resources for upcoming seasons; Strategy – how to process loan applications faster and better than rivals and improve the selection criteria for loans.

15. Revenue Model: describes how the firm will earn revenue, generate profits, and produce a superior return on invested capital. The internet has enabled new revenue models.

Offline Revenue Models: Traditional sales, transaction fees, advertising-based business models

Many companies selling products/services use the internet as an economic medium to reach a large customer base; a large number of customers allow these companies to turn over their inventory quickly, allowing them to sell at lower prices while still earning a profit.

Freemium: an organization gives away limited versions of a product or service for free in order to build a large customer-base and charges a premium for unrestricted versions.

The price of computer processing, storage, and bandwidth have become very low, making digital products/services cheap to replicate and offer customers. 

18. Note that innovation is not the same as ‘inventing’; innovation involves realizing the value of the new product, process, or service.

Since product innovations can often be easily copied, companies often combine multiple types of innovations to sustain competitive advantage. Ex: Apple is typically known for its product innovations; yet while the design and functionality of Apple’s products have been widely imitated, other companies find it difficult to copy Apple’s product system innovations or customer engagement innovations.

To gain and sustain competitive advantage, firms must often deploy the latest technologies or redeploy and reinvest in existing technologies in clever, new ways. Ex: using VR headsets for interior design/architecture customers. Now, AR uses information systems to enhance a person’s perception of reality by providing relevant information about the user’s surroundings; special glasses augment the user’s view of the real world with computer-generated content.

Innovation: involves creating new products, processes, or services that return value to the organization.

Incremental innovation: involves enhancing or upgrading existing products, services, or processes.

Radical innovation (disruptive innovation): new technologies, products, or services that eventually surpass the existing dominant technology or product in the market.

** Many of these innovations are enabled by or would not even be possible without information systems!!

20. Effectively organizing for innovation involves beginning early, showcasing leadership commitment, assembling a skilled team, and educating the organization. Implementing these strategies creates a foundation for successful innovation choices that drive growth and advancement.

•Start Early: Initiate the innovation process early on to allow ample time for idea generation, refinement, and strategic planning.

•Display Executive Leadership: Demonstrating strong support from top leadership reinforces the importance of innovation, guiding the organization towards a culture of progress.

•Build a Team of Expert Innovators: Curate a diverse team with varied skills and backgrounds to foster collaboration and generate a wide range of innovative ideas.

•Educate the Organization: Empower all employees by providing training and resources, promoting a collective understanding and enthusiasm for innovation.

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5. Managing application software poses several critical issues for businesses:

1. Purpose and Efficiency: It's crucial to determine whether the software addresses a business need or enhances a process. Moreover, the software's impact on worker efficiency needs assessment; it should ideally make tasks easier and more efficient.

2. Cost-Benefit Analysis: Before acquisition, the financial implications should be weighed. The software's benefits, in terms of efficiency or profit generation, should justify its costs.

3. Hardware Compatibility: With rapid advancements in software, there's a risk that the software might outpace the capabilities of current hardware, leading to inefficiencies or additional investments in upgrading hardware.

4. Update Management: The frequency of software updates and the responsibility for managing these updates can influence the ease of software management. Regular updates might offer improvements but also pose challenges in terms of stability and compatibility.

5. Skillset and Maintenance: Companies need to ensure they have the expertise to maintain the software, addressing issues like bugs, compatibility, and security vulnerabilities.

6. Integration: Software should be able to seamlessly integrate with other systems in place, ensuring smooth data flow and operations.

7. Acquisition Strategy: Finally, the approach to obtaining the software (building in-house, buying off-the-shelf, renting, or opting for open-source solutions) presents its own set of challenges and benefits, impacting costs, customization, and control.

In summary, effective software management requires a holistic view of its impact on operations, costs, and long-term sustainability.

6. So how does your organization acquire the critical software it needs to run efficiently? There are a number of options and your organization may use some or all of these.

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1.Customized Software is tailored to your company's unique needs. You can either have it developed by your in-house team or get external experts to craft it for you.

2.Off-the-shelf is standard software, kind of like a one-size-fits-most solution. It's designed for general purposes and you can choose to either purchase it for long-term use or rent it for a while.

3.Open source can be thought of as software with an open playbook. You can see all its inner workings (the source code). Some versions are free, while others might have a small cost, but the beauty is you can adjust it if needed.

4.Hybrid Approach is combining the best of all worlds. It's about merging customized, off-the-shelf, and open-source elements to create a software solution that fits like a glove.

5.Software as a Service (SaaS) is something you are already familiar with (i.e. Gmail). This is like having a subscription to a service. Hosted in the cloud, you access and use the software online, which means less hassle with installations and updates.

The right approach really depends on your company's specific needs and how you want to balance customization, cost, and convenience.

7. A popular practice today is to shift as many applications and infrastructure to the cloud to enjoy the cost and scalabilty benefits of the cloud. However, Evaluating cloud service providers requires a comprehensive look at several key issues:

1.Security and Compliance: Understand the provider's security protocols, encryption methods, and compliance certifications. Ensure they align with industry standards and your specific business needs.

2.Performance and Reliability: Check uptime guarantees and history. A reliable provider should maintain high availability and performance levels.

3.Data Sovereignty and Location: Know where your data is stored. Data residency can impact regulatory compliance, and geographical proximity can affect access speed.

4.Scalability and Flexibility: Evaluate if the provider can adapt to your changing business needs, allowing you to scale resources up or down efficiently.

5.Cost Structure: Understand the pricing model. Ensure clarity on any hidden costs and ascertain if it aligns with your budget.

6.Integration and Compatibility: Assess how well the provider's solutions integrate with your existing infrastructure and applications.

7.Support and Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Know the level of support provided. Ensure they have clear SLAs covering response times, resolution times, and other critical parameters.

8.Exit Strategy: Understand the process and costs of migrating away if the need arises. Ensure data retrieval is straightforward and doesn't entail prohibitive costs.

In essence, choosing a cloud service provider is a balance of performance, security, cost, and strategic fit for your organization's long-term goals.

10. •let’s delve deeper into a critical component of IS Infrastructure: the Hardware.

•Starting with Input technologies: Think of these as the gatekeepers. They let us input data into our devices, converting our commands, keystrokes, or clicks into a language the computer understands - the binary code.

•The heart of the operation is the Processing unit. It's like the brain of our computer. It receives countless instructions and manages the myriad of computations, ensuring everything runs smoothly. Its main job? Taking all that input and turning it into valuable outputs.

•Speaking of outputs, Output technologies step in here. After all the behind-the-scenes work, they display or present the results in formats we can easily understand, be it visuals on a screen or printouts.

•Primary storage includes components like RAM, register, cache, and ROM. Imagine this as your computer's short-term memory, storing data and applications that are actively being used. It’s the info your device needs on hand and ready for quick access.

•On the other hand, Secondary storage, including hard drives and removable storage, is like a vast digital library. It offers long-term storage for our countless files and programs. Though not as quickly accessible as primary storage, it holds the vastness of our digital world.

•In essence, the hardware is the tangible, foundational aspect of our digital journey, ensuring everything runs harmoniously and efficiently.

15. Similar to cloud computing, grid computing makes use of distributed resources; however, in contrast to cloud computing, the resources in a grid are typically applied to a single large problem. To make it work, large computing tasks are broken into smaller chunks, which can then be completed by individual computers.

Example: Japanese Toyota use large supercomputers to simulate automobile crashes and to evaluate design changes for vibrations and wind noises; Oak Ridge National Lab uses supercomputers to model neutron transport in nuclear reactors or to study climate change scenarios.

17. The three main networking equipment are described here:

-WAP: provides WiFi connectivity to mobile hosts that cannot be physically connected to the network

-Switches: move data very cheaply and effectively within an organization’s LAN

-Router: super important device that moves packets of data between networks. Routers are used to connect many LANs into WANs, and are the key component to building the Internet.

35. What's green washing 

CH4

6. There are 8 recognized types of e-transactions that are shown here. The purpose of these transactions, as you can expect is, is focused around the electronic facilitation and delivery of goods, services and information across entire supply chains (which vary according to the different transaction types). Lets look at some specific definitions and examples.

8. As the different types of e-transactions have taken hold in the modern economy, it has completely altered the ways commerce is conducted.

Before the internet, retailers operated solely using traditional physical stores; today, this approach is referred to as brick-and-mortar business strategy. These companies do not offer their products online. The advent of the web has enabled companies to move beyond their physical location and engage in the online sale of goods and service, or e-tailing.

Let’s stop and try to identify a brick-and-mortar store without an online sales presence… hard, isn’t it. This type of scenario is likely a small-business like a restaurant or specialized services that require physical goods exchange.

9. With transactions occurring in both physical and virtual environments, it is imperative that click and mortars learn how to exploit commercial opportunities in both domains. However, this presents challenges for the firm as business activities must be tailored for each of these environments in order for the firms to compete effectively.

Traditionally, a company would only offer its customers a single channel (physical retail store, a catalog, or an online store). As companies grew, many started using a multichannel approach.

1.Multichannel Retailing: offering the customer different (independent) touch-points, such as a retail store and a catalogue.

2.Cross-channel Retailing: offering the customer different touchpoints, such that transactions take place across multiple environments. : in-store pickup, or looking at products in a store but buying them online

3.Omni-channel Retailing: providing seamless, simultaneous retail interactions using different channels, such that a customer does not interact with a single channel but with the brand as a whole. scanning a QR code in-store to receive more information or product reviews

10. Click-Only Strategy: company only conducts business electronically in cyberspace.

Can often compete more effectively on price because they do not need to support the physical aspects of the click-and-mortar approach.

However, it is more difficult for customers to gauge products online and return them if needed.

What are some examples? Really, the easiest possible example is right there for the taking… Ama….com

11. In all cases, the components of e-Commerce success are the same as commerce success throughout time…

### 1. Revenue Model:

   - Description:

     The revenue model outlines the approach a business will take to earn income, identifying the revenue sources. It's crucial for the viability of an e-commerce business and can include sales, subscription fees, advertising sales, and other income streams.

   - Example in E-Commerce:

     An e-commerce store might have a revenue model comprising direct sales, affiliate marketing income, and advertising revenue from the website.

### 2. Value Proposition:

   - Description:

     The value proposition is a clear statement that explains how a product solves a pain point, meets a need, or delivers specific benefits to customers. It essentially defines the uniqueness of the company's products/services and why customers should purchase from them.

   - Example in E-Commerce:

     An online retailer might offer a value proposition of high-quality products at lower prices with fast and reliable delivery services.

### 3. Competitive Environment:

   - Description:

     The competitive environment refers to the number and types of companies against which a business competes in a particular market. Analyzing the competitive environment helps in identifying competitors, understanding their strategies, and formulating plans to counteract them.

   - Example in E-Commerce:

     An e-commerce store might operate in a highly competitive environment with competitors like Amazon and eBay, necessitating strategies such as price competitiveness, product differentiation, or customer service excellence to stand out.

### 4. Marketing Strategy:

   - Description:

     Marketing strategy outlines the overall plan to reach and attract prospective customers and convert them into buyers. It includes the company's value proposition, key brand messaging, data on target customer demographics, and other high-level elements.

   - Example in E-Commerce:

     A comprehensive online marketing strategy might include search engine optimization (SEO), social media advertising, email marketing campaigns, and content marketing to drive traffic and sales.

### 5. Management Team:

   - Description:

     The management team is the group of individuals who oversee the operational, financial, and strategic decisions of a company. The effectiveness and expertise of this team can significantly impact the success of the business.

   - Example in E-Commerce:

     A successful e-commerce company might have a management team comprising experienced leaders in areas like operations, marketing, finance, and technology who can drive the company towards its goals.

Each of these components plays a crucial role in determining the success of an e-commerce business, contributing to its ability to attract customers, withstand competition, and maintain profitable operations.

12. Firms around the world can now compete for customers to gain access to new markets. The web not only has facilitated the dissemination of information and facilitated communication with customers but often is used to facilitate all stages of a transaction without much need for human assistance (except to pull product and ship it). This tremendously reduces costs associated with transactions. The web has disrupted many traditional business models, including disintermediation, the long-tail, mass customization, group buying, new revenue and pricing models, and social commerce.

13. Disintermediation: the ability to sell products directly to end customers, without the need for distributors or retailers.

Sellers are able to reach customers more efficiently and can offer lower prices (or reap greater profits) by bypassing traditional distribution and retail channels.

However, they also have to take on those roles and responsibilities previously held by the middlemen.

Reintermediation: the design of business models that reintroduce middlemen in order to reduce the chaos brought on by disintermediation.

Example: when airlines started selling tickets directly to customers (disintermediating travel agents), they also had to directly deal with customers who were upset with delays and cancellations. Travelocity and Orbitz are examples of reintermediation that allow customers to check flights from a number of different airlines instead of visiting individual airline sites.

A better example is that some companies decided to sell directly to customers and realized they are not good at shipping, so they reintermediated with Amazon to have them do it for them… something we will talk about later.

14. The Long Tail: the large parts of consumer demand that are outside the relatively small number of mainstream tastes; refers to catering to niche markets in addition to (or instead of) purely selling mainstream products

The distribution of consumers’ needs/wants can be compared to a statistical normal distribution: the center of the distribution reflects the ‘mass market,’ characterized by relatively similar ‘mainstream’ needs/wants shared by many people. The tails are the niche markets, catering to very diverse needs/wants, though fewer people share the same needs and wants. Because of the high storage and distribution costs, most traditional brick-and-mortar retailers are forced to limit their product offerings to serving the needs and wants of mainstream customers at the center of the distribution. Example: large mainstream movies typically draw a larger audience than independent movie productions, so movie theaters tend to show mainstream movies to draw larger crowds and reap profits.

Many e-tailers can focus on the long tails, outside of mainstream tastes, since their operating costs for an online platform are relatively small compared to a brick-and-mortar store. Example: Netflix can afford to have a large selection of unpopular movies and still make a profit.

My favorite results from searching for “niche” etailing examples:  CBD petfood & hiking gear made out of recycled yarn.

15. Mass Customization: tailoring products and services to meet the particular needs of individual customers on a large scale.

Mass consumption is based on the concept of mass production, which reduces costs by producing large numbers of identical goods. Subsequently, mass production was adopted as the standard way of producing goods to be sold at affordable prices.

Web technologies, combined with the ability to interact directly with end customers, have allowed firms to focus on the long tails by tailoring their products/services specifically to each customer’s particular needs on a large scale (mass customization).

Linking online product configuration systems with just-in-time production allows companies to assemble each individual product based on a customer’s specifications so that companies are able to provide individualized products while at the same time reaping the economies of scale provided by mass production.

16. Group Buying: special volume discounts negotiated with local businesses and offered to people in the form of ‘daily deals’; if enough people agree to purchase the product/service, everyone can purchase it at a discounted price.

Group Buying: the company uses these deals to either reduce unsold inventory or to get new customers ‘in the door’, yet they face the potential of making significant losses on these deals. Ex: Groupon

Pricing/Revenue Models: some companies use a traditional menu-driven pricing model, where prices are set; other companies like Priceline use a dynamic pricing model where the customer specifies how much they’re willing to pay and the company matches the customer’s bid.

17. Social Commerce: the use of social media to influence shopping behavior, from the pre-purchase evaluation stage to post-purchase experiences.

Basically, social commerce is buying stuff through a social media site rather than a separate e-commerce website. It's an emerging and still evolving trend that allows customers to buy directly off of social media sites and apps like Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and TikTok. These social apps personalize the shopping experience, and the recommendations made for customers. Allowing you to make a purchase and checkout from the social platform is likely the next phase.

23. One major benefit of internet marketing is the ability to target specific recipients based on demographic and psychographic data (location, time of day, ‘likes’, etc). It’s also easier to assess viewer’s reactions to an ad. How is the success of internet ad campaigns measured? Click-through rate, conversion rate, exit rate, bounce rate.

Web Analytics: the process of analyzing web surfer’s behavior to improve website performance and maximize sales. Includes:

Click-Through Rate: the number of visitors who click on an ad (clicks) divided by the number of times it was displayed (impressions).

Conversion Rate: the percentage of visitors who actually perform the market’s desired action (i.e., complete a purchase or sign up for email newsletters).

Exit Rate: the percentage of visitors who leave the site after viewing the page.

Bounce Rate: the percentage of users for whom a particular page is not the only page visited on the website.

CH5

10. Social Software/Media: Allow people to communicate, interact, and collaborate in various ways.

“Born Digital” workers have new expectations about how work should be organized and performed. Companies no longer just serve customers, compete with rivals, or are limited to industry boundaries. Today, successful companies collaborate with customers, partner with rivals, and evolve their businesses as needed.

The “millennials,” or “Generation Y,” who grew up being tied to social software such as Myspace (once the world’s largest social network site, which now primarily focuses on music), YouTube, or Facebook, have started joining the workforce and have much different expectations for their workplace than prior generations, and some fundamental shifts are taking place in employer–employee relationships (see Accenture, 2016). For example, employees are now looking for a portfolio career rather than a cradle-to-grave job, tend to view themselves as citizens rather than employees, and “loan their talent” to the employer rather than being a “human resource.”

Accenture feels that this new generation of “born digital” workers have new expectations about how work should be organized and performed. For instance, companies no longer just serve customers, compete with rivals, or are limited to industry boundaries. Today, successful companies collaborate with customers, partner with rivals, and evolve their business as needed. Thus, to be successful, companies must create a corporate culture that is embracing the trends of the digital world.

Viewing social media as a means of enhancing company culture, improving customer relationships, and recruiting future customers and employees provides many benefits. It also provides companies with deeper insight into what their competition is doing and what matters to their customers, all of which can aid in planning for the future.

1.Enhancing Communication Using Social Media

2.Enhancing Cooperation Using Social Media

3.Enhancing Collaboration Using Social Media

4.Enhancing Connection Using Social Media

11. Blogs: Process of keeping an online text diary made up of chronological entries. Bloggers blog about their lives or voice their opinions. Organizations blog to connect with employees or customers.

Microblogging: enables people to voice their thoughts; designed for broadcasting relatively short ‘status updates’, which are distributed in near real-time.

Trending: when a word phrase or topic is tagged at a greater rate than others.

Many business organizations are continuously looking for ways to use social media to support their existing business processes; many organizations have built successful business models entirely based on core Web 2.0 values such as social sharing or collaboration. The use of social media within a company’s boundaries or between a company and its customers or stakeholders can help in sharing organizational knowledge, making businesses more innovative and productive, and helping them to effectively connect with their customers and the wider public.

Blogs: In addition to blogs created by and/or for individual readers, blogs are being used by small, medium-sized, and large organizations for connecting with their employees or customers. For example, IBM’s business-oriented social software suite IBM Connections includes blogs, helping people to voice ideas and obtain feedback from others. Similarly, companies such as Google maintain official company blogs (e.g., http://googleblog.blogspot.com) to inform their stakeholders about news, rumors, or current thoughts. In contrast to press releases or other official public relations statements, blogs provide an avenue for companies to present themselves in a more approachable way.

Microblogging: In contrast to social networks, where users can choose who can or cannot receive their status updates, typically, anyone can follow another person’s microblog. A popular microblogging service is Twitter, which allows users to post short (up to 280 characters of text) “tweets” that are delivered to the author’s followers or subscribers (Figure 5.10). The recipient can “retweet” (i.e., re-broadcast) interesting tweets to his or her followers.

Trending: A topic becomes trending because of a concerted effort by users or because of an event (e.g., a new winner of the Super Bowl or a missing aircraft) that prompts people to tweet about the topic. Microblogging, however, is not limited to text content.

14. Collective Intelligence: based on the notion that distributed groups of people with a diverse range of information and expertise can outperform the capabilities of individual experts.

Peer Production: the creation of goods or services by self-organizing communities. Examples:

1.Open Source Software: Created, maintained, and updated by thousands of volunteers around the world. Examples: Firefox, Linux, Apache OpenOffice

2.Wikis: a website allowing people to create, edit, revert, or delete content as well as discuss about content or suggested changes with other community members.

In peer production, the creation of the goods or services is dependent on the incremental contributions of the participants such that anyone can help in producing or improving the final outcome.

Open source software: Often, someone with an idea for a useful program develops an initial version; other developers looking for interesting projects to work on may then join the original creator and contribute to the continuing development of the software. Organizations now have access to various high-quality open source software, ranging from operating systems to databases, web servers, and e-commerce solutions; using open source software offers benefits such as security, flexibility, and auditability (of the program’s source code). For individuals, participating in open source software projects can help to improve their skill set or boost their CVs. For organizations, participating in open source projects can be a way to influence the direction the software’s development may take and to build goodwill by giving back to the community.

Wiki: In contrast to a regular website, a wiki is linked to a database keeping a history of all prior versions and changes; thus, a wiki allows viewing prior versions of the pages as well as reverting any changes made to the content. The idea behind wikis is that by allowing anyone to contribute content or edit others’ contributions, the collaborative work performed by the community helps minimize vandalism and ensure high-quality content (Figure 5.15). For example, Wikipedia articles are created by Wikipedia users, and almost any of these articles can be edited by either anonymous or registered users. By allowing easy access, Wikipedia has grown exponentially within just a few years. However, Wikipedia is not without critics. Some argue that, by allowing anyone to create and edit articles, systematic biases in the content can occur. This includes the ability for users to add misinformation that is hard to verify.

15. Human-Based Computing (Crowdsourcing): the use of everyday people as cheap labor force, enabled by IT. Example: Amazon’s Mechanical Turk for survey responses.

Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs): small, self-contained tasks that humans can solve easily but would be difficult for a computer to solve. Examples: tagging images, generating potential search key words for a product, fixing product titles on e-commerce, etc.

Users can find HITs that are of interest to them, solve the tasks, and earn money that is credited to their Amazon account. As you can see, for companies, crowdsourcing is an innovative way to reduce costs by using the expertise of the crowds. Similar to grid computing (see Chapter 3), a person’s “idle time” is used for a certain business task, and many people are willing to provide their resources in exchange for a relatively small amount of money.

A related concept is that of open innovation. As discussed in Chapter 2, companies are increasingly attempting to create ad hoc research-and-development networks by integrating external stakeholders into their innovation processes to harness the power of the crowds.

17. Viral Marketing: Using the network effect to increase brand awareness. How to create viral marketing:

Do something unexpected;

Make people feel something;

Make sequels;

Allow sharing and easy distribution;

Never restrict access to viral content.

18. Enterprise≠Web: While reading this chapter, you have learned about many web-based technologies you are familiar with from your daily life. Although many of those technologies are hugely successful in a consumer environment, this success does not always translate to success in a corporate environment.

Culture: As highlighted earlier, organizational culture is a critical success factor for implementing social media applications in organizations, and many proposed projects face strong cultural resistance. On the web, people participate by choice, but people in organizations cannot be forced to participate. Hence, organizations must understand the multiple stakeholders, personalities, and perspectives of future users and ensure that any enterprise-oriented social media initiative will appeal to the organization’s members.

Organizational Context: Just as users choose popular social media applications such as YouTube or Wikipedia to fulfill a need, the work-related context should drive the choice of tools. In other words, organizations should always ask what objective is to be accomplished with the tool and only then decide which type of tool to implement.

Organizational Hierarchies: Therefore, to be successful, enterprise-oriented social media implementations need the support and active involvement of senior management to cope with the large magnitude of changes.

Technological Inertia: One factor hindering the adoption of many new technologies is technological inertia. In many cases, people are not willing to switch to new applications unless they see real, tangible benefits. This can be especially a hindrance with social media applications, many of which incorporate a variety of other tools (such as chat or instant messaging interfaces within social networking sites).