Midterm Review

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Midterm Review
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Chapter 1. IS Management Overview
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The Internet Economy

• From APARTNET to todays Internet
• WWW has evolved from a graphical layer of the
  Internet to a cyberspace for business
• eRetailers, eMarkets, eAggregators,
  Informediaries, Exchanges, Portals
• Dot-com crash
• Pure Internet economy VS. the hybrid model

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Business Ecosystems

• An ecosystem is a web of relationships
  surrounding one or a few companies
• They appear to follow biological rules
• Various players in one's business ecosystem
• Suppliers, distributors, retailers, competitors,
  banks, advertising agencies etc.

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From Supply-Push to Demand-Pull

• Supply-push
• Companies did their best to figure out what
  customers wanted
• Organized to build a supply of products or
  services and then push them out to end
  customers on stores shelves, in catalogs etc.
• Demand-pull
• Allows much closer and one-to-one contact
  between customer and seller
• Offer customers the components of a
  product/service then the customer creates their
  own version by pulling what they want

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Outsourcing and Strategic Alliances

• To become more competitive, organizations are
  examining types of work that should be done
  internally or externally by others
• The thinking is We should focus on what we do
  best and outsource the other functions to people
  who specialize in them
• Ranges from a simple contract for services to a
  long-term strategic alliance

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Demise of Hierarchy

• Hierarchical structures cannot cope with rapid
  change
• Communications up and down the chain of command
  takes too much time for todays environment
• Self-managed groups produce higher performance
• IT enables team-based organizational structures
  by facilitating rapid and far-flung communication

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The Mission of Information Systems

• Early days "paperwork factories" to pay
  employees, bill customers, ship products etc.
• MIS era producing reports all levels of
  management
• Get the right information to the right person at
  the right time.
• Today Improve the performance of people in
  organizations through the use of information
  technology.

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A Framework for IS Management
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Chapter 2. The Top IS Job
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Waves of Innovation
Source Kenneth Primozic, Edward Primozic, and
Joe Leben, Strategic Choices supremacy,
Survival, or Sayonara (New York McGraw-Hill,
1991)
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Traditional Functions Are Being Nibbled Away (1)

• The traditional set of responsibilities for IS
• Managing operations of data centers, remote
  systems, and networks
• Managing corporate data
• Performing systems analysis and design, and
  constructing new systems
• Systems planning
• Identifying opportunities for new systems

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Traditional Functions Are Being Nibbled Away (2)

• Distributed systems
• Ever more knowledgeable users
• Better application packages
• Outsourcing

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New Roles Are Emerging ---The Squeeze on
Traditional IS Activities
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New Roles Are Emerging ---Roles for IS
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Toward IS Lite
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Major IT Eras
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Four Aspects of the CIO Role

• Leading
• Creating a vision by understanding the business
• Governing
• Establishing an IS Governance structure
• Investing
• Shaping the IT portfolio
• Managing
• Establishing credibility and fostering change

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Leading Creating a Vision by Understanding the
Business

• Seven approaches to understanding the business
  and its environment
• Encourage project teams to study the marketplace
• Concentrate on lines of business
• Sponsor weekly briefings
• Attend industry meetings with line executives
• Read industry publications
• Hold informal listening sessions
• Partner with a line executive

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Investing Shaping the IT Portfolio

• IT investments has gained increased attention
• CIOs were usually falsely blamed for making poor
  IT investment
• Two key IT investment topics
• What to invest in (strategic)
• How to make investment decision (tactical)
• IT portfolio management
• Systematic management of large classes of planned
  IT initiatives, projects, and ongoing IT services
  etc.

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Chapter 3. Strategic Use of IT
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Strategic Use of Information Systems

• "Working inward"
• Improving a firm's internal processes and
  structure
• "Working outward"
• Improving the firm's products and relationships
  with customers
• "Working across"
• Improving its processes and relationships with
  its business partners

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Whither the Internet Revolution?

• British Railway Revolution the mania started in
  1830s and experienced a crash in 1845
• 10 fold increase in 1910, 65 years after the
  crash
• During boom, great excitement and small companies
  flourished
• After crash, glamour gone, business became
  serious and full of hard work
• Industry became orderly and profits began to
  reflect real returns
• Investment frenzy for connection technology
  "race for space"

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Does IT Still Matter?

• "IT Doesn't Matter" article by Nicholas Carr in
  Harvard Business Review May 2003
• What makes a resource truly strategic is not
  ubiquity but scarcity
• As information technology's power and ubiquity
  have grown, its strategic importance has
  diminished.
• Being now available and affordable to all, IT has
  evolved from potentially strategic resources into
  commodity factors of production.

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Jumping to a New Experience Curve (1)

• Strategically using IT to work outward is highly
  competitive and innovative
• Technology updates occur frequently, forming a
  set of connected experience curves
• Each curve represents a new technology or
  combination thereof in a product or service as
  well as in its manufacture and/or support
• Moving to a new curve requires substantial
  investment in a new technology

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Establishing Close and Tight Relationships (2)

• 3 level of systems integration between companies
• Loose provide ad hoc access to internal
  information
• Business processes remain distinct
• Close two parties exchange information in a
  formal manner
• Processes are distinct, but some tasks are
  handled jointly
• Tight two parties share at least one business
  process
• High volumes of possibly confidential data are
  exchanged

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Chapter 4. IS Planning
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Tradition Strategy Making
Step 1 Where is the business going and why?
Business Strategy

• Assumptions
• The future can be predicted
• Time is available to do these 3 parts
• IS supports and follows the business
• Top management knows best (broadest view of firm)
• Company like an "Army"

• Business decision
• Objectives and direction
• Change

Supports business
Direction For IS
System Strategy
Step 2 What is required?

• Business-based
• Demand-oriented
• Application-focused

Infrastructure and services
Needs and priorities
IT Strategy
Step 3 How can it be delivered?

• Activity-based
• Supply-oriented
• Technology-focused

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Today's Sense-and-Response Approach (1)
Old-era strategy One big choice, long commitment

• Let strategies unfold rather than plan them
• A sense-and-respond approach when predictions are
  risky
• Sense a new opportunity and immediately respond
  by testing it
• Myriad of small experiments

Time
New-era strategy Many small choices, short
commitments
Time
Strategic envelop
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Stages of Growth

• Richard Nolan et al observed four stages in the
  introduction and assimilations of a new
  technology
• Early Successes
• Increased interest and experimentation
• Contagion
• Interest grows rapidly growth is uncontrolled
  learning period for the field
• Control
• Efforts begun toward cost reduction and
  standardization
• Integration
• Dominant design mastered setting the stage for
  newer technology

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Five Forces Analysis of the Internet

• The Internet tends to dampen the profitability of
  industries
• Increases the bargaining power of buyers
• Decreases barriers to entry
• Increases the bargaining power of suppliers
• Increases the threat of substitute products and
  services
• Intensifies rivalry among competitors
• Success depends on offering distinct value
• Firms should focus on their strategic position in
  an industry and how they will maintain
  profitability

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Chapter 5. Distributed Systems
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Definition IT Architecture VS. IT
Infrastructure

• An IT architecture is a blueprint showing how the
  parts will interact and interrelate.
• System, information, departments...
• Multiplicity of structures and views
• An IT infrastructure is the implementation of an
  architecture.
• processors, software, databases, electronic
  links, data centers, standards, skills,
  electronic processes...
• We now tend to divide computing into applications
  and infrastructures

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Open Standards

• Open standards provide foundations for
• Interconnectivity
• Interoperability
• Open standards after 1990s
• OSI Reference Model
• SQL
• API standardized interface
• TCP/IP

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Internet---Topology and Reliability

• Internet is a scale-free network
• A small number of nodes have a large number of
  links while the majority of nodes only have a
  small number of links
• Internet is robust to random failures, but
  vulnerable to targeted attacks

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Client-Server Systems (2) ---Distribution of
Processing
Distributed Presentation
Remote Presentation
Distributed Function
Remote Data Management
Distributed Database
Data Management
Data Management
Data Management
Data Management
Data Management
Application Function
Application Function
Application Function
Data Management
Server
Presentation
Network
Application Function
Application Function
Application Function
Client
Presentation
Presentation
Presentation
Presentation
Presentation
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Client-Server Systems (7) ---Three-tier
Client-Server Style
Server (usually DB server) connected to the
network via one or more servers, and sometimes
directly as well
Multiple specialized servers, some possibly
dedicated to middleware (application servers)
Internet or LANs
Clients, some of which may be portable
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Peer-to-Peer Computing

• Concept
• How does P2P computing adapt to Internet
  computing environment, especially in content
  distributation

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Web Services

• Concept
• Foundations for Web Services

Service directory UDDI
Service description WSDL
Service interaction SOAP
Format description XML Schema
Data format XML
Communication Protocol HTTP
Communication Network Internet
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Service-Oriented Architecture

• Concept, model
• Features loosely-coupled, coarse-grained and
  standards-based

Registry
Advertise
?
?
Discover
Service
?
Client
Interact
?
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Grid Computing

• A computational grid is a hardware and software
  infrastructure that provides dependable,
  consistent, pervasive, and inexpensive access to
  high-end computational capabilities
• Grid is a generalized network computing system
  that is supposed to scale to Internet levels and
  handle data and computation seamlessly

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Chapter 6. Managing Telecomms
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Transformation of Telecom Industry

• ATT deregulation in 1984
• Divest it LECs (RBOCs) in return for a chance in
  Internet services industry
• The last mile problem for RBOCs in 1990s
• A Fire-hose-to-straw gap
• tbps (1012) in backbones VS. 56k or 1.2m in the
  last mile
• RBOCs then became ILECs, and there came new
  competitors CLECs (competitive LECS)
• ILECs bundled local phone access with Internet
  access
• CLECs came up with new connection options
• Cable modems, optical fiber, wireless, satellite

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Telecom Technologies and Their Speeds
Bits Per Second Technologies
1011-1012 Optical fiber
1010 Optical wireless local loop(20G), WMAN (100G)
109 Microwave LANs (1.5G-2.0G), Gigabit Ethernet (1G), WMAN (24g)
108 ATM (155-622M), Faster Ethernet (100M)
107 Frame relay (10M), Ethernet (10M), WLANs(10M), cable modem (10M), Wi-Fi (11-54M)
106 Stationary 3G (2M), DSL(1.5-7M), WiMax (1.5-10M)
105 Mobile 3G (384k), ISDN (128k)
104 Modems (56k), 2.5G(57k)
103 2G (9.6-14.4k)
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The Internet is the Network of Choice (4)
Public Website

• Intranet
• Internet technology used inside an enterprise
• Extranet
• Internet technology used to connect trading
  partners, customers, suppliers etc.

E
Extranet
Intranet
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OSI Reference Model
Important protocols
Application Layer
HTTP
NetBIOS
SSL
TCP
IP, X.25
Ethernet, Token ring, FDDI, ISDN, ATM, Frame relay
10BaseT, twisted pair, fiber-optic cable
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Presentation Layer
6
Session Layer
5
Transport Layer
4
Network Layer
3
Data Link Layer
2
Physical Layer
1
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Wireless Networks
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Licensed VS. Unlicensed Frequencies

• Some frequencies of the radio spectrum are
  licensed by governments for specific purposes
  others are not
• Devices that tap unlicensed frequencies are
  cheaper
• No big licensing fees
• Greater competition, more innovation and faster
  changes
• Possibility of collision between signals

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"Telecoms Crash"

• Auctions of the 3g radio spectrum in Germany and
  Britain at the beginning of 2000.
• Although one similar auction in the USA had
  failed disastrously the year before.
• 3G also requires an infrastructure development
  measured in billions of dollars
• The nature of the auctions, was to offer a
  limited number of licenses
• This put the telephone operators in a difficult
  position, as diabetics being forced to bid for
  insulin.
• The stock market lost confidence (dot-com crash),
  influencing the credit rating of the operators
• Within a year 100,000 jobs were lost in telecoms
  in Europe (30,000 in UK)
• Subsequent government auctions of the 3g spectrum
  were met with low bids

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The Role of the IS Department

• Three roles of IS department
• Create the telecom architecture
• Connectivity
• Interoperability
• Operate the network
• Stay current with the technology