Intranet

The Internet has changed the course of knowledge distribution for the world. This vast network has allowed for the quick, almost instantaneous delivery of messages, news, and information. It’s no wonder why companies use this to gain access to information. Yet a public system would not be the safest one. So they create an intranet. This is when the Internet is used privately by a company to link selected resources with suppliers, customers, and other business partners. (The Book)When outsiders of a company use a network to view some of the in formation from the intranet, that new network is an extranet. (Source 1)

An intranet can use software such as Ethernet (a locally based network of computers and technology), Wi-Fi, TCP/IP (, Web browsers and web servers. The intranet is usually firewalled to protect the computers from outside access. (Source 2) Bob Taylor (internet pioneer who led teams that made major contributions to the personal computer along with other related technologies (Source 4)) imagined the intranet at first in at least 1966. The Internet started out initially as an intranet. (Source 3) Meaning that at first, the Internet was simply a resource for companies and organizations for distributing information. The Internet grew, simplified, and became a part of more casual users until it was a common application among the general population it is today.

Intranets utilize the sheer magnitude of the Internet now for business use. It’s an interesting view on how applications, networks, and similarly organizations in business or anything requiring efficiency and speed will divide itself into simpler parts. This smaller part is now more easily manageable and “monitor-able”.

Source 1

http://compnetworking.about.com/od/filetransferprotocol/Intranets_and_Extranets.htm

Source 2

http://compnetworking.about.com/cs/intranets/g/bldef_intranet.htm

Source 3 http://www.mail-archive.com/www-talk@w3.org/msg01129.html

Source 4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_(computer_scientist)

Cloud Computing

In this post I’m going to explain cloud computing and what it’s emergence means for the business and IT world.

Simply put, Cloud Computing allows for other computers to do the workload of yours. Slightly more technically, the user/client’s computer connects through a network to the “cloud”. As stated before, this passing of the workload allows the user’s computer to operate the software they want without having to get more software or hardware. All that’s needed of the user’s computer something to reach the cloud, which may very well be just a standard web browser. (Source 1 page 1)

Cloud computing works on two ends: the user’s side, and the cloud side. The user’s end requires the user’s computer and the software needed to access the cloud. This can be as stated earlier a standard web browser, but in other instances specific and unique applications are required. The other side is the cloud side. This features computers, data storage systems, and servers. This side works by having the server run the whole operation as smoothly as possible, following what is called protocols. Protocols are a set of rules that a server follows when operating the system.  Servers use middleware to allow the computers in the server to communicate with each other. (Source 1 page 2)

Servers don’t usually run at full capacity so the utilize server virtualization. (Source 1) Server virtualization can reduce server sprawl, make server resourced used more efficiently, for testing and development, centralize server administration, improve server availability, and to assist in disaster recovery. (Source 4)

What does cloud computing mean for the IT industry? The transition of a business to use cloud computing needs oversight and guidance from the business’s IT department. Less staff is needed as well in the IT department as the majority of issues would most likely be on the server end, handled by a different company. (Source 2)

I imagine software and even hardware companies must figure out how to deal with what changes cloud computing will bring to their economic designs. They must change the ways they create and develop applications. (Source 2) Yet while demand of their initial software may diminish, as it is needed in “fewer quantities”, software companies could make other tools to monitor the software performance on the cloud. Also, programs that work with different clouds will become important as well when more companies shift to cloud networks. (Source 3)

In conclusion, Cloud Computing will vastly reduce costs and energy in the computer world for a business relying heavily on their computers. Like most of these changes, it’s best to embrace them to  keep up with the opposition and keep your business running smoothly.

Source 1 http://computer.howstuffworks.com/cloud-computing/cloud-computing1.htm

Source 2 http://www.rickscloud.com/how-is-cloud-computing-influencing-the-it-industry/

Source 3 http://www.software-marketing-advisor.com/cloud-computing.html

Source 4 http://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/definition/server-virtualization

Hardware and Software

Hardware 1 An Apple IPhone or similar mobile device. The first step to mobilizing my business. My employees can use tools and programs that they would normally have to be at a home computer for on the go. Has mobile tethering to access internet anywhere. 199 2 A laptop is also important. More tools and programs available on the computer, and it’s a much more reliable and user-friendly instrument to do business on than a cell phone. Inspiron 14z ultrabook dell 699.99 3 Neat Desk (Scanner) This is hardware one can use on the field to scan a document to turn into digital files. 399.95 Software 4 A program like Skyper/Oovoo for conducting face-to-face talks and even group communication. Helps show more clearly who is talking about what than a phone call, and more personal than an email. Free 5 I would get a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to allow my employees to access files remotely and securely. This allows them the same freedom of information on a mobile device as if they were in the office. “Establish encrypted VPN tunnels with the Cisco VPN Client for highly secure remote connectivity for your mobile employees or teleworkers.“(http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/secursw/ps2308/index.html )  It’s also safe, so I don’t have to worry about security issues. Cisco would seem to be the particular brand/product. Not sure of price Software

Adding Gadgets

1. I went into my blog  2. Selected "View Blog"  3. At the top right was "Design" Clicked that 4. On the side bar to the left I selected "Layout" 5. Clicked "Add a Gadget" 6. Viewed the Gadget and selected the one I thought were appropriate I selected two Gadgets. 1. Followers 2. Search this Blog  The first was to see who/how many followers I had. An important function for any blogger. Lets others see how reputable a blog is by the quantity or quality of the people following it The other is Search This Blog. Someone can use this to find desired information or topics quicker. Efficient.

Monitoring Social Networks

Advertising is important. Without proper advertising no one will know about your services or product, and ultimately never purchase it. Now businesses target specific demographics (by age, location, hometowns, education, “scenes”, interests, friends, hobbies) to make the best use of the money they put into advertising. However, this information is not easily utilized (or even gathered) on involuntary potential consumers. Television could at best advertise to the local broadcasting, newspaper ads are becoming useless as the use of newspaper declines heavily, and ads in magazines are only reaching the potential consumers that make the choice to get that particular magazine. But social networking changes the game. Users will VOLUNTARILY enter the basic and even specific information on social networking sites, information, that a business needs to secure customers. Facebook is possibly the most promising social networking site for a business to use. The integration of monitoring technology and the sheer magnitude of users makes this a huge opportunity (which unfortunately for Facebook itself, it can’t seem to monetize. Facebook gets only $5.02 per user per year in revenue.) Companies use Facebook to target users with ads specifically related to them. Users can even “Like” a product or company and see friends who like them as well. The pages for the most part are owned by the company and operated by employees to interact and address those who interact with the page. I would first decide which company to use to monitor Facebook, and perhaps twitter. Sysomos is a top rated company with a 10/10 review, so I’d perhaps go with them. I would use this company to: -Identify my target customers by their age, occupation, education, etc. -Identify key people of influence (those with the most comments/ subscribers/ followers) to use, manipulate, and listen to as many people listen and respect their opinion. -Find out what people are saying about my business. The good we can promote and even reward some people with perhaps free merchandise (shirts, coupons, offers, etc.). The bad we can address ourselves and perhaps even promote and reward in a similar manner. Hiding bad publicity is a part of a business, but too drastically and we will get hate from that. Negative comments picking up popularity we will address and ensure that it will be corrected immediately and in a friendly way. -Find out what events/times of the year/months/days cause what ideas/discussions to be talked about to capitalize from. -Similarly, find out where these discussions are being discussed. -Use “Sentiment Analysis” monitoring to turn these discussions and comments into raw data to learn from. I would try to keep my web site organized and easily reached through Facebook and Twitter. E-Commerce is big with the younger generation that frequents these company pages on Facebook and retweets and listens to the Twitter posts. Taco Bell runs their Facebook page very well. They interact with their customers, listen to their ideas, easily sell merchandise (anecdotes are only worth so much but several people were buying shirts in my town), and I generally can’t recall seeing a negative comment on their page. A lot of this can of course be attributed to the service itself but the web page multiplies the positive comments. I’d like to follow their example for my hypothetical business.

Task 5 information Systems

Information systems are key to increasing the potential of a business. It’s like zooming into the inner working of the data of a company step by step to understand where things are slowing down, why, and where things speeding up and why. The knowledge of how your business operates is important when problems and shortcoming arise, and information systems (IS) can help avoid running into those problems altogether.  An IS is any network (consisting of hardware or software) that people or groups use to collect, measure, share, and analyze data. Knowledge is power. I’ve already discussed E-Commerce (any business transaction done electronically) which goes hand in hand with M-Commerce (E-Commerce done on a mobile device) so I’ll discuss Knowledge Management Systems (KMS). A KMS is as defined by the book “an organized collection of people, procedures, software, databases and devices, to create, store, share, and use the organization’s knowledge and experience.”(Fundamentals of information systems page 22) So from our understanding of what knowledge is (by the business definition in the book), these systems use pre-determined data to form its own knowledge. I imagine they usually inform of the next or best decisions for certain scenarios and problems, so they probably have a large part in stock trading, predicting traffic/weather, and used with artificial intelligence systems. Artificial Intelligence operates by solving and approaching situations with the knowledge and tools in their procession for the best possible outcome. The 70’s brought the “Knowledge Revolution”, researchers using the new advances in computer memory storage to add knowledge into AI applications. This shows how important KMS is to AI. Tasks are hard to complete when no knowledge of past experience of data can be used to inform you. An interesting thing to learn was that as Artificial Intelligence increases, it might outsource knowledge based. Entry-level knowledge based jobs are becoming more susceptible to AI. This means that a huge array of jobs could be made impossible for someone just starting out working to attain. Higher education and experience is needed to attain the lower level jobs that aren’t yet outsourced by technology. An intriguing thought on the double-edged sword that is technology: As it makes our lives easier, it also puts us in worse situations at the same time. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence)

Value Chain

For my new business, I’d need to understand what my value chain is, so I can give my product a perceived value and quality different than perhaps just buying a cd from a friend. The value chain consists of:

Upstream Management

1. Raw Materials

2. Inbound Logistics/Inbound tracking systems

3. Warehouse and Storage/Raw Material Inventory Control Systems

4. Production/Process Control Systems Downstream Management

5.Finished Product Storage/Automated Storage and Retrieval systems

6. Outbound Logistics/Distribution Planning Systems

7. Marketing and Sales/Promotion Planning Systems

8.Customer Service/Customer Service Tracking and Control Systems

I imagine the low cost and undamaged quality of the cd is most important, followed by the customer’s desire to legally (we’ll assume its legal to do this) obtain the music, and their desire to financially support an artist. We’d have a brick-and-mortar location to make sure cd’s are undamaged so buying customers won’t receive damaged or the wrong cd. So for each chain of the value chain, I’d make sure certain care is taken with these thoughts to add the most value for the cheapest costs to these products.

1.    1  Raw Materials:

Keep the materials needed for shipping cd’s low. Nothing too fancy, but safe and secure enough to keep a cd from being damaged during travel. For the shipping of cd’s to our brick and mortar location we’d probably give instructions for the best way to do so. Also, containers and space is need to temporarily hold and ensure quality of cd’s. In addition to the materials, I imagine personnel are also included in this category. The use of these personnel sis to ensure the quality of the cd’s. This makes us reliable and safe, features often lost in casual commerce online on places you can find cheaper used products like Craigslist or eBay.. The low cost of materials means we have a better chance to beat out buying from bigger businesses like Amazon.

2.    2  Inbound logistics/Inbound tracking systems

Not as big as an issue or something that can be really fleshed out. Smaller company that can’t really handle tracking systems on small purchases like cd’s, especially when our goal is to keep shipping costs low

3.    3  Warehouse and Storage/Raw Material Inventory Control Systems

Keep cd’s in clean and stable conditions and containers. Monitor the demand our business needs for shipping materials

4.    4  Production/Process Control Systems Downstream Management

Make sure they’re the advertised quality (we’d need conditions and requirements to sell cd’s with the right qualifications to be certain levels of quality).

 5. Finished Product Storage/Automated Storage and Retrieval systems

Probably keep in same or close storage space as the inbound cd’s. Keep costs of running business low as possible.

6.    6  Outbound Logistics/Distribution Planning Systems

Use decent quality, but low costing materials to ship cd’s to the buyer.

7.   7   Marketing and Sales/Promotion Planning Systems

Not sure if sales or promotion systems are needed as it is run by customer’s demand. We can market with the idea that we can ensure the artist receives money if the customer wants to spend a small amount more.  Our product at this point is shipped and stored at low costs, of high enough quality to be of the needed value of the customer, and cheaper than buying new and from larger companies. Cd’s are lossless and when burned will give the listener the same quality as on the cd. The formats used in the illegal downloading of music might be of lesser quality. While not free, using our business ensures the buyer that they are getting the highest quality version of the wanted music.

8.   8   Customer Service/Customer Service Tracking and Control Systems

No tracking systems again for shipped products, but customer service should be top priority. Friendly and intelligent customer service personnel to keep the feeling of small, everyman type run business. Even without tracking, customers should be assured they would receive their product in a certain timespan without worrying about it. This will be tricky as larger companies can send free products incase the shipped one never arrived, or arrived damaged. Our smaller company would need to keep shipping secure as buying new cd’s would be taxing.

Week 1 Task

Information Systems (SI) are an integral part of a well-run business. SI’s simplify information sharing by organizing data and how and who sees it. They can speed up the daily, monotonous processes that perhaps a computer could do and perform the calculations that humans may not be accurate to measure/calculate. A well crafted, understood, and managed SI can save businesses time, personnel, and money, perhaps even saving the business itself. There are a few types of SI’s, but I’ll discuss Electronic-Commerce.

Electronic-Commerce (e-commerce) is any business transaction performed electronically between companies, companies and consumers, consumers and other consumers, business and the public sector, and consumers and the public sector. Mobile Commerce (m-commerce) being electronic commerce done using any wireless, mobile device (phone, handheld/laptop computer, or other mobile devices). E-commerce is valuable in allowing even small businesses access to a larger more global market, streamlining work activities by saving time and energy, and just simply making transactions more convenient. Now the average consumer can purchase products and services on their phone during their daily activities instead of having to travel to a brick-and-mortar business. With e- commerce, business transactions take fewer personnel to run, reducing the costs of operating the business. These aspects are what is making e-commerce grow rapidly, and creating more business opportunities.

An example of an E-Commerce transaction would be a consumer using the website server to make a purchase. The buyer listing their item, quantity, shipping methods, and credit card information would be the Input. The server calculating the information, checking the validity and purchase with the credit card would be the processing. The output is the server giving the information of the purchase to the buyer in the form of a document. The feedback is the systems records and calculations of the process and feelings of the consumer. This can be used to further the use and efficiency of the labor and cost efficient use of the system and essentially the business.