PowerPoint (Please read all directives before accepting assignment) IT Support of Business ProcessesIntroduction:The main learning outcome of this unit addresses the

MBA 5401, Management Information Systems 1 Cou rse Learning Outcomes for Unit III Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to: 8. Analyze the importance of software, hardware, and telecommunications to the business. 8.1 Examine how technologies such as software, hardware, and telecommunications support business operations. 8.2 Explain current technologies used in organizations. 8.3 Explain emerging technolo gies in business. Reading Assignment Chapter 5: IT Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies Chapter 7: Telecommunications, the Internet, and W ireless Technology Unit Lesson IT Infrastructure and Technology How are IT infrastructure and emerging technologies important to organizations? In the last unit, we talked about the role that information technology (IT) plays in organizations and business strategy. In this unit, we will discuss a natural continuation o f that topic with a focus on emerging technologies and communication technologies such as wireless technology, the Internet, and telecommunications. What is IT infrastructure? If you remember from the textbook reading in Chapter 1, our IT infrastructure includes the shared technology resources that provide the platform supporting our information systems applications. IT infrastructure includes everything technical that supports the business. It supports both the business and IT strategies. Think of it thi s way: If our strategy is to offer our customer a specific service such as electronic invoicing (EDI), how can we do that without the infrastructure in place to carry out that goal? The IT infrastructure in this case is the EDI software, the hardware (a se rver, database, and the Internet), the personnel, educational services, management services, and so on. How has the IT infrastructure evolved over time? Most of us have a sense of the scope’s answer to this question. It is enormous! Just look at computers —the first ones were huge. Businesses used mainframes the size of trucks, and now servers are the size of a desktop. Simple applications of the past have now become suites, or bundles of applications that can work together. Now, there are enterprise -level applications that help improve an organization’s productivity and efficiency via a collection of programs with common business applications. They are designed to be customizable to solve enterprise -wide problems rather than personal or departmental proble ms. In addition, there are newly emerging enterprise -level tools such as enterprise database management software. Again, this concept of enterprise level takes the already existing tools to a different level to answer the need for more storage and enterpr ise -wide sharing. Years ago, dialing into the Internet meant using a slow modem. Now, businesses can use fiber -optic and wireless technologies. In the past, for small to medium -sized organizations, many of the emerging technologies were out of reach and w ere mostly cost prohibitive. Now, these businesses can turn to the cloud and service providers to gain access to technologies that were previously out of reach. UNIT III STUDY GUIDE Infrastructure and Emerging Technology MBA 5401, Management Information Systems 2 UNIT x STUDY GUIDE Title What are the current trends in technology? We just mentioned one, cloud computing. Cloud computing offers many on -demand services. One good example is software as a service (SaaS). This service allows the customer to take advantage of highly beneficial applications via a yearly subscription fee, r ather than paying a large purchase cost. Virtualization is another recent trend. Many organizations are moving their physical servers to a virtual platform rather than being restricted by the physical restraints of the server box. In a virtual world, you can assign resources dynamically, and all of the servers on a host share the whole. There is also an emerging technology in software development. Early software languages were not human friendly at all. Simply misplacing of a colon or a bracket could brin g a programmer hours of frustration trying to find an error in his or her coding. There were second generation languages like Assembler, then along came C and C++, which are more user friendly and are considered third generation languages. Then we have dat abase languages and the ability to query data. These are fourth generation languages that are very user friendly. No one knows what the exact future of the fifth generation of languages holds. In years past, as a programmer, if you wanted a new report, yo u would have to create a new program or procedure providing a layout and a data source with specific columns to include. It could be quite cumbersome. Now, with Crystal Reports and other reporting tools, you just tell the program what fields you want and h ow you want to group or sum, and the program will create a reusable report for you. Now, programming languages have branched out to become usable across all platforms. Look at Java as an example. Where would web development be today without Java? HTML has advanced to the point that you can embed images, audio, files, and more directly into a document without add -ons. There have also been huge improvements in telecommunications, the Internet, and wireless technology. If you look at the past trends in netwo rks, telephones handle voice communications and computer networks handle data packet traffic. It is not that cut and dry now is it? How many of you use VOIP in your organizations? If there was an Internet outage in the past, we could still answer the phone s and talk to customers. Now, if the Internet is out, so are our phones and voice mails because they are mostly handled through computers. Everything is interconnected, but how does this connection work? What about networks and telecommunications? Most of us know what a network is, even if it might be hard to describe. Simply, a network is a way to connect two or more computer devices together. As they grow, they get more complicated, but it is the same basic concept. Now, you have to add switches and rout ers into the mix so that something manages all that data that is flowing around. To communicate, we must have some sort of rules or a protocol. The main protocol is TCP/IP, which allows for computers to talk to each other even if they are on completely di fferent platforms. We have IP addresses so that data can find its way to us. Even our IP address system is evolving. Our current system (e.g., 123.1.1.1) is changing to IPv6 (more than a possible quadrillion addresses). Organizations also have internal In tranets for employees to use. This keeps their data separate from the outside world. Organizations may also use a virtual private network (VPN), which is a secure, encrypted private network. Can you imagine where this might be beneficial? Consider those em ployees who log into their work remotely. All of this has led to other types of growth areas. The website has advanced due to speed capabilities offered by the Internet and improved media. People want their information now. Many people will only wait a ma nner of seconds for a webpage to load before moving on to another website. This puts an amazing strain on businesses to constantly keep up with current technologies. What do you think? Additionally, the trend for websites has evolved to be more social. Cu stomers are encouraged to leave feedback. They can post pictures or videos of themselves and the product. Once again, technology has to evolve to allow for this functionality. Where do you imagine technology will be 10 years from now? MBA 5401, Management Information Systems 3 UNIT x STUDY GUIDE Title Suggested Reading The following article provides important information on how enterprise IT architectures align with business processes. It also provides benefits of enterprise architecture for small and medium -sized organizations, which was discussed in the textbook readi ngs and lesson lecture. You are encouraged to review this information. In order to access the resource below, you must first log into the myCSU Student Portal and access the Business Source Ultimate database within the CSU Online Library. Nogueira , J. M., Romero, D., Espadas, J., and Molina, A. (2013). Leveraging the Zachman framework implementation using action –research methodology – a case study: Aligning the enterprise architecture and the business goals. Enterprise Information Systems. 7 (1), 10 0-132. Learning Activities (Nong raded) No matter what role IT plays in business, it is important to be able to properly access new software applications or tools you are considering for your business to be more competitive, efficient, effective, etc. Complete the Management Decision Problem 7 -8 on page 295 of your textbook. Create a one -page summary document reporting your findings from the research you performed while addressing the questions at the end of the problem. In addition to the textbook , you may use external sources or select sources from the CSU Online library. Be sure to reference and cite all sources used with proper APA formatting. As this is a non graded activity, this work cannot be uploaded to Blackboard. If you would like your pr ofessor’s feedback on your work, send this document to them in an email with a note that you would like to receive feedback on your nongraded activity.