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Respond to initial posts and consider the following:

What are some strategic advantages that the technology described by your peers can provide to a business?

Provide examples of companies using the same technology, and explain how they use it to gain a competitive advantage. Post the URL of the company you use.

Post -   Technology has myriad roles to play in business. One role is to enhance productivity and efficiency. In the case of Watson, machines can parse and organize vast amounts of data much faster than humans can. They can also store and retrieve those vast amounts of information, far beyond the capability of the human mind. Technology also serves as a means of communication in the business world. Everything from Power Point presentations, to email, to document sharing, to video conferencing can transpire thanks to technology. Just about every industry has been touched by technology and almost everyone uses it daily in some form or fashion. It doesn't even have to be in the form of computers, technology can also be in the form of industrial machines which create products or timers in baking ovens (which themselves can rely on things like circuits and conductors in order to function). Speaking to the efficiency aspect of business technology, computers make things run faster in our daily life. They can calculate, collate, compute, and conduct transactions with data at a faster rate than humans. This speed frees people up to conduct other more human friendly aspects of business such as thinking about longterm strategy or conducting inventory. Technology in the business world also improves mobility, the workforce can conduct their tasks from anywhere outside of the office with an internet connection, such as home or the coffee shop. This enables telecommuting for workers and can lead to a happier and more productive workforce. This would not be possible in the solely pen/pencil and paper cubicles of yore. Now, due to technological achievements, people in business are able to work faster, more efficiently, and from almost anywhere.

     An example of technology from the glossary being used in business is cloud computing, specifically in networking. There is a networking company that produces and manages networking equipment called Meraki that is cloud computing based. The resources that manage the devices in your network (your physical equipment) are located in the cloud. When you want to make a change to a network device at your physical location, you log in to a dashboard and make the changes there, in the cloud, which are then reflected in the cloud and on your device. You don't have the ability to physically access the equipment that is used to manage your equipment, it is stored in a location different from yours, in "the cloud". The devices that you manage through the cloud enable the business to perform functions and execute strategy

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