Information and Business Intelligence, Essay Example

Applying Porter’s three generic strategies.  Choose an industry (e.g. grocery stores, clothing retailers, airlines, etc.) and find and compare two companies, one that is competing based on price and another that is pursuing a differentiated strategy enabled by the creative use of IS. Discuss the ways that the company is using IT to help it differentiate and compete against the low cost provider.

Porter’s three generic strategies are defined on two dimensions; strategic scope (the demand side dimension), and strategic strength (Supply side dimension). In this case the strategic strength of a company looks the core competencies of a given company. The two major competencies are product cost and product differentiation. Product cost looks to increase efficiency while minimize cost. Product differentiation looks at applying unique features to a product in order to successfully compete.

Looking at the automobile industry, Toyota and The Ferrari Automobile Company apply these two different approaches in the production process. Toyota looks to win the market by applying appealing price-sensitive approaches to their commodities. Toyota produces in large quantities using the principle of economies of scale to make their commodities much cheaper. Ferrari on the other hand looks differentiate their commodities by applying technical production techniques to produce high quality vehicles. Ferrari approaches the production of the chassis, engines and the bodies of their vehicles with high-tech IT applications to produce the most aerodynamic and high-performance vehicles in the market.

Research and describe 3 different grid computing projects (not 3 from the same grid project) that are helping solve a world or social problem  

Grid computing utilizes a large collection of high-powered computing resources in order to solve a scientific or social problem.

• SZTAKI Desktop Grid: this grid computing project searches for all multilingual plagiarism on Wikipedia. It also understands the basic university classes of the non-equilibrium system. Furthermore it detects all the generalized binary number structures up to dimension 11. It is primarily for mathematical application. It is based in the MTA SZTAKI laboratory of Parallel and Distributed Systems in Hungary.
• net: this grid computing project performs full-atom molecular mock-ups of proteins on NVidia GPUs. This is primarily for biomedical research in the field of molecular biology. It is based in the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park.
• The Lattice Project: this grid computing project has numerous scientific analysis project applications majorly in the fields of life science. It is base in the University of Maryland Centre for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology.

What is network convergence and why is it important to a business?

Network convergence is the delivery of video, data and telephone communication services within one network. This kind of service has been evolving with the internet and has become a huge facet of business. It is much cheaper for businesses to receive this bundled service as all services are paid for in bulk and helps in saving.

What is the purpose of an entity relationship diagram (ERD)? Create an ERD (see Chapter 6 and Appendix C for examples of ERDs) for the following scenario:

An entity relationship diagram is meant to depict the relationship between different entities within an organization, also showing the flow of information and organization of a database.

What is the digital divide?  Has this personally affected you, someone you know, or someone or group you have read about? What programs or initiatives have been developed to decrease the digital divide in the United States?

The digital divide is the economic inequality between different groups existing in the country. This inequality in widely interpreted in terms of the access, the use and/or knowledge of ICT.  Many individuals living below the poverty line are victims of the digital divide. The United States government has strategically been able to lay aside a considerable portion to ensure citizen’s connectivity to ICT. This is because connectivity is by far the biggest challenge of overcoming the digital divide. The government achieves this through the Boston Digital Bridge Foundation and the District of Columbia City-Wide Digital Divide Strategy.

What are geographic information systems (GIS), global positioning systems (GPS), and location based systems (LBS)?  How are businesses using these applications to compete (be specific, please do not use examples from the textbook)?

GIS (Geographic Information Systems) are systems that are constructed to visualize, store, analyse, manipulate, understand and present any and all forms of geographic information and data.

GPS (Global Positioning System) is a navigation system that is satellite based that provides time and location data on any location on the surface of the earth 24 hours a day.

LBS (Location Based System) is a general calibre of computer program services that are utilized to engage in a given control system for time and location data features for programs.

GIS and GPS is used by business to help them determine their scope and depth of operations given a specific location of interest. For example, GIS can be used by a shipping company to predict and see the weather conditions in a given area to help define the quickest and cost efficient route for their delivery. The same company can use GPS to track their delivery units and LBS to determine the time of given locations of delivery.

What are the differences between the traditional SDLC methodologies and agile methodologies?  Why the agile methodologies are considered better?

(IBI 2011, Qu, X., & Yang, Y., 2012)

(15)10.  What role does the project manager (PM) play in the systems development effort? What skills should a PM have?  Where could he or she obtain these skills?

The roles of a project manager in the systems development effort include:

• Planning
• Execution
• Monitoring
• Control
• Closure(Lock, 2007)

The PM should have the following skills to achieve this:

The ability to execute:

• Feasibility study
• Business Case
• Project charter
• Project Governance
• RFI
• RFP
• Project Management Plan(Lock, 2007)

Is identity theft a problem?  What actions can people sue to reduce their exposure?

Identity theft is a huge problem. People can reduce their exposure to identity theft by;

• Avoiding uploading sensitive information about themselves on the internet.
• Safeguard their social security numbers and only provide them to authorized government officials or authorized personnel.

References

IBI 2011, Qu, X., & Yang, Y. (2012). Information and business intelligence. International Conference, IBI 2011, Chongqing, China, December 23-25, 2011. Berlin: Springer.

Lock, D. (2007). Project Management. Aldershot: Gower.