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Case: US Department of Defense: Enlisting Open Source Applications.

Case Summary:

1.) Summarize the case from the perspective of a company looking to do business with the DoD and their ability to use open source interfaces.

Case Analysis:

2.) Analyze the use of open source software and compare and contrast it with platforms such as Windows and/or Apple's OS's. Why would a company select open source over a paid and supported system?

Case Application:

3.) Is the government more or less at-risk by using open sourced platforms than proprietary systems? Explain your answer and support it with scholarly sources.

  • Learner successfully applied critical thinking to the case study analysis & recommendations/actions taken - 25 pts max.
  • - Learner s successfully incorporated a minimum of two concepts/principles from the textbook (or external sources) in their work to support their position. (No more than 10% of the entire submission should be from referenced sources. In other words, the references should support the learner’s work not be the bulk of what is written.) - 25 pts max.
  • - Learner met the criteria for academic writing (i.e. no spelling or grammar errors, properly formatted paragraphs, APA formatting used for references, etc.) - 15 pts max.
  • - Each question needs to more than 250 words. - 10 pts max.

Separate the answers like I have the questions. Thank you.

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obr76817_ch04_129-176.indd Page 129 8/2/10 2:30 PM user-f498 /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Management Challenges CHAPTER 4 Business Applications Module II Development Processes Information Technologies Foundation Concepts COMPUTER SOFTWARE Ch apt er Highligh t s Section I Application Software: End-User Applications Introduction to Software Real World Case: GE, H.B. Fuller Co., and Others: Successful Implementations of Software-as-a-Service Business Application Software Software Suites and Integrated Packages Web Browsers and More Electronic Mail, Instant Messaging, and Weblogs Word Processing and Desktop Publishing Electronic Spreadsheets Presentation Graphics Personal Information Managers Groupware Software Alternatives Section II System Software: Computer System Management System Software Overview Operating Systems Real World Case: U.S. Department of Defense: Enlisting Open-Source Applications Other System Management Programs Programming Languages Web Languages and Services Programming Software Real World Case: Wolf Peak International: Failure and Success in Application Software for the Small-to-Medium Enterprise Real World Case: Power Distribution and Law Enforcement: Reaping the Benefits of Sharing Data through XML W I L L ea r n i n g O bj ect i v e s S 1. Describe several important trends occurring in O computer software. N 2. Give examples of several major types of application and system software. , J A M I E 3. Explain the purpose of several popular software packages for end-user productivity and collaborative computing. 4. Define and describe the functions of an operating system. 5. Describe the main uses of computer programming software, tools, and languages. 6. Describe the issues associated with open-source software. 5 0 5 1 B U 129 obr76817_ch04_129-176.indd Page 130 8/2/10 2:30 PM user-f498 130 ● /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Module II / Information Technologies SECTION I Application Software: End-User Applications Introduction to Software This chapter provides an overview of the major types of software you depend on as you work with computers and access computer networks. It discusses their characteristics and purposes and gives examples of their uses. Before we begin, let’s look at an example of the changing world of software in business. Read the Real World Case discussing some innovative and successful implementations of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). We can learn a lot about the promise of this approach to technology use from this example. See Figure 4.1. What Is Software? To fully appreciate the need for and value of the wide variety of software available, we should be sure we understand what software is. Software is the general term for various kinds of programs used to W operate and manipulate computers and their peripheral devices. One common way of describing hardware and software is to say that software I can be thought of as the variable part of a computer and hardware as the invariable Lcategories of software. We will focus our attention on part. There are many types and the different types of softwareS and its uses in this chapter. Types of Software Application Software for End Users O by looking at an overview of the major types and Let’s begin our analysis of software functions of application software N and system software available to computer users, shown in Figure 4.2. This figure summarizes the major categories of system and ap, in this chapter. Of course, this figure is a conceptual plication software we will discuss illustration. The types of software you will encounter depend primarily on the types of computers and networks you use and on the specific tasks you want to accomplish. We J will discuss application software in this section and the major types of system software A in Section II. M Figure 4.2 shows that application software includes a variety of programs that can I be subdivided into general-purpose and function-specific application categories. General-purpose application programs are programs that perform common inforE mation processing jobs for end users. For example, word processing, spreadsheet, database management, and graphics programs are popular with microcomputer users for home, education, business, scientific, and many other purposes. Because 5 they significantly increase the productivity of end users, they are sometimes known as productivity packages. Other0examples include Web browsers, e-mail, and groupware, which help support communication and collaboration among workgroups 5 and teams. 1 of classifying software is based on how the software An additional common way was developed. Custom software B is the term used to identify software applications that are developed within an organization for use by that organization. In other words, the U organization that writes the program code is also the organization that uses the final software application. In contrast, COTS software (an acronym that stands for commercial off-the-shelf ) is developed with the intention of selling the software in multiple copies (and usually for a profit). In this case, the organization that writes the software is not the intended target audience for its use. Several characteristics are important when describing COTS software. First, as stated in our definition, COTS software products are sold in many copies with minimal changes beyond scheduled upgrade releases. Purchasers of COTS software generally have no control over the specification, schedule, evolution, or access to either the source code or the internal documentation. A COTS product is sold, leased, or licensed to the general public, but in virtually all cases, the vendor of the product retains the intellectual property rights of the software. Custom software, in contrast, obr76817_ch04_129-176.indd Page 131 8/2/10 2:30 PM user-f498 /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Chapter 4 / Computer Software ● REAL WORLD CASE G 1 GE, H.B. Fuller Co., and Others: Successful Implementations of Software-as-a-Service eneral Electric’s supply chain is not simply enormous. It’s a Byzantine web of sourcing partners, touching all corners of the globe: 500,000 suppliers in more than 100 countries that cut across 14 different languages. Each year, GE spends some $55 billion among its vast supplier base. Long-time GE CIO Gary Reiner knows this problem all too well, since, among his other duties, he is responsible for how the $173 billion conglomerate spends that $55 billion, utilizing GE’s Six Sigma practices and taking advantage of its hefty purchasing power. GE, for instance, buys $150 million in desktops and laptops each year from a single supplier, Dell—“at a very low price,” says Reiner. For years, GE’s Global Procurement Group faced a challenging reality: trying to accurately track and make sense of all of the supply chain interactions with half a million suppliers— contracts, compliance initiatives, certifications, and other critical data, which needed to be centrally stored, managed, and made accessible to thousands across the globe. GE was using what it called a Global Supplier Library, a homegrown system that, Reiner says, had a “rudimentary capability.” Reiner and his staff knew that GE needed something better, but they F IGUR E 4.1 W I L S O N , J A M I E 5 0 5 1 B U Software-as-a-Service enables one of the largest and most impressive supply chains in the world. Source: © Ryan McVay/Getty Images. 131 didn’t want to build it. They wanted a supplier information system that was easy to use and install, could unite GE’s sourcing empire into one central repository, had multilanguage capabilities, and also offered self-service functionality so that each of its suppliers could manage its own data. The destination was obvious: To achieve one common view of its supplier base, and one version of the truth in all that data, a goal that torments nearly every company today. But to get there, Reiner and his IT and procurement teams took a different route. In 2008, GE bought the application of a little-known Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendor that would ultimately become the largest SaaS deployment to date. “When we judge a solution, we are indifferent to whether it’s hosted by a supplier or by us,” Reiner says. “We look for the functionality of the solution and at the price.” And that, he claims, has been the way they’ve always operated. Reiner says that his group doesn’t see a big difference in cost and in capabilities between on-premise and SaaS products. “And let me emphasize,” he adds, “we don’t see a big difference in cost either from the point of view of the ongoing operating costs, or the transition costs.” Furthermore, when looking at implementation costs, “they’re largely around interfacing with existing systems, process changes and data cleansing,” he says. “Those three costs exist regardless of whether GE hosts that application or whether the supplier hosts that application.” The Aravo technology platform was untested at GE’s level of requirements and, with just 20 or so customers, coupled with the sheer scale of GE’s needs, did not really concern Reiner. “We could have been concerned about that,” he concedes. “But that would have also been a concern if we had hosted the software on our own servers. We knew Aravo could handle it.” Plus, Reiner says that no other supply chain vendor offered the type of functionality that Aravo’s Supplier Information Management (SIM) product offered, and Reiner and his team reasoned that it was much cheaper to buy than build. “We’d much rather work with them,” he says, “than build it on our own.” One GE sourcing manager told Aravo that GE’s ROI on the project is not just positive, “it’s massively positive.” “They’re using SaaS for 100,000 users and 500,000 suppliers in six languages: that’s a major technology deployment shift,” says Mickey North Rizza, research director at AMR Research. She says that the sheer volume of transactions, combined with the fact that GE supply chain and procurement employees around the world can now access the same sourcing partner information, all from the same central spot, is significant not only for the supply chain management space but also for the SaaS and cloud computing world. “Finally we have a very large company tackling the data transparency issue by using a SaaS product,” North Rizza says. “It’s a huge deal.” So far, the thorny issue of data quality in GE’s supplier data has been improved, because suppliers now use the self-service capabilities in the SaaS system to manage their own data. obr76817_ch04_129-176.indd Page 132 8/2/10 2:30 PM user-f498 132 ● /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Module II / Information Technologies GE has 327,000 employees worldwide, and its sourcing systems have more than 100,000 users. There is still more work to do to the SIM platform—for example, GE sourcing employees will add more workflows and new queries to the system; more languages might be added as well (six are operational now). Reiner says that GE is committed to working with Aravo for the long term and that the system has performed well so far. And SaaS, as an application delivery mechanism, appears to have a bright future at GE. When Steven John took over as CIO at specialty chemical manufacturer H.B. Fuller Co., he inherited a North American payroll system implementation that was expensive and going nowhere. The business units hadn’t participated in the technology decision, and the project was bogged down with customization issues and other concerns. John chose to relinquish control of payroll software and switched to SaaS. “I wanted to do an implementation that was simple and straightforward—to configure but not customize—and see the benefits of a standard, global platform,” John says. “This was a way to teach, save money and outsource a noncore system.” Giving up control was an easy trade-off compared with the headaches he would face trying to fix the existing software. “You’re getting a lot more innovation,” says Ray Wang, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. “The products are a lot more configurable than what most people have in their own applications. You can change fields, rename things, and move attributes and workflows. So there’s a good level of control there.” What’s more, the configuration choices are more refined and well thought out, giving users a few good choices instead of myriad options. John found that configuration rather than customization allows H.B. Fuller to maintain its “lean core.” “I believe that more standardization leads to more agility,” John says. “SaaS allows us to say, ‘This is good enough . . . for what we need.’ So you don’t end up with these horrible situations where you have these highly customized systems. We go with configuration option A, B or C. If one of those three doesn’t meet our need, we can try to influence the next release. But in most cases, A, B or C is going to meet the need.” At H.B. Fuller, the move to SaaS for human resources tools allowed the company to empower its people. “I can do CASE STUDY QUESTIONS 1. What factors should companies take into consideration when making the decision between developing their own applications, purchasing them from a vendor, or taking the SaaS route, as discussed here? Make a list of factors and discuss their importance to this decision. 2. What risks did GE take on when they contracted with a small and less experienced vendor? What contingencies could have been put in place to prevent any problems from arising? Provide several examples. 3. What should companies do if none of the “configuration options” perfectly fits with their needs? Should they attempt to customize, or select the least-worst alternative? When would they do each? a reorganization and have it reflected within minutes, and I don’t have to call someone in HR to update everything,” John says. “I can also pull up other people’s organization charts and see where they are and what they’re doing and better understand the organization.” When it comes to managing SaaS, neither the IT department nor the business unit using the software should be eager to relinquish control. “The buying decisions are shifting from IT to the business leaders,” who often opt to charge the software as an expense rather than wait for approval through the capital budget committee, Wang says. Still, he adds, “it’s very important to engage IT in these SaaS decisions because there are overall IT architectures and blueprints to consider.” It becomes very costly when applications don’t integrate or interoperate well with one another. “It’s good to at least have some parameters and policies in place so that people understand what type of apps will W work better within the environment, what will be cheaper to I share information and data with,” says Wang. of the problems with SaaS is that if your vendor LwereOne to go bankrupt, everything would shut down. You don’t Sown the software. It’s on lease. The question is, what do you own? If the vendor doesn’t have a separate on-premises Odeployment option, “you need the ability to take out transNactional data, master file information, any kind of migration programs, just in case, so you can convert it to an on, premises alternative if they were to go down,” Wang says. In the long term, Wang envisions an IT culture where software as a service is commonplace. “We may live in a Jworld where everything is provisioned. All our applications don’t stay on premises, and business leaders are out procurAing applications,” he says. “IT teams are testing them to Mmake sure they work well in the environment and there are no bugs or viruses and things integrate well, and basically I the IT staff will spend a lot of time provisioning services and integrating, doing installs. That’s where we Eimplementing, envision the market in 2020.” Source: Adapted from Thomas Wailgum, “GE CIO Gets His Head in the for New SaaS Supply Chain App,” CIO Magazine, January 22, 2009; 5Cloud and Stacy Collett, “SaaS Puts Focus on Functionality,” Computerworld, 0March 23, 2009. 5 1 REAL WORLD ACTIVITIES B case mentions that GE’s implementation of SaaS U1. The was, at the time, the largest rollout of the technology in the world. What other companies have started using SaaS extensively since? Go online and research recent implementations. How are those different from GE’s experience? Prepare a report to share your findings. 2. By implementing systems based on SaaS, companies are relinquishing control over ownership of the technology and are putting access to valuable data in the hands of a third party. What are the perils of taking this approach? How could companies guard against them? Break into small groups to discuss these issues and provide some suggestions and recommendations. obr76817_ch04_129-176.indd Page 133 8/2/10 2:30 PM user-f498 /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Chapter 4 / Computer Software ● FIGURE 4.2 133 An overview of computer software. Note the major types and examples of application and system software. Computer Software Application Software GeneralPurpose Application Programs Software Suites Web Browsers Electronic Mail Word Processing Spreadsheets Database Managers Presentation Graphics Personal Information Managers Groupware Performs Information Processing Tasks for End Users Application-Specific Programs Business–Accounting, Transaction Processing, Customer Relationship Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, Electronic Commerce, etc. Science and Engineering Education, Entertainment, etc. System Software W I L Operating Systems Network S Management Programs Database O Management Systems N Servers Application System Utilities , Performance and System Management Programs Manages and Supports Operations of Computer Systems and Networks System Development Programs Programming Language Translators Programming Editors and Tools Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE) Packages Security Monitors J A is generally owned by the organization that developed it (or that paid to have it M developed), and the specifications, functionality, and ownership of the final product are controlled or retained Iby the developing organization. The newest innovation in software development is called open-source software. E collaborate on the development of an application using In this approach, developers programming standards that allow for anyone to contribute to the software. Furthermore, as each developer completes his or her project, the code for the application becomes available and free5to anyone else who wishes to use it. We will discuss this new approach to software development in greater detail in Section II of this chapter. 0 SAP Business Suite 7: Introducing Modular Scenarios Cutting Across Organizational Functions 5 1 Germany-based SAP AG is tackling business processes in a novel way with the B Suite, which embeds analytics acquired from Businewest version of its Business ness Objects SA and introduces industry-specific “value scenarios.” Version 7.0 of U SAP Business Suite, a library of business processes, adds industry best practices through more than 30 modular value scenarios—like Superior Customer Value, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)—designed to cross traditional organizational boundaries. These “pre-defined end-to-end business processes” are intended to be implemented in small steps by organizations as they need it, says Jim Hagemann Snabe, SAP executive board member. The value scenarios basically illustrate interrelationships between SAP product capabilities using graphical guides and business terms, not feature and function lists. The customer can also see the impact on the associated systems, and ultimately, the specific SAP modules that would need to be activated. obr76817_ch04_129-176.indd Page 134 8/2/10 2:30 PM user-f498 134 ● /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Module II / Information Technologies Ray Wang, vice president at Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Forrester Research Inc., says customers will find the value scenarios “compelling as they align with the key business drivers users face.” But as with all best practices, Wang notes that “SAP will need to make it easy for customers to modify those scenarios, reduce the overall cost of owning SAP, and provide more frequent levels of innovation.” One customer, Colgate-Palmolive Co., has large implementations in CRM and PLM that would benefit from the new capabilities of version 7.0, says the company’s senior vice president of IT and business services, Ed Toben. “Particularly when you look at PLM, which is newer, the processes and the enhancement pack concept of turning on pieces should make us move faster,” says Toben. Another customer, pharmaceutical company Roche, requires the flexibility and ability to scale as the business changes in order to remain current, says chief information officer Jennifer Allerton. “IT investments . . . have got to make sense in their own right,” she says. “And, theW pharmaceuticals business is one where you invest for the long term and when you make investments about IT packages, you’re not going to change your mind the next Iday about them.” IBM Corp., also a customer, L is focused on a number of transformation programs, including the area of operational efficiency, says Jeannette Horan, vice S transformation with the office of the chief inforpresident of enterprise business mation officer at IBM. To that Oend, the company’s strategy, says Horan, is to globally integrate the enterprise through common processes, using the Business Suite, N she says, to “mix and match components of the business to go to market in new and interesting ways.” , But while companies are taking a hard look at spending and reviewing projects, “that does not mean . . . that companies do not spend, they just spend very smartly J and very wisely,” says Léo Apotheker, co-CEO of SAP AG. There is a need, says Apotheker, “to provide better and faster insight, a higher level of efficiency, a need to A introduce a whole new degree of flexibility in the way we do business.” M I E Source: Adapted from Kathleen Lau, “Industry ‘Value Scenarios’ in SAP Business Suite 7,” Computerworld Canada, February 12, 2009. Business Application Software 5 Thousands of function-specific application software packages are available to support 0 in business and other fields. For example, business apspecific applications of end users plication software supports the5 reengineering and automation of business processes with strategic e-business applications like customer relationship management, enterprise re1 management. Other examples are software packages source planning, and supply chain that Web-enable electronic commerce applications or apply to the functional areas of B business like human resource management and accounting and finance. Still other software empowers managers andU business professionals with decision support tools like data mining, enterprise information portals, or knowledge management systems. We will discuss these applications in upcoming chapters that go into more detail about these business software tools and applications. For example, data warehousing and data mining are discussed in Chapters 5 and 10; accounting, marketing, manufacturing, human resource management, and financial management applications are covered in Chapters 7 and 8. Customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, and supply chain management are also covered in Chapter 8. Electronic commerce is the focus of Chapter 9, and decision support and data analysis applications are explored in Chapter 10. Figure 4.3 illustrates some of the many types of business application software that are available today. These particular applications are integrated in the Oracle E-Business Suite software product of Oracle Corp. obr76817_ch04_129-176.indd Page 135 8/2/10 2:30 PM user-f498 /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Chapter 4 / Computer Software ● 135 F IG UR E 4.3 The business applications in Oracle’s E-Business Suite software illustrate some of the many types of business application software being used today. ORACLE E-BUSINESS SUITE Advanced Planning e-Commerce Financials Manufacturing Procurement Projects Training Business Intelligence Enterprise Asset Management Human Resources Marketing Product Development Sales Treasury Contracts Exchanges Interaction Center Order Fulfillment Professional Services Automation Service W I Source: Adapted from Oracle Corp., “E-Business Suite: Manage by Fact with Complete Automation and Complete Information,” Oracle.com, 2002. L S Let’s begin our discussion of popular general-purpose application software by lookSoftware ing at software suites. TheOmost widely used productivity packages come bundled Suites and together as software suites, such as Microsoft Office, Lotus SmartSuite, Corel N WordPerfect Office, Sun’s StarOffice, and their open-source product, OpenOffice. Integrated , gives us an overview of the important software tools Examining their components Packages that you can use to increase your productivity. Figure 4.4 compares the basic programs that make up the top four software suites. J software packages for word processing, spreadsheets, Notice that each suite integrates presentation graphics, database A management, and personal information management. Microsoft, Lotus, Corel, and Sun bundle several other programs in each suite, dependM Examples include programs for Internet access, e-mail, ing on the version you select. Web publishing, desktop publishing, voice recognition, financial management, and I electronic encyclopedias. A software suite costs a E lot less than the total cost of buying its individual packages separately. Another advantage is that all programs use a similar graphical user interface (GUI) of icons, tool and status bars, menus, and so on, which gives them the same look 5 and feel and makes them easier to learn and use. Software suites also share common tools such as spell checkers and help 0 wizards to increase their efficiency. Another big advantage of suites is that their programs are designed to work together seamlessly and import each 5 other’s files easily, no matter which program you are using at the time. These capabilities 1 easier to use than a variety of individual package versions. make them more efficient and B F IGUR E 4.4 The basic program components of the top four software suites. Other programs may be included, U depending on the suite edition selected. Programs Microsoft Office Lotus SmartSuite Corel WordPerfect Office Sun Open Office Word Processor Word WordPro WordPerfect Writer Spreadsheet Excel 1–2–3 Quattro Pro Calc Presentation Graphics PowerPoint Freelance Presentations Impress Database Manager Access Approach Paradox Base Personal Information Manager Outlook Organizer Corel Central Schedule obr76817_ch04_129-176.indd Page 136 8/2/10 2:30 PM user-f498 136 ● /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Module II / Information Technologies Of course, putting so many programs and features together in one supersize package does have some disadvantages. Industry critics argue that many software suite features are never used by most end users. The suites take up a lot of disk space (often upward of 250 megabytes), depending on which version or functions you install. Because of their size, software suites are sometimes derisively called bloatware by their critics. The cost of suites can vary from as low as $100 for a competitive upgrade to more than $700 for a full version of some editions of the suites. These drawbacks are one reason for the continued use of integrated packages like Microsoft Works, Lotus eSuite WorkPlace, and AppleWorks. Integrated packages combine some of the functions of several programs—word processing, spreadsheets, presentation graphics, database management, and so on—into one software package. Because integrated packages leave out many features and functions that are in individual packages and software suites, they are considered less powerful. Their limited functionality, however, requires a lot less disk space (often less than 10 megabytes), costs less than $100, and is frequently preinstalled on many low-end microcomputer W enough functions and features for many computer systems. Integrated packages offer users while providing some ofIthe advantages of software suites in a smaller package. Web Browsers and More F IGUR E 4.5 Using the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser to access Google and other search engines on the Netscape.com Web site. L The most important software component for many computer users today is the once S simple and limited, but now powerful and feature-rich, Web browser. Browsers such as Microsoft Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera are software appliO cations designed to support navigation through the point-and-click hyperlinked resources N rest of the Internet, as well as corporate intranets and of the World Wide Web and the extranets. Once limited to surfing , the Web, browsers are becoming the universal software platform from which end users launch information searches, e-mail, multimedia file transfers, discussion groups, and many other Internet-based applications. Figure 4.5 illustrates the use J of the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser to access search engines on the Netscape.com Web site. Netscape uses top-rated Google as its A M I E 5 0 5 1 B U Source: Netscape and the “N” Logo are registered trademarks of Netscape Communications Corporation. Netscape content © 2010. Used with permission. obr76817_ch04_129-176.indd Page 147 8/2/10 2:30 PM user-f498 /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Chapter 4 / Computer Software ● SECTION II 147 System Software: Computer System Management System Software Overview System software consists of programs that manage and support a computer system and Overview We can group system software into two major categories (see Figure 4.14): its information processing activities. For example, operating systems and network management programs serve as a vital software interface between computer networks and hardware and the application programs of end users. Read the Real World Case on the use of open-source software by the U.S. Department of Defense. We can learn a lot about new trends regarding the use of open-source applications from this example. See Figure 4.13. . Programs that manage the hardware, software, • System Management Programs W • Operating Systems Operating Systems Functions network, and data resources of computer systems during the execution of the varI jobs of users. Examples of important system manageious information processing ment programs are operating L systems, network management programs, database management systems, and system utilities. S System Development Programs. Programs that help users develop information O system programs and procedures and prepare user programs for computer processing. Major software development programs are programming language translators N and editors, and a variety of CASE (computer-aided software engineering) and other programming tools. We ,will take a closer look at CASE tools later in this chapter. The most important system software package for any computer is its operating system. J An operating system is an integrated system of programs that manages the operations A of the CPU, controls the input/output and storage resources and activities of the computer system, and providesMvarious support services as the computer executes the application programs of users. The primary purpose ofI an operating system is to maximize the productivity of a computer system by operating E it in the most efficient manner. An operating system minimizes the amount of human intervention required during processing. It helps your application programs perform common operations such as accessing a network, entering data, saving and retrieving files, and printing or displaying output. If you 5 have any hands-on experience with a computer, you know that the operating system 0 before you can accomplish other tasks. This requirement must be loaded and activated emphasizes that operating systems are the most indispensable components of the soft5 ware interface between users and the hardware of their computer systems. 1 An operating system performs B five basic functions in the operation of a computer system: providing a user interface, resource management, task management, file manageU services. See Figure 4.15. ment, and utilities and support The User Interface. The user interface is the part of the operating system that allows you to communicate with it so you can load programs, access files, and accomplish other tasks. Three main types of user interfaces are the command-driven, menu-driven, and graphical user interfaces. The trend in user interfaces for operating systems and other software is moving away from the entry of brief end-user commands, or even the selection of choices from menus of options. Instead, most software provides an easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI) that uses icons, bars, buttons, boxes, and other images. These GUIs rely on pointing devices like the electronic mouse or touch pad to make selections that help you get things done. Currently, the most common and widely recognized GUI is the Microsoft Windows desktop. obr76817_ch04_129-176.indd Page 148 8/2/10 2:30 PM user-f498 148 ● /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Module II / Information Technologies REAL WORLD CASE T 2 U.S. Department of Defense: Enlisting Open-Source Applications he U.S. Defense Department is enlisting an opensource approach to software development, which is an about-face for such a historically top-down organization. The Department of Defense (DoD) says open-source software is equal to commercial software in almost all cases and by law should be considered by the agency when making technology purchase decisions. In terms of guidance, the DoD says open-source software (OSS) meets the definition of “commercial computer software” and thus executive agencies are required to include open source when evaluating software that meets their computing needs. OSS is defined as “software for which the human-readable source code is available for use, study, reuse, modification, enhancement, and redistribution by the users of that software.” In addition, it lays out a list of open-source positives, including broad peer-review that helps eliminate defects, modification rights that help speed changes when needed, a reduction in the reliance on proprietary vendors, a licensing model that facilitates quick provisioning, cost reduction in some cases, reduction in maintenance and ownership costs, and favorable characteristics for rapid prototyping and experimentation. “The continuous and broad peer-review enabled by publicly available source code supports software reliability and security efforts through the identification and elimination of defects that might otherwise go unrecognized by a more limited core development team,” states deputy CIO David Wennergren in a memo to top military officials. “I would consider this a milestone day,” says John Scott, director of open-source software and open integration for F IGU RE 4.13 The U.S. Department of Defense is becoming both an adopter and a provider of open-source software. Source: Andrea Comas/Reuters/Landov. Mercury Federal Systems, a technology consultancy to the U.S. government. Scott helped draft some of the opensource guidance contained in the memo, which took about 18 months to draft. “The 2003 policy study was OK to use, but this one goes a bit further in expanding on what open source is and why you would want to use it. But it is not just about usage, it is also about helping create OSS by submitting changes back out to the public.” Scott says he believes this is the first time guidance has been issued about sharing the government’s own openW source changes with the public. I Taken together, two developments show how the DeDepartment is trying to take advantage of Web-based Lfense communities to speed up software development and reduce Sits costs. Dave Mihelcic, CTO of the Defense Information Systems Agency, says the military believes in the core OWeb 2.0 philosophy of the power of collaboration. military has launched a collaborative platform NcalledThe Forge.mil for its developers to share software, systems , components, and network services. The agency also signed an agreement with the Open Source Software Institute (OSSI) to allow 50 internally developed workforce manageJment applications to be licensed to other government agencies, universities, and companies. A “The Web is a platform for harvesting collective intelliMgence,” Mihelcic says. He points to “remixable data sources, services in perpetual beta and lightweight programming I models” as some of the aspects of open-source software dethat are applicable to the Defense Department. Evelopment One example of the Defense Department’s new community-based approach to software development is Forge.mil, which was made generally available for unclassi5fied use within the department in April 2009. Forge.mil is 0powered by CollabNet Team Forge, a commercial lifecycle management platform for distributed software development 5teams, and is modeled after the popular SourceForge.net. The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has 1issued version two of SoftwareForge (software that runs on Bthe Forge.mil site to enable sharing and collaborative development of open-source software) after a three-month trial Uthat grew to 1,300 users. SoftwareForge provides software version control, bug tracking, requirements management, and release packaging for software developers, along with collaboration tools such as wikis, discussion forums, and document repositories, DISA says. DISA also says it will deploy a cloud computing-based version of the SoftwareForge tools for classified environments. DISA also plans to add software testing and certification services to Forge.mil. Mihelcic says Forge.mil is similar to the “Web 2.0 paradigm of putting services on the Web and making them accessible to a large number of users to increase the adoption of capabilities. We’re using the same collaboration approach to speed the development of DOD systems.” obr76817_ch04_129-176.indd Page 149 8/3/10 5:34 PM user-f498 /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Chapter 4 / Computer Software ● Meanwhile, DISA has licensed its Corporate Management Information System (CMIS) to the OSSI to develop an open-source version of the 50-odd applications that DISA uses to manage its workforce. The CMIS applications support human resources, training, payroll, and other personnel management functions that meet federal regulations. DISA, which provides IT services to the Department of Defense, made the decision to share its applications after other agencies expressed interest in them, says Richard Nelson, chief of personnel systems support at DISA’s manpower, personnel, and security directorate. “Federal agencies discovered that the applications we have could be of benefit more widely,” he says. Interest is coming from states and counties, as well. DISA worked with the nonprofit OSSI, which promotes the use of open source in government and academia. OSSI copyrighted the software stack and licensed it back to DISA, making it available at no cost to government agencies under the Open Software License 3.0. “It’s already paid for because the taxpayer paid for us to build it,” Nelson says. OSSI wanted to create a process that could be repeated with other government-built applications. “The opportunity was more than the product,” executive director John Weatherby says. “One of the key things was to set up a system, a process that can be replicated by other government agencies.” CMIS comprises more than 50 Web applications, including workforce management, automated workflow, learning management, balanced scorecard, and telework management. CMIS has 16,000 users, including DISA employees and military contractors. Originally written in 1997, CMIS was revamped in January 2006 using the latest Web-based tools, including an Adobe Cold Fusion front-end and a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 back-end. Nelson says CMIS is easy to use because it takes advantage of modern Web-based interfaces, including drop-down lists for data input. “We’ve been able to cut down on help desk support so substantially,” Nelson says. “With the old version, we were running anywhere from 75 to 100 help desk calls and e-mails a day. Now our average is less than five CASE STUDY QUESTIONS 1. Given the critical nature of defense activities, security in this environment is a primary concern. How do the agencies discussed in the case address this issue? Can you think of anything else they could be doing? Provide some recommendations. 2. The U.S. Department of Defense is arguably one of the largest organizations in the world. Managing technology for such an organization is certainly a major endeavor. Does the shift toward open-source initiatives help in this regard? Does it hurt? Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of adopting open-source applications in large organizations. 3. After reading the case, do you think the shift to opensource software involved a major cultural change for the Department of Defense? Would you expect the same to be the case for large companies? Justify your answer. W I L S O N , J A M I E 5 0 5 1 B U 149 e-mails and calls. It’s not because people are using it less but because it has fewer problems.” Nelson says a key driver for CMIS is that it needs to be so intuitive that users don’t need training. “If the customer requires instruction on the product, we have failed and we will do it over,” Nelson says. “The reason that we’re able to do that so successfully is that we take a somewhat different approach to the way most software is designed. Most software is designed so that business logic and processes need to follow software logic and process. Therefore it requires substantial training. We do it exactly opposite.” The OSSI will make CMIS available in two different licenses: a regular open-source license for government agencies and companies, and a free license for academia. Nelson says CMIS has a cutting-edge approach to learning management, handling everything from training course sign-up to approvals and payment. Another unusual feature of CMIS is its telework management application. Nelson says he hopes many organizations will license CMIS and start adding new capabilities so DISA can take advantage of a vibrant CMIS community of developers. Within three years, “I would hope that a number of others inside government and beyond are using it,” Nelson says. “I’m hoping we all have ready access to qualified developers. I’m hoping that DISA gets access to a substantial number of additional applications . . . without having to build them ourselves.” Going forward, DISA wants to encourage use of and training in Adobe Cold Fusion, which it used to build OSCMIS, to increase the talent pool of OSCMIS developers. “We would even like to start with kids in high school to get them interested in software development as a career,” Nelson says.” Source: Adapted from Carolyn Duffy Marsan, “Military Enlists Open Source Community,” Network World, April 27, 2009; John Fontana, “DoD: Open Source as Good as Proprietary Software,” Network World, October 27, 2009; J. Nicholas Hoover, “Defense CIO Touts Benefits of Open Source,” InformationWeek, October 28, 2009; and J. Nicholas Hoover, “Defense Info Agency Open-Sources Its Web Apps,” InformationWeek, August 21, 2009. REAL WORLD ACTIVITIES 1. Small open-source applications have been around for quite some time, but large-scale open-source systems have begun to emerge. Go online and search the Internet for examples of businesses adopting open-source technologies for major organizational systems. Prepare a presentation to highlight several examples from your research. 2. How does the open-source model of application development and distribution differ from the more common, proprietary approach? Do open-source applications present a legitimate threat to commercial software development, or will they remain niche applications? Break into small groups to discuss various reasons that the companies may or may not want to adopt opensource technologies. obr76817_ch04_129-176.indd Page 150 8/2/10 2:31 PM user-f498 150 ● /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Module II / Information Technologies F IGU R E 4.14 End Users The system and application software interface between end users and computer hardware. Application Software System Software Computer Hardware System Management and Development W I End Users L S Resource Management. AnOoperating system uses a variety of resource management programs to manage the hardware and networking resources of a computer sysN tem, including its CPU, memory, secondary storage devices, telecommunications processors, and input/output ,peripherals. For example, memory management proGeneral-Purpose • Application-Specific grams keep track of where data and programs are stored. They may also subdivide memory into a number of sections and swap parts of programs and data between memory and magnetic disks orJother secondary storage devices. This process can provide a computer system with A a virtual memory capability that is significantly larger than the real memory capacity of its primary storage circuits. So, a computer with a virtual memory capability canMprocess large programs and greater amounts of data than the capacity of its memory I chips would normally allow. E system contains file management programs that File Management. An operating control the creation, deletion, and access of files of data and programs. File management also involves keeping track of the physical location of files on magnetic disks and 5 So operating systems maintain directories of inforother secondary storage devices. mation about the location and0characteristics of files stored on a computer system’s secondary storage devices. 5 Task Management. The task management programs of an operating system help 1 accomplish the computing tasks of end users. The programs control which task gets B U F IGU R E 4.15 User Interface The basic functions of an operating system include a user interface, resource management, task management, file management, and utilities and other functions. End User/System and Network Communications Resource Management Task Management File Management Utilities and Other Functions Managing the Use of Hardware Resources Managing the Accomplishment of Tasks Managing Data and Program Files Providing a Variety of Support Services obr76817_ch04_129-176.indd Page 151 8/2/10 2:31 PM user-f498 /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Chapter 4 / Computer Software ● 151 access to the CPU and for how much time. The task management functions can allocate a specific slice of CPU time to a particular task and interrupt the CPU at any time to substitute a higher priority task. Several different approaches to task management may be taken, each with advantages in certain situations. Multitasking (sometimes referred to as multiprogramming or time-sharing) is a task management approach that allows for several computing tasks to be performed in a seemingly simultaneous fashion. In reality, multitasking assigns only one task at a time to the CPU, but it switches from one program to another so quickly that it gives the appearance of executing all of the programs at the same time. There are two basic types of multitasking: preemptive and cooperative. In preemptive multitasking, the task management functions parcel out CPU time slices to each program. In contrast, cooperative multitasking allows each program to control the CPU for as long as it needs it. If a program is not using the CPU, however, it can allow another program to use it temporarily. Most Windows and UNIX-based operating systems use the preemptive approach, whereas most Macintosh-style platforms use cooperative multitasking. Although the W terms multitasking and multiprocessing are often used interchangeably, they are actually different concepts based on Ithe number of CPUs being used. In multiprocessing, more than one CPU is being accessed, but in multitasking, only one CPU is in operation. L of some sort of multitasking. On modern microcomputMost computers make use ers, multitasking is made possible by the development of powerful processors and S their ability to address much larger memory capacities directly. This capability allows O into several large partitions, each of which is used by primary storage to be subdivided a different software application. N In effect, a single computer can act as if it were several computers, or virtual ma, program runs independently at the same time. The chines, because each application number of programs that can be run concurrently depends on the amount of memory that is available and the amount of processing each job demands. That’s because a microprocessor (or CPU) J can become overloaded with too many jobs and provide unacceptably slow responseAtimes. However, if memory and processing capacities are adequate, multitasking allows end users to switch easily from one application to anM other, share data files among applications, and process some applications in a backI ground mode. Typically, background tasks include large printing jobs, extensive mathematical computations, or unattended telecommunications sessions. E Microsoft Windows For many years, MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) was the most widely used microcomputer operating 5 system. It is a single-user, single-tasking operating system but was given a graphical user interface and limited multitasking capabilities by combining it with Microsoft0Windows. Microsoft began replacing its DOS/Windows combination in 1995 with 5 the Windows 95 operating system, featuring a graphical user interface, true multitasking, networking, multimedia, and many other capabilities. 1 Microsoft introduced an enhanced Windows 98 version during 1998, and a Windows Me (Millennium Edition) consumer PC system in 2000. B Microsoft introduced its Windows NT (New Technology) operating system in U 1995. Windows NT is a powerful, multitasking, multiuser operating system that was installed on many network servers to manage PCs with high-performance computing requirements. New Server and Workstation versions were introduced in 1997. Microsoft substantially enhanced its Windows NT products with the Windows 2000 operating system during the year 2000. Late in 2001, Microsoft introduced Windows XP Home Edition and Professional versions, and thus formally merged its two Windows operating system lines for consumer and business users, uniting them around the Windows NT and Windows 2000 code base. With Windows XP, consumers and home users finally received an enhanced Windows operating system with the performance and stability features that business users had in Windows 2000 and continue to have in Windows XP Professional. Microsoft also introduced four new Windows Server 2003 versions in 2008, which are summarized and compared in Figure 4.16. obr76817_ch04_129-176.indd Page 152 8/2/10 2:31 PM user-f498 152 ● /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Module II / Information Technologies F IGU RE 4.16 Comparing the purposes of the four versions of the Microsoft Windows Server 2008 operating system. Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Comparisons • Windows Server 2008, Standard Edition For smaller server applications, including file and print sharing, Internet and intranet connectivity, and centralized desktop application deployment. • Windows Server 2008, Enterprise Edition For larger business applications, XML Web services, enterprise collaboration, and enterprise network support. • Windows Server 2008, Datacenter Edition For business-critical and mission-critical applications demanding the highest levels of scalability and availability. • Windows Server 2008, Web Edition For Web serving and hosting, providing a platform for developing and deploying Web services and applications. W In 2006, Microsoft released their next operating system called Vista. Vista contains I hundreds of new features; some of the most significant include an updated graphical user interface and visual style L dubbed Windows Aero, improved search features, new multimedia creation tools suchSas Windows DVD Maker, and completely redesigned networking, audio, print, and display subsystems. Vista also aims to increase the level O of communication between machines on a home network using peer-to-peer technology, making it easier to share files N and digital media between computers and devices. For developers, Vista introduced version 3.0 of the .NET Framework, which aims to make it significantly easier,for developers to write high-quality applications than with the previous versions of Windows. Microsoft’s primary stated objective with Vista, however, was to improve the state J of security in the Windows operating system. One of the most common criticisms of Windows XP and its predecessors A has been their commonly exploited security vulnerabilities and overall susceptibility to malware, viruses, and buffer overflows. In light of M these complaints, then-Microsoft chairman Bill Gates announced in early 2002 a companywide “Trustworthy Computing Initiative” to incorporate security work into every I aspect of software development at the company. Microsoft claimed that it prioritized E improving the security of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 rather than finishing Windows Vista, significantly delaying its completion. During 2008, a new server product, entitled (appropriately enough) Windows Server 5 2008, has emerged. Windows Server 2008 is built from the same code base as Windows Vista; therefore, it shares much0of the same architecture and functionality. Because the code base is common, it automatically comes with most of the technical, security, man5 agement, and administrative features new to Windows Vista such as the rewritten net1 native wireless, speed, and security improvements); working processes (native IPv6, improved image-based installation, B deployment, and recovery; improved diagnostics, monitoring, event logging, and reporting tools; new security features; improved Windows U Firewall with secure default configuration; .NET Framework 3.0 technologies; and the core kernel, memory, and file system improvements. Processors and memory devices are modeled as Plug and Play devices, to allow hot-plugging of these devices. Windows Server 2008 is already in release 2 as several performance and security enhancements required a major upgrade. In 2009, Microsoft released their newest operating system, Windows 7. Unlike its predecessor, Vista, which introduced a large number of new features, Windows 7 was intended to be a more focused and incremental upgrade with the goal of being fully compatible with applications and hardware with which Vista was already compatible. Windows 7 has been very well received and is rapidly replacing the installed base of Vista without receiving any of the complaints and struggles encountered by Vista adopters and users. obr76817_ch04_129-176.indd Page 153 8/2/10 2:31 PM user-f498 /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Chapter 4 / Computer Software ● 153 UNIX Originally developed by AT&T, UNIX now is also offered by other vendors, including Solaris by Sun Microsystems and AIX by IBM. UNIX is a multitasking, multiuser, network-managing operating system whose portability allows it to run on mainframes, midrange computers, and microcomputers. UNIX is still a popular choice for Web and other network servers. Linux Linux is a low-cost, powerful, and reliable UNIX-like operating system that is rapidly gaining market share from UNIX and Windows servers as a high-performance operating system for network servers and Web servers in both small and large networks. Linux was developed as free or low-cost shareware or open-source software over the Internet in the 1990s by Linus Torvald of Finland and millions of programmers around the world. Linux is still being enhanced in this way but is sold with extra features and support services by software vendors such as Red Hat, Caldera, and SUSE Linux. PC versions, which support office software suites, Web browsers, and other application software, are also available. Open-Source Software The concept of open-source software (OSS) is growing far beyond the Linux operating I system. The basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify theLsource code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt S it, people fix bugs. This development can happen at a speed that, if one is accustomed to the slow pace of conventional software development, O seems astonishing. The open-source community of software developers has learned that this rapid evolutionary process N produces better software than the traditional commercial (closed) model, in which only a very few programmers can see the source. The concept of open source, admittedly, runs, counter to the highly commercial (and proprietary) world of traditional software development. Nonetheless, an increasingly large number of developers have embraced the open-source concept and come to realize that the proprietary J approach to software development has hidden costs that can often outweigh its benefits. Since 1998, the OSS movement has become a revolution in software development. A This revolution, however, can actually trace its roots back more than 30 years. TypiM cally, in the PC era, computer software had been sold only as a finished product, otherwise called a precompiled binary I , which is installed on a user’s computer by copying files to appropriate directories or folders. Moving to a new computer platform (Windows to E Macintosh, for example) usually required the purchase of a new license. If the company went out of business or discontinued support of a product, users of that product had no recourse. Bug fixes were completely dependent on the organization that sold the soft5 ware. In contrast, OSS is software that is licensed to guarantee free access to the pro0 gramming behind the precompiled binary, otherwise called the source code. This access allows the user to install the5software on a new platform without an additional purchase and to get support (or create a support consortium with other like-minded users) for a 1 supports it. Those who are technically inclined can fix product whose creator no longer bugs themselves rather than Bwaiting for someone else to do so. Generally, there is a central distribution mechanism that allows users to obtain the source code, as well as U cases. There are also mechanisms by which users may precompiled binaries in some pay a fee to obtain the software, such as on a CD-ROM or DVD, which may also include some technical support. A variety of licenses are used to ensure that the source code will remain available, wherever the code is actually used. To be clear, there are several things open source is not: It is not shareware, publicdomain software, freeware, or software viewers and readers made freely available without access to source code. Shareware, whether or not the user registers it and pays the registration fee, typically allows no access to the underlying source code. Unlike freeware and public-domain software, OSS is copyrighted and distributed with license terms designed to ensure that the source code will always be available. Although a fee may be charged for the software’s packaging, distribution, or support, the complete package needed to create files is included, not simply a portion needed to view files created elsewhere. W obr76817_ch04_129-176.indd Page 154 8/2/10 2:31 PM user-f498 154 ● /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Module II / Information Technologies The philosophy of open source is based on a variety of models that sometimes conflict; indeed, it often seems there are as many philosophies and models for developing and managing OSS as there are major products. In 1998, a small group of open-source enthusiasts decided it was time to formalize some things about open source. The newly formed group registered themselves on the Internet as www. open-source.org and began the process of defining exactly what is, and what is not, open-source software. As it stands today, open-source licensing is defined by the following characteristics: • The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software • • • as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The program must include source code and must allow distribution in source code, as well as compiled form. The license must allow modifications and derived works and must allow them to W terms as the license of the original software. be distributed under the same The license may restrict source I code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of patch files with the source code for L program at build time. the purpose of modifying the S The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons. • O anyone from making use of the program in a spe• The license must not restrict • • • cific field of endeavor. N The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is re, for execution of an additional license by those parties. distributed without the need The license must not be specific to a product. The license must not contaminate other software by placing restrictions on any J software distributed along with the licensed software. A This radical approach to software development and distribution is not without its M detractors—most notably Microsoft. Nonetheless, the open-source movement is I to revolutionize the way we think about software flourishing and stands to continue development. E OpenOffice.org 3 A relative newcomer to the open-source arena is an entire office suite offered by Sun Microsystems called OpenOffice.org 3. This product, built under the open-source 5 standards described above, is a complete integrated office suite that provides all the 0 word processing, spreadsheet, presentation graphics, common applications including and database management. It5can store and retrieve files in a wide variety of data formats, including all of the file formats associated with the other major office suite applications on the market. 1 Best of all, OpenOffice.orgB3 can be downloaded and used entirely free of any license fees. OpenOffice.org 3 is released under the LGPL license. This means you may use U it for any purpose: domestic, commercial, educational, or public administration. You may install it on as many computers as you like, and you may make copies and give them away to family, friends, students, employees—anyone you like. Mac OS X Actually based on a form of UNIX, the Mac OS X (pronounced MAC OS 10) is the latest operating system from Apple for the iMac and other Macintosh microcomputers. The Mac OS X version 10.2 Jaguar has an advanced graphical user interface and multitasking and multimedia capabilities, along with an integrated Web browser, e-mail, instant messaging, search engine, digital media player, and many other features. Mac OS X was a radical departure from previous Macintosh operating systems; its underlying code base is completely different from previous versions. Its core, named Darwin, is an open source, UNIX-like operating system. Apple layered over Darwin a obr76817_ch04_129-176.indd Page 155 8/2/10 2:31 PM user-f498 /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Chapter 4 / Computer Software ● 155 number of proprietary components, including the Aqua interface and the Finder, to complete the GUI-based operating system that is Mac OS X. Mac OS X also included a number of features intended to make the operating system more stable and reliable than Apple’s previous operating systems. Preemptive multitasking and memory protection, for example, improved the ability of the operating system to run multiple applications simultaneously that don’t interrupt or corrupt each other. The most visible change was the Aqua theme. The use of soft edges, translucent colors, and pinstripes—similar to the hardware design of the first iMacs—brought more texture and color to the interface than OS 9’s “Platinum” appearance had offered. Numerous users of the older versions of the operating system decried the new look as “cutesy” and lacking in professional polish. However, Aqua also has been called a bold and innovative step forward at a time when user interfaces were seen as “dull and boring.” Despite the controversy, the look was instantly recognizable, and even before the first version of Mac OS X was released, third-party developers started producing skins (look-and-feel colors and styles for application interfaces) for customizW the Aqua appearance. able applications that mimicked Mac OS X also includesIits own software development tools, most prominently an integrated development environment called Xcode. Xcode provides interfaces to comL pilers that support several programming languages including C, C, Objective-C, and Java. For the Apple Intel Transition, it was modified so that developers could easS ily create an operating system to remain compatible with both the Intel-based and PowerPC-based Macintosh.O Application Virtualization N Consider all of the various types of software applications we discussed in the first sec, the multiple operating systems we just discussed. What tion of this chapter along with happens when a user who has a machine running Windows needs to run an application designed specifically for a machine running Mac OS X? The answer used to be “Borrow someone’s Mac.” J Through the development of application virtualization, a much more useful and productive A answer exists. Application virtualization is an umbrella term that describes software technologies that improve portability, manageability, and M compatibility of applications by insulating them from the underlying operating system on which they are executed.I A fully virtualized application is not installed in the traditional sense; it is just executed as if it is. The application is fooled into believing that it E is directly interfacing with the original operating system and all the resources managed by it, when in reality it is not. Application virtualization is just an extension of operating system virtualization where5the same basic concepts fool the whole operating system into thinking it is running on a particular type of hardware when it is, in fact, not. 0 The concept of virtualization is not a recent development. The use of a virtual machine was a common practice during the mainframe era where extremely large ma5 chines were partitioned into smaller, separate virtual machines or domains to allow 1 sets of applications and processes simultaneously. Each multiple users to run unique user constituency used a portion B of the total available machine resources and the virtualization approach made it appear that each domain was an entirely separate maUhave ever set up a new PC and created a partition on the chine from all the rest. If you hard drive, you have taken advantage of virtualization. You have taken one physical drive and created two virtual drives—one for each partition. Application virtualization is a logical next step from these early roots. The benefits to the enterprise range from the cost savings associated with not having to have multiple platforms for multiple applications, to the energy savings associated with not having a multitude of servers running at low capacity while eating up electricity and generating heat. A thorough discussion of virtualization is well beyond the scope of this text but suffice to say it is rapidly blurring the boundaries between machines and operating systems and operating systems and applications. Add this to the cloud computing concept and we have the makings of an anytime, anywhere, any machine, any application world. obr76817_ch04_129-176.indd Page 156 8/2/10 2:31 PM user-f498 156 ● /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Module II / Information Technologies Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children: Challenges in Making Virtualization Work Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children has learned the hard way that virtualization efforts won’t be successful if vendors aren’t ready to support you, according to its director of technology, Ana Andreasian. The hospital (usually referred to as “Sick Kids”) has already consolidated a considerable amount of its server infrastructure, which now includes 300 physical and 60 virtual machines. Sick Kids employs about 110 IT staff members who serve more than 5,000 employees. Andreasian said the biggest issue she’s experienced so far has come from vendors who do not properly test their applications before offering them to virtualization customers. “They’ll say, ‘Give me one CPU, one gig of memory, and I’m good,’” she says. “Then you’ll find they need four CPUs and four gigs of RAM. You wind up having a never-ending discussion on how to solve the performance problems.” Another challenge has been vendors who say they’re willing to support virtual environments, but not fully. “Some vendors have a condition: if you have a problem, you have to move (the application) W out of a virtual environment,” she says. “That’s just not practical.” I Sick Kids Hospital is somewhat unusual in that it started its virtualization journey by focusing on storage systems L rather than servers. Andreasian explained that the organization currently manages some 150 terabytes of data, which is always on S that data, meanwhile, always end up going out of the increase. Devices to handle support. “We were facing theO question: How do you migrate that data? It’s a huge cost,” she says, adding that no one wants to experience any downtime associated N with such a migration. And all this has to happen in such a way that’s transparent to the user. , The hospital has also turned to Citrix for application virtualization in order to allow remote support, which is important in a hospital situation where many J home. Sick Kids is now using VMware to deal clinicians may need to work from with the more common issuesAaround managing server fleets, such as lack of real estate, power costs, and the need to provision (that is, set up) machines more M quickly. “In the physical world, if you I have good planning and processes in place, that will help you with virtualization,” says Dennis Corning, HP’s worldwide senior manager E of product marketing for virtualization. Andreasian agrees. “Provisioning (a virtual server) is easy. De-provisioning once the business user no longer needs it is where it’s difficult,” she says. “They 5 necessarily. You need governance and monitoring might not tell you it’s no longer and process.” 0 5 1 B There are many other typesUof important system management software besides Source: Adapted from Shane Schick, “Hospital CTO Identifies Virtualization Gotchas,” CIO.com, January 28, 2010. Other System Management Programs operating systems. These include database management systems, which we will cover in Chapter 5, and network management programs, which we will cover in Chapter 6. Figure 4.17 compares several types of system software offered by IBM and its competitors. Several other types of system management software are marketed as separate programs or included as part of an operating system. Utility programs, or utilities, are an important example. Programs like Norton Utilities perform miscellaneous housekeeping and file conversion functions. Examples include data backup, data recovery, virus protection, data compression, and file defragmentation. Most operating systems also provide many utilities that perform a variety of helpful chores for computer users. obr76817_ch04_129-176.indd Page 157 8/2/10 2:31 PM user-f498 /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Chapter 4 / Computer Software ● F IGUR E 4.17 Software Category 157 Comparing system software offered by IBM and its main competitors. Main Competitor What It Does IBM Product Customers Customers Network management Monitors networks to keep them up and running. Tivoli T. Rowe Price uses it to safeguard customer records. HP OpenView Amazon.com uses it to monitor its servers. Application server Shuttles data between business apps and the Web. WebSphere REI uses it to serve up its Web site and distribute data. BEA WebLogic Washingtonpost.com builds news pages with it. Database manager Provides digital storehouses for business data. DB2 Mikasa uses it to help customers find its products online. Oracle 11g It runs Southwest Airlines’ frequentflyer program. Collaboration tools Powers everything from e-mail to electronic calendars. Lotus Retailer Sephora uses it to coordinate W maintenance. store Microsoft Exchange Time Inc. uses it to provide e-mail to its employees. Development tools Allows programmers to craft software code quickly. Rational Merrill Lynch used I it to build code for L trading. online Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Used to develop management system. S O Other examples of system support programs include performance monitors and N monitors are programs that monitor and adjust the security monitors. Performance performance and usage of one , or more computer systems to keep them running effi- ciently. Security monitors are packages that monitor and control the use of computer systems and provide warning messages and record evidence of unauthorized use of computer resources. A recent J trend is to merge both types of programs into operating systems like Microsoft’s Windows 2008 Datacenter Server or into system manageA Associates’ CA-Unicenter, which can manage both ment software like Computer mainframe systems and servers M in a data center. Another important software trend is the use of system software known as applicaI tion servers, which provide a middleware interface between an operating system and the application programs ofEusers. Middleware is software that helps diverse software applications and networked computer systems exchange data and work together more efficiently. Examples include application servers, Web servers, and enterprise applica5 tion integration (EAI) software. Thus, for example, application servers like BEA’s WebLogic and IBM’s WebSphere help Web-based e-business and e-commerce appli0 cations run much faster and more efficiently on computers using Windows, UNIX, 5 and other operating systems. Programming Languages 1 To understand computer software, you need a basic knowledge of the role that proB gramming languages play in the development of computer programs. A programming U to develop the sets of instructions that constitute a language allows a programmer computer program. Many different programming languages have been developed, each with its own unique vocabulary, grammar, and uses. Machine Languages Machine languages (or first-generation languages) are the most basic level of programming languages. In the early stages of computer development, all program instructions had to be written using binary codes unique to each computer. This type of programming involves the difficult task of writing instructions in the form of strings of binary digits (ones and zeros) or other number systems. Programmers must have a detailed knowledge of the internal operations of the specific type of CPU they are using. They must write long series of detailed instructions to accomplish even simple processing tasks. Programming in machine language requires specifying the storage obr76817_ch05_177-216.indd Page 215 8/2/10 2:42 PM user-f498 /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Chapter 5 / Data Resource Management ● REAL WORLD CASE R 4 215 Applebee’s, Travelocity, and Others: Data Mining for Business Decisions andall Parman, database architect at restaurant chain Applebee’s International and head of Teradata’s user group, opened Teradata’s annual user conference in Las Vegas with a warning to those who aren’t making the best use of their data. “Data are like gold,” Parman noted. “If you don’t use the gold, you will have someone else who will come along and take the opportunity,” speaking to a room packed with almost 3,900 attendees. Parman drew an analogy to the story about Isaac Newton’s discovery of gravity after he was hit on the head with an apple. “What if Newton had just eaten the apple?” he asked. “What if we failed to use the technology available, or failed to use these insights to take action?” Applebee’s, which has 1,900 casual dining restaurants worldwide and grossed $1.34 billion in revenue last year, has a four-node, 4-terabyte data warehouse system. Although the company has a staff of only three database administrators working with the system, “we have leveraged our information to gain insight into the business,” he said. “Some of those insights were unexpected, coming out of the blue while we were looking in a completely different direction.” For example, Applebee’s had been using the data warehouse to analyze the “back-of-house performance” of restaurants, including how long it took employees to prepare food in the kitchens. “Someone had the unanticipated insight to use back-of-house performance to gauge front-of-house performance,” he said. “From looking at the time the order was placed to when it was paid for by credit card and subtracting preparation meal time, we could figure out how long servers were spending time with customers.” Parman added that the information is being used to help the company improve customer experiences. Applebee’s has also advanced beyond basic business decisions based on data—such as replenishing food supplies according to how much finished product was sold daily—to developing more sophisticated analyses. His department, for example, came up with a “menu optimization quadrant” that looks at how well items are selling so that the company can make better decisions about not only what to order, but about what products to promote. Meanwhile, technology vendors see untapped potential for businesses to spend money on software and hardware that lets them use data to make more sophisticated business decisions. “Companies who operate with the greatest speed and intelligence will win,” says Teradata CEO Michael Koehler. Like many companies, Travelocity.com has lots of unstructured data contained in e-mails from customers, call center representative notes, and other sources that contain critical nuggets of information about how customers feel about the travel site. To offset the inability of business intelligence tools to search for unstructured data, Travelocity has launched a new project to help it mine almost 600,000 W I L S O N , J A M I E 5 0 5 1 B U unstructured comments so that it can better monitor and respond to customer service issues. The online travel site has begun to install new text analytics software that will be used to scour some 40,000 verbatim comments from customer satisfaction surveys, 40,000 e-mails from customers, and 500,000 interactions with the call center that result in comments to surface potential customer service issues. “The truth is that it is very laborious and extremely expensive to go through all that verbatim customer feedback to try to extract the information we need to have to make business decisions,” notes Don Hill. Travelocity’s director of customer advocacy. “The text mining capability . . . gives us the ability to go through all that verbatim feedback from customers and extract meaningful information. We get information on the nature of the comments and if the comments are positive or negative.” Travelocity will use text analytics software from Attensity to automatically identify facts, opinions, requests, trends, and trouble spots from the unstructured data. Travelocity will then link that analysis with structured data from its Teradata data warehouse so the company can identify trends. “We get to take unstructured data and put it into structured data so we can track trends over time,” adds Hill. “We can know the frequency of customer comments on issue ‘x’ and if comments on that topic are going up, going down, or staying the same.” Unlike other text analytics technology, which requires manual tagging, sorting, and classifying of terms before analysis of unstructured data, Attensity’s technology has a natural language engine that automatically pulls out important data without a lot of predefining terms, notes Michelle de Haaff, vice president of marketing at the vendor. This allows companies to have an early warning system to tackle issues that need to be addressed, she added. VistaPrint Ltd., an online retailer based in Lexington, Massachusetts, which provides graphic design services and custom-printed products, has boosted its customer conversion rate with Web analytics technology that drills down into the most minute details about the 22,000 transactions it processes daily at 18 Web sites. Like many companies that have invested heavily in online sales, VistaPrint found itself drowning, more than a year ago, in Web log data tracked from its online operations. Analyzing online customer behavior and how a new feature might affect that behavior is important, but the retrieval and analysis of those data were taking hours or even days using an old custom-built application, says Dan Malone, senior manager of business intelligence at VistaPrint. “It wasn’t sustainable, and it wasn’t scalable,” Malone says. “We realized that improving conversion rates by even a few percentage points can have a big impact on the bottom line.” So VistaPrint set out to find a Web analytics package that could test new user interfaces to see whether they could obr76817_ch05_177-216.indd Page 216 8/2/10 2:42 PM user-f498 216 ● /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Module II / Information Technologies increase conversion rates (the percentage of online visitors who become customers), find out why visitors left the site, and determine the exact point where users were dropping off. The search first identified two vendor camps. One group offered tools that analyzed all available data, without any upfront aggregation. The other offered tools that aggregated everything upfront but required users to foresee all the queries they wanted to run, Malone says. “If you have a question that falls outside the set of questions you aggregated the data for, you have to reprocess the entire data set.” The company finally turned to a third option, selecting the Visual Site application from Visual Sciences Inc. Visual Site uses a sampling method, which means VistaPrint can still query the detailed data. but “it is also fast because you’re getting responses as soon as you ask a question. It queries through 1% of the data you have, and based on that . . . it gives you an answer back. It assumes the rest of the 99% [of the data] looks like that. Because the data has been randomized, that is a valid assumption,” notes Malone. VistaPrint, which has been using the tool for just over a year, runs it alongside the 30–40 new features it tests every three weeks. For example, the company was testing a fourpage path for a user to upload data to be printed on a busi- CASE STUDY QUESTIONS 1. What are the business benefits of taking the time and effort required to create and operate data warehouses such as those described in the case? Do you see any disadvantages? Is there any reason that all companies shouldn’t use data warehousing technology? 2. Applebee’s noted some of the unexpected insights obtained from analyzing data about “back-of-house” performance. Using your knowledge of how a restaurant works, what other interesting questions would you suggest to the company? Provide several specific examples. 3. Data mining and warehousing technologies use data about past events to inform better decision making in the future. Do you believe this stifles innovative thinking, causing companies to become too constrained by the data they are already collecting to think about unexplored opportunities? Compare and contrast both viewpoints in your answer. ness card. The test showed that the new upload path had the same conversion rate as the control version. “We were a little disappointed because we put in a lot of time to improve this flow,” he adds. When the company added Visual Site to the operation, it found that although the test version was better than the control in three out of four pages, the last page had a big drop-off rate. “We were able to tell the usability team where the problem was,” Malone says. VistaPrint also reduced the drop-offs from its sign-in page after the Visual Site tool showed that returning customers were using the new customer-registration process and getting an error notice. The company fixed the problem, and “the sign-in rate improved significantly and led to higher conversions,” he says. While Malone concedes that it is hard to measure an exact return on the investment, the company estimates that the tool paid for itself several months after installation. W I Source: Adapted from Heather Havenstein, “Use Web Analytics to Turn Visitors into Paying Customers,” Computerworld, September 17, 2007; LOnline Mary Hayes Weier, “Applebee’s Exec Preaches Data Mining for Business InformationWeek, October 8, 2007; and Heather Havenstein, SDecisions,” “Travelocity.com Dives into Text Analytics to Boost Customer Service,” Computerworld, November 14, 2007. O N REAL WORLD ACTIVITIES , 1. Go online to the Web site of Attensity (www.attensity. J com) and research which other products are offered by the company that complement those discussed in the A case. What other examples can you find of companies M that have benefited from using these technologies? Prepare a report to summarize your findings. I 2. In the opening of the case, Randall Parman of Applebee’s E International compared data to gold. Although it is easy 5 0 5 1 B U to figure out the value of gold at any time, valuing data has always been subject to controversy. Search the Internet for alternative methodologies to putting a price tag on the data assets of a company. Contrast different approaches and share your findings with the class. obr76817_ch06_217-269.indd Page 217 8/2/10 2:16 PM user-f498 /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Management Challenges CHAPTER 6 Business Applications Module II Development Processes Information Technologies Foundation Concepts TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKS Ch apt er Highligh t s Section I The Networked Enterprise Networking the Enterprise The Concept of a Network Real World Case: DLA Piper, MetLife, PepsiCo, and Others: Telepresence Is Finally Coming of Age Trends in Telecommunications The Business Value of Telecommunications Networks The Internet Revolution The Role of Intranets The Role of Extranets Section II Telecommunications Network Alternatives Telecommunications Alternatives A Telecommunications Network Model Real World Case: Brain Saving Technologies, Inc. and the T-Health Institute: Medicine through Videoconferencing Types of Telecommunications Networks Digital and Analog Signals Telecommunications Media Wired Technologies Wireless Technologies Telecommunications Processors Telecommunications Software Network Topologies Network Architectures and Protocols Bandwidth Alternatives Switching Alternatives Network Interoperability Real World Case: Metric & Multistandard Components Corp.: The Business Value of a Secure Self-Managed Network for a Small-to-Medium Business Real World Case: Starbucks and Others: The Future of Public Wi-Fi W I L L ea r n i n g O bj ect i v e s S 1. Understand the concept of a network. O 2. Apply Metcalfe’s law in understanding the value of a network. N 3. Identify several major developments and trends , in the industries, technologies, and business J A M I E 5 0 5 1 B U 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. applications of telecommunications and Internet technologies. Provide examples of the business value of Internet, intranet, and extranet applications. Identify the basic components, functions, and types of telecommunications networks used in business. Explain the functions of major components of telecommunications network hardware, software, media, and services. Explain the concept of client/server networking. Understand the two forms of peer-to-peer networking. Explain the difference between digital and analog signals. Identify the various transmission media and topologies used in telecommunications networks. Understand the fundamentals of wireless network technologies. Explain the concepts behind TCP/IP. Understand the seven layers of the OSI network model. 217 obr76817_ch06_217-269.indd Page 218 8/2/10 2:17 PM user-f498 218 ● /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Module II / Information Technologies SECTION I The Networked Enterprise The Networked Enterprise When computers are networked, two industries—computing and communications— converge, and the result is vastly more than the sum of the parts. Suddenly, computing applications become available for business-to-business coordination and commerce, and for small as well as large organizations. The global Internet creates a public place without geographic boundaries—cyberspace—where ordinary citizens can interact, publish their ideas, and engage in the purchase of goods and services. In short, the impact of both computing and communications on our society and organizational structures is greatly magnified. Telecommunications and network technologies are inter-networking and revolutionizing business and society. Businesses have become networked enterprises. The Internet, the Web, and intranets and extranets are networking business processes and W them to their customers, suppliers, and other employees together and connecting business stakeholders. Companies I and workgroups can thus collaborate more creatively, manage their business operations and resources more effectively, and compete L successfully in today’s fast-changing global economy. This chapter presents the telecommunications and network S foundations for these developments. Read the Real World Case 1 on the future of virtual business meeting. We can O learn a lot about the possibilities offered by new telecommunication developments from this case. See Figure 6.1.N , The Concept of a Network Because of our focus on information systems and technologies, it is easy for us to think of networks in terms of connected computers. To understand the value of connecting computers fully, however, it is J important to understand the concept of a network in its broader sense. A means an interconnected or interrelated chain, By definition, the term network group, or system. Using this definition, we can begin to identify all kinds of networks: M a chain of hotels, the road system, the names in a person’s address book or PDA, the I a church, club, or organization. The examples of netrailroad system, the members of works in our world are virtually E endless, and computer networks, though both valuable and powerful, are just one example of the concept. The concept of networks can be expressed as a mathematical formula that calculates the number of possible connections 5 or interactions in a one-way communication environment: N(N ⫺ 1), or N 2 ⫺ N. In the formula, N refers to the number of nodes (points 0 of connection) on the network. If only a few nodes exist on a network, the number of 5 Using the formula, we see that three nodes result in possible connections is quite small. only 6 possible connections. A network of 10 nodes results in a somewhat larger 1 number—90 connections. It’s when a large number of nodes are connected that the posB to significant proportions. A network with 100 nodes sible number of connections grows has 9,900 possible connections, Uand a network with 1,000 nodes has 999,000 possible connections. This type of mathematical growth is called exponential. This term just means that the growth in number of connections is many times greater than the number of nodes. Adding only one more node to a network makes the number of connections grow many times greater. Think of the effect of adding a new entry and exit ramp on a highway system that connects 30,000 cities and towns. How many more connections does that one new ramp create? Maybe more relevant is the effect of adding one additional person as a friend to your Facebook, MySpace, or Plaxo account. If you have 100 unique friends who each have 100 unique friends and the new friend has 100 unique friends—well, you get the picture. That’s what the next section is all about. Metcalfe’s Law Robert Metcalfe founded 3Com Corp. and designed the Ethernet protocol for computer networks. He used his understanding of the concept of networks to express the exponential growth in terms of potential business value. Metcalfe’s law states that the obr76817_ch06_217-269.indd Page 221 8/2/10 2:17 PM user-f498 /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Chapter 6 / Telecommunications and Networks ● 221 usefulness, or utility, of a network equals the square of the number of users. In other words, every time you add a new user to a network, the value of the network, in terms of potential connections amongst its members, doubles! Metcalfe’s law becomes easy to understand if you think of a common piece of technology we all use every day: the telephone. The telephone is of very limited use if only you and your best friend have one. If a whole town is on the system, it becomes much more useful. If the whole world is wired, the utility of the system is phenomenal. Add the number of wireless telephone connections, and you have a massive potential for value. To reach this value, however, many people had to have access to a telephone— and they had to have used it. In other words, telephone use had to reach a critical mass of users. So it is with any technology. Until a critical mass of users is reached, a change in technology affects only the technology. Once critical mass is attained, however, social, political, and economic systems change. The same is true of digital network technologies. Consider the Internet. It reached critical mass in 1993, when there were roughly 2.5 million host computers on the network;W by November 1997, the vast network contained an estimated 25 million host computers. According to Internet World Stats, the number of I users on the Internet in September 2009 topped 1.7 billion! More important, that L than 25 percent of the estimated world population. With represents only slightly more computing costs continuingSto drop rapidly (remember Moore’s law from Chapter 3) and the Internet growing exponentially (Metcalfe’s law), we can expect to see more O for less cost—virtually every time we log on. The Interand more value—conceivably net is kind of a big deal, andNit’s getting bigger even as we write. Trends in Telecommunications Telecommunications is the ,exchange of information in any form (voice, data, text, im- ages, audio, video) over networks. The Internet is the most widely visible form of telecommunications in your daily lives. Early telecommunications networks did not use computers to route traffic Jand, as such, were much slower than today’s computerbased networks. Major trends A occurring in the field of telecommunications have a significant impact on management decisions in this area. You should thus be aware of M major trends in telecommunications industries, technologies, and applications that I significantly increase the decision alternatives confronting business managers and professionals. See Figure 6.2. E Industry Trends The competitive arena for telecommunications service has changed dramatically in recent years. The telecommunications industry has changed from government-regulated F IGUR E 6.2 Major trends in business telecommunications. Industry trends 5 0 Toward more competitive vendors, carriers, alliances, and 5 services, accelerated by deregulation and the growth network of the Internet and the World Wide Web. 1 B U Technology trends Toward extensive use of Internet, digital fiber-optic, and wireless technologies to create high-speed local and global internetworks for voice, data, images, audio, and videocommunications. Application trends Toward the pervasive use of the Internet, enterprise intranets, and interorganizational extranets to support electronic business and commerce, enterprise collaboration, and strategic advantage in local and global markets. obr76817_ch06_217-269.indd Page 222 8/2/10 2:17 PM user-f498 222 ● /Volumes/203/MHSF225/foe94488_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387 Module II / Information Technologies F IGU RE 6.3 The spectrum of telecommunications-based services available today. Categories Entertainment Information Transactions Full Service Spectrum Broadcast TV High-definition TV Enhanced pay-per-view Video-on-demand Interactive TV Interactive video games Video catalog shopping Distance learning Multimedia services Image networking Transaction services Internet access Telecommuting Videoconferencing Video telephony Wireless access Cellular/PCS systems? POTS—Plain old telephone service W I L monopolies to a deregulated market S with fiercely competitive suppliers of telecommunications services. Numerous companies now offer businesses and consumers a choice of O everything from local and global telephone services to communications satellite channels, N phone services, and Internet access. See Figure 6.3. mobile radio, cable television, cellular The explosive growth of the , Internet and the World Wide Web has spawned a Communications host of new telecommunications products, services, and providers. Driving and responding to this growth, business firms have dramatically increased their use of the Internet and the Web for electronic commerce and collaboration. Thus, the service J and vendor options available to meet a company’s telecommunications needs have increased significantly, as ha...
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Attached.

Enlisting Open Source Applications
Thesis statement: Adopting open source applications will be of great benefit to the computing
needs of the Department of Defense.

I.

Case Summary

II.

Case Analysis

III.

Case Application


Running head: ENLISTING OPEN SOURCE APPLICATIONS

Enlisting Open Source Applications
Institutional Affiliation
Date

1

ENLISTING OPEN SOURCE APPLICATIONS

2

Case Summary

From the viewpoint of a company which is looking forward to conducting business with
the DoD, adopting open source applications will be of great benefit to the department’s
computing needs. Using the open source software will be an important way of cutting
development costs in the Department by reducing the development time. The open source
software application will also enable usage and modification of the source codes as well as their
distribution which make the software an attractive alternative to the department (Shelly and
Rosenblatt 2012). The availability of open source software in the Department of Defense will
increase the ability to quickly alter the codes when there is a change in situations and missions.
The stability of the software is also strong due to the broad peer review and do not have the perseat licensing costs which are a major benefit to th...


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