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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
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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,
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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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