Introduction Cisco Systems, Inc. is a big player in the Internet technologies field, manufacturing their primary product – the router. Two Stanford computer scientists founded the company in 1984, unbelievably by 1997, Cisco became a fortune 500 company and in the following year Cisco’s market capitalization was over $100 billion dollars. With the gigantic growth experienced Cisco needed to look into their future regarding their existing Enterprise Resource Planning package. Unreliability and common outages brought into question the validity of trying to enlarge the current system to meet the Cisco’s constantly growing needs. The current system was a UNIX-based software package that supported financial, manufacturing, and order-entry systems. An upgrade was made available to Cisco, but would be a fix that offered more reliability and redundancy without maintainability or room for growth. The management structure in 1993 provided that each functional business unit make its own decisions regarding the future of their IT Continue reading
Business Information Systems
Case Study on E-Business Transformation: Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems is the network vendor for many institutions — yet they now also provide products and services for home networking. At the beginning history of Cisco Systems, the corporation’s goals were to build-up easiness in accessing the information using various electronic information channels, especially computer, inside the Stanford campus. Along with the growth of the firm, the management hired many talented employees. They formalized their business plan covering four strategic goals (provide complete solution for businesses, make acquisitions a structured process, define the industry-wide networking protocols, and form the right strategic alliances). Based on that strategy, they want to become “e-business” leaders in their industry. Cisco use several distribution channels to deliver its products and services such as personal selling, third-party distributors, resellers, service providers, and system integrators. Since Cisco plays in the networking products, they try to provide customers with a great possible flexibility of product or service Continue reading
Data Mining – Meaning, Processes and Models
Data mining involves the use of sophisticated data analysis tools to discover previously unknown, valid patterns and relationships in large data sets. These tools can include statistical models, mathematical algorithms, and machine learning methods such as neural networks or decision trees. Consequently, data mining consists of more than collecting and managing data, it also includes analysis and prediction. The objective of data mining is to identify valid, novel, potentially useful, and understandable correlations and patterns in existing data. Finding useful patterns in data is known by different names (e.g., knowledge extraction, information discovery, information harvesting, data archaeology, and data pattern processing). The term “data mining” is primarily used by statisticians, database researchers, and the business communities. The term KDD (Knowledge Discovery in Databases) refers to the overall process of discovering useful knowledge from data, where data mining is a particular step in this process. The steps in the KDD process, Continue reading
Advertising in the Ubiquitous Age
Ubiquitous computing, which is also referred to as pervasive computing, is about the notion that as a result of continuous advances in engineering, information technology, communications, integrated circuit chip technologies and sensors etc. computer technology devices will become smaller, cheaper, more capable and better able to weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they become indistinguishable from it. It was Mark Weiser, chief scientist of Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Centre, who first presented the concept of ubiquitous computing, the third wave in computing and predicted that technology will recede into the background of our lives as computers evolve into quite, invisible servants that will help people to calmly do all kinds of tasks in a manner that will prevent them from becoming overloaded by interactions with computing. Thus, computers will extend the human unconscious and enhance their ability to productively control, interact and sense their environment. Unlike the Continue reading
Artificial Intelligence vs Human Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence is the art of programming computers in order to produce intelligent behavior, whereas brain theory is the study of the brains function, to understand how the brain functions, the stimulations that go within and how outputs are produced via mathematical modeling and computer stimulation. It can be argued that both contain similar characteristics for functionality, both works together, this can be seen through artificial intelligence used to understand the roles of brain mechanisms. Furthermore both are involved in high cognitive task, such as reasoning, problem solving and decision making. Although some philosophers have accepted that machines can do everything that humans can do, some disagree with this view arguing that such high sophisticated behavior such as love, emotions discovery and moral decisions can only be carried out by humans. AI for many years has been pursuing the study of intelligent behaviour, but using artificial methodology. Intelligence can be Continue reading
Classification of Security Threats in Information Systems
As use of internet and related telecommunications technologies and systems has become pervasive, use of these networks now creates a new vulnerability for organizations or companies. These networks can be infiltrated or subverted a number of ways. As a result, organizations or companies will faced threats that affect and vulnerable to information system security. Threats to information system can come from a variety of places inside and external to an organizations or companies. In order to secure system and information, each company or organization should analyze the types of threats that will be faced and how the threats affect information system security. Examples of threats such as unauthorized access (hacker and cracker), computer viruses, theft, sabotage, vandalism and accidents. Unauthorized Access (Hacker and Cracker): One of the most common security risks in relation to computerized information systems is the danger of unauthorized access to confidential data. The main concern comes Continue reading