In this article business value of cloud computing will be discussed. In deciding whether hosting a service in the cloud makes sense over the long term, it is argues that the fine-grained economic models enabled by Cloud Computing make trade-off decisions more fluid, and in particular the elasticity offered by clouds serves to transfer risk. As well, although hardware resource costs continue to decline, they do so at variable rates; for example, computing and storage costs are falling faster than WAN costs. Cloud computing can track these changes and potentially pass them through to the customer more effectively than building one’s own datacenter, resulting in a closer match of expenditure to actual resource usage. In making the decision about whether to move an existing service to the cloud, one must additionally examine the expected average and peak resource utilization, especially if the application may have highly variable spikes in resource Continue reading
Information Systems Basics
E-Service Orientation
The traditional e-commerce paradigm based on e-tailing, commodity goods, and transaction sales, has largely failed and taking the international stock markets down with it (Dotcom bubble). Those organizations that have survived this meltdown have one thing in common – they learned quickly to embrace the e-service paradigm. The new e-service paradigm takes advantage of the inherent nature of the online environment to feature information flows and computation, as a means of learning more about customers and building long-term customer relationships. Its profitability model is based more on revenue expansion than on cost reduction, and those revenues come from enhancing the service experience rather than just replacing people with automated systems. E-service is a customer-centric concept, and thus, the strategic and tactical components of an e-service orientation focus on increasing value defined at the customer level. An e-service orientation is all about taking advantage of the electronic environment and the technology Continue reading
An Overview of Virtual Private Network (VPN) Technology
Virtual private networks (VPN) have gained popularity as a secure and cheaper medium for sensitive information to be accessed and transmitted between two or more corporate network over a public network such as the internet, other network technologies have been innovated and used to connect within business sites and across to other sites that are miles away from each other. In the sixties, sites were connected together to enable data transfer through the use of analog phone lines and 2,400-bps modems leased from AT&T, businesses had no other faster modems they could choose from because the telephone companies were controlled by the government. It was not until the early eighties that businesses were able to connect to sites at higher speed using 9,600-bps modems because other telephone companies emerged as a result of the changes in government control and policy on telephone. During this period, there were not much mobile Continue reading
Concept of Management Information Systems (MIS)
The concept of Management Information Systems (MIS) has evolved over a period of time comprising many different facets of the organizational function. MIS is a necessity in all the organizations. The initial concept of MIS was to process the data available in the organization and present it in the form of reports at regular intervals. The system was largely capable of handling the data from collection to processing. It was more impersonal, requiring each individual to pick and choose the processed data and use it for his requirements. This concept was further modified when a distinction was made between data and information. Information is a product of an analysis of data. This concept is similar to a raw material and the finished product. However, data can be analyzed in a number of ways, producing different shades and specifications of the information as a product. It was, therefore, demanded that the Continue reading
Commonly used Computer Input Devices
You can now enter data and commands directly and easily into a computer system through pointing devices like electronic mice and touch pads, and technologies like political scanning, handwriting conviction, and voice recognition. These developments have made it unnecessary to always record data on paper source documents (such as sales order forms, for example) and then keyboard the data into a computer in an additional data entry step. Further improvements in voice recognition and other technologies should enable an even more natural user interface in the future. Pointing Devices: Keyboards are still the most widely used devices for entering data and text into computer systems. However, pointing devices are a better alternative for issuing commands, making choices, and responding to prompts displays on your video screen. They work with you operating systems graphical user interface (GUI), which presents you with icons, menus, windows, buttons, bars, and so on, for your Continue reading
Uses of Virtual Private Networks (VPN)
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a point to point connection that connects a user to a private network in a different location. Basically, VPNs are used to set up a secure connection to the internet. A VPN works by creating a point to point connection from a public wifi connection to a private wifi connection in a business or company building as if you are directly connected to the network. Since the normally accepted definition for a network is fairly common and usually accepted throughout the trade. A network consists of any variety of devices which may communicate through some arbitrary technique. Devices of this nature include computers, printers, and routers will reside in geographically numerous locations. The strategies during which they will communicate are varied, since there are infinite electronic communication specifications, data-link, transport, and application layer protocols. For the needs of simplicity, let’s simply agree that a Continue reading