The ability to own and to transfer assets via transactions is at the heart of economic value creation. And to keep track of these business agreements, market participants have always relied on ledgers. But to make sure that these ledgers remain accurate and are not being tampered with by fraudulent market participants, most business networks rely on central, trusted parties, such as banks or other intermediaries, to oversee these business ledgers and to validate each transaction that is taking place within the network. This need for an intermediary has become even more important in the modern age, as assets have increasingly been digitalised and central third parties are required to make sure that a digital asset is not duplicated and spent more than once by the same party. But while the use of such a central intermediary brings the major benefit of introducing trust into the system, it also comes Continue reading
Modern Information Systems
Cloud Computing Models
There are many considerations for cloud computing architects to make when moving from a standard enterprise application deployment model to one based on cloud computing. There are three basic cloud computing models to consider, and they differed as the open APIs versus the proprietary ones. These are public, private and hybrid cloud and IT organization can choose to deploy applications according to their requirements. IT organizations can choose to deploy applications on public, private, or hybrid clouds, each of which has its trade-offs. The terms public, private, and hybrid do not dictate location. While public clouds are typically “out there” on the Internet and private clouds are typically located on premises, a private cloud might be hosted at a collocation facility as well. Companies may make a number of considerations with regard to which cloud computing model they choose to employ, and they might use more than one model to Continue reading
Technology Adoption Life Cycle
Geoffrey Moore, An American organizational theorist, management consultant and author, in his books Crossing the Chasm (1991) and Inside the Tornado (1995), draws on marketing theory and high-tech experience to describe the elements of the product life cycle for technology innovations. His work examines how communities respond to discontinuous innovations – or any new products or services that require the end user in the marketplace to dramatically change their past behavior. He describes how companies must position their products differently through the cycle to reach their full sales potential and become an industry standard instead of a novelty. Many new technologies start along a classic new product diffusion curve, but fail soon thereafter. Through the various phases of the technology adoption life cycle, very different strategies for product and service offering and positioning are called for. The basis of the technology adoption life cycle is similar to the Continue reading
What is Electronic Records Management (ERM)?
ISO standard 15489: 2001 defines Records Management (RM) as the field of management responsible for the efficient and systematic control of the creation, receipt, maintenance, use, and disposition of records, including the processes for capturing and maintaining evidence of and information about business activities and transactions in the form of records. Electronic Records Management (ERM) guarantees that your company has the records they need when they are needed. Records management is referred to a set of activities that are required for systematically controlling the distribution, use, creation, maintenance, and disposition of all recorded information that’s maintained as proof of business transactions and activities. Records management is mainly concerned with the evidence of a company’s activities. Applying records management usually occurs according to the value of the records, not their physical formats. The essential records managements are capable of assigning specific identifiers to individual records, providing safeguards against all unauthorized changes Continue reading
Data Mining and Privacy Concerns
In data mining, the privacy and legal issues that may result are the main keys to the growing conflicts. The ways in which data mining can be used is raising questions regarding privacy. Every year the government and corporate entities gather enormous amounts of information about customers, storing it in data warehouses. Part of the concern is that once data is collected and stored in a data warehouse, who will have access to this information? Oftentimes a consumer may not be aware that the information collected about him/her is not just shared with who collected the information. With the technologies that are available today, data mining can be used to extract data from the data warehouses, finding different information and relationships about customers and making connections based on this extraction, which might put customer’s information and privacy at risk. Data mining necessitates data arrangements that can cover consumer’s information, which Continue reading
Components of an RFID System
Radio frequency Identification (RFID) as the name implies uses radio frequency to exchange data between two entities for identification purpose. It is a wireless technology to collect information without any human interventions. An RFID system is basically an integrated combination of various components which work together for detection and identification of objects or persons. These are the components which are primarily responsible for working of any RFID system whether basic or complex. Although there can always be additional components associated with RFID systems like sensors etc. but the following are amongst the key components of these systems: A tag (sometimes called a transponder), which is composed of a semiconductor chip, an antenna, and sometimes a battery. An interrogator (sometimes called a reader or a read/write device), which is composed of an antenna, an RF electronics module, and a control electronics module. A controller (sometimes called a host), which most often Continue reading