Impact of power and politics in Dan Mart Inc. in achieving the firm’s Technological Goals

Table of Contents

1. Abstract 2. Brief Company background 3. Challenges * Political * Power 4. Benefits of addresses the challenges 5. Business/technical approach 6. Business process changes 7. Technology or business practices used to augment the solution 8. High-level implementation plan 9. Conclusions and overall recommendations 10. Summary of project
References

Abstract
The purpose of this project is to identify the impact of power and politics in Dan Mart Inc management decision in choosing information technology architecture that can provide a high availability and clustering in a business environment like Dan Mart Inc, this project will also identify the limitation power and politics, advantages and cost of implementing each one so as to have a choice of choosing from them all. But for the sake of this project the use of Oracle cooperation high availability and clustering technologies will be the target. We would be discussing different types of technologies by Oracle such as real application cluster(RAC), automatic storage management (ASM), data guard, grid infrastructure, grid control, cloud control, Flash back technology, database e-memory that will be suitable for Dan Mart Inc business environment.
Brief Company Background
DanMart is a high volume customer oriented business organization that require 24/7 availability of their services, they handle online sales transaction, customer services, purchase and supply chain, booking and reservation, and over the years DanMart has been named one of the fortune 1000 companies in North America. DanMart Inc has over the years maintaining an environment that does not support scalability, high volume of customer usage at the same time, an increase in the volume of customer at pick business hours always brings about low performance of different standalone infrastructure environment that is presently in place. To improve DanMart Inc business performance and availability so as to keep their customer and perhaps eventually attract more customers, therefore we want see how power and politic influences the choice of technology DanMart Inc needs to implement High Availability, clustering information technology architecture.

Challenges
At DanMart Inc, power and politics has been playing a greater role in the selection the type of technology architecture to use, including the vendors and selection of the IT department manager/employees, this political decision has been creating problems, need required to solve failure the customer experience while transacting business at a pick business hour, due to the low performances of the present architecture, service outage, lack of load balancing, lack of scalability, lack of recovery after disaster, lack fail over, performance monitoring difficulty etc. All these problems are increasing due to lack of proper decision from the organization leadership to implement required technology due to role politics and power play in decision making.
Over the years Dan mart has resulted to using different types of vendor not considering condition for its implementation within the environment. Politics and power of influence from some member of management is now a major concern.
POWER: Power has been defined as the capacity that someone has to influence the decision of other person to make him or her act in accordance to his/her wishes.
AUTHORITY: Defined as the right to influence others that flows down the vertical hierarchy.
POLITICS: This is defined as the use of influence to affect decision making. It also come that it is the application of power and authority to achieve desires interest. Meanwhile, many politicking is done in organization mainly for selfish interest, and that is what I am looking into with this project. Political resistance is one of the great difficulties of bringing about organizational change, especially the development of new information systems. Virtually all large information systems investments by a firm that bring about significant changes in strategy, business objectives, business processes, and procedures become politically charged events. Managers that know how to work with the politics of an organization will be more successful than less-skilled managers in implementing new information systems. (Laudon 84) Approach
Setting up a high availability, disaster recovery and high performance environment to determine if it will bring about customer satisfaction, improve performance, increase availability of services, help in monitoring performance of database and applications using different utility available from the technology providers, helps in reducing cost, help in improving business intelligence, e-business, supply-chain and security of the environment, helps in planning and implementation of any other business without fear of single point of failure is a new technology environment that need to be implemented. There are different providers of these wonderful technologies, such as Microsoft, IBM, ORACLE cooperation etc. Therefore, before selecting the best platform and technologies needed there are need to evaluate the present architecture environment, carry out some business ideas, knowing average number of customers and business network currently available, and forecast the growth of the business locally/internationally, available time, available resources and cost of maintenance. Then, selection can be made from the above three listed technologies after getting the cost of setting up the technological architecture that will meet the current and future needs. (Kennedy 2014)

Fig. 1 Sample ASM Architecture http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24628_01/em.121/e27046/img/db_prov_topology.gif

Fig. 1 Sample ASM Architecture http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24628_01/em.121/e27046/img/db_prov_topology.gif

Fig. 1 Sample ASM Architecture http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24628_01/em.121/e27046/img/db_prov_topology.gif Fig. 1 Sample ASM Architecture http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24628_01/em.121/e27046/img/db_prov_topology.gif

Grid Infrastructure – Oracle created grid computing infrastructure software which enables all forms of workload across server and help all the servers to be managed as one complete system. Grid computing can achieve the same high level reliability just like mainframe computing. Meanwhile, unlike mainframe grid computing can be built with open system technologies such as Intel processor and Linux operating system at very low price.
Oracle grid computing technology includes: * Automatic Storage Management(ASM) * Real Application Cluster (RAC) * Application Server Cluster * Enterprise Manager Grid Control
Power and politics has been hindering the proper implementation of this powerful technology. (Kennedy, 2014) Fig. 2 GRID ARCHITECTURE http://www.avarsys.com/images/grid_architecture.jpg

Fig. 2 GRID ARCHITECTURE http://www.avarsys.com/images/grid_architecture.jpg

Fig. 1 Sample ASM Architecture http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24628_01/em.121/e27046/img/db_prov_topology.gif Fig. 1 Sample ASM Architecture http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24628_01/em.121/e27046/img/db_prov_topology.gif

General Benefit
DanMart Inc needs an information system infrastructure with a high availability, clustering and disaster recovery capability that will bring about higher performance, brings about customer satisfaction, increases DanMart Inc revenue at the long run, brings about scalability, effective database and application monitoring and performance tuning, it helps in effectively achieving good business intelligence and also brings about setting a greater goal without fear of failure as result of that, what a business will look forward to do in the future totally depends on what the available system can do. The above mentioned will be some of the great benefit of moving DanMart Inc into a High availability, clustering information system architecture environment. (Kennedy 2014) Therefore to achieve this, the negative impact of POLITICS and POWER that have been affecting the process of achieving this must be addressed. The positive POWER gives employees the opportunity to decide what work best within the IT architecture and be able to empower them to make some decision rather than coercing them. It encourages productivity and growth within the organization. Those in the higher level positions will so gain more power through the respect from the employee and their supports. Employees also stay longer with the organization because they are given opportunity to express their concern and be part of decision makers that brings positive impact on the organization. Therefore, if DanMart Inc management could encourage POSITIVE POWER AND FOCUS DRIVEN POLITICS to play within the organization they will be able to achieve the lay down goals in respect to IT infrastructure.
When employees learn to navigate the politics of an organization, they are more productive than those who are left out of the loop. To encourage productivity, organizations must develop a political culture easy for employees to understand. Establishing clear policies and chains of command makes it easier for employees to find the answers they need and spend more time on producing quality work. A climate focused on collaboration and equal treatment prevents conflict that can reduce productivity.
Conclusion:
A lot has been discussed above about the IT infrastructure needed by Dan Mart Inc, much has also been said about the benefit of implementing this highly innovative technology. In conclusion, negative forces of Politics and Power have to be dealt with so as to bring this great dream to manifestation. The management will have to show some levels of commitment to this
Goal, the entire IT department needs to be educated about the new architecture and the process in resolving issues, policy needs to be enforced, and there must be management commitment to financial responsibility for the implementation of this project. Using the positive side of these two forces (Power and Politics) can bring enormous transformation into any team, group, society, institutes and organization including Dan Mart Inc. These forces are great tool for change, expansion, success and profitability in business. Therefore, using it positively will bring about great infrastructural change and profit impact in the DanMart Inc Technological goal.

Reference
Bob, B., Kevin, L. (2008). Oracle Database 11g DBA Handbook New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc
Gopalakkrishnan, K. (2012). Oracle Database 11g Oracle Real Application cluster Handbook (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc
Kennedy, A. (2014) Implementation of High Availability, Clustering Technologies in Business Environment to Improve Business Performance at DanMart Inc, A course Project submitted for MIS535
Kenneth, C. Laudon, Jane P. Laudon (2012) Management Information Systems, (12th ed. for DeVry University). Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.
Lascu, O., Bodily,S., Esser, M., Herrera, Pothier,P., Prelec,D., Quintero,D., Raymond,K., Sebesteny,V., Socoliuc,A., Steel, A. (2005 December). Implementing High Availability
Cluster Multi-Processing (HACMP) Cookbook.
Retrieved from http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg246769.pdf
Nitin, V., Murali, V., Rich, L. (2008). Oracle Automatic Storage Management. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc
Robbins, P. Stephen, Timothy, A. Judge (2012) Organizational Behavior, (15th Edition. Pearson Learning Solutions) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc.