...Mainframes vs. PC's Essentially, mainframes and PC's do the same thing. They manipulate 0's and 1's. Their basic components are the same. Processors, I/O devices, memory and storage devices. The first computing systems were mainframes. They required large amounts of space, environmentally controlled rooms, and large power supplies. Mainframes are extremely expensive but a valuable tool to large businesses. Mainframes consist of multiple processors, large amounts of memory, storage, and can support thousands of users. Its tremendous number crunching abilities allow business applications to compile large batch processing tasks, which needs more memory, at speed. The original mainframe system was designed to have one massive computer in one central location and many "dumb" terminals connected to it throughout an office building. The original "dumb" terminals were referred to as such because they had no processing capability on their own, they had to be connected to the mainframe or they were useless. They were made up of a keyboard and a monitor. The keyboard was the input interface to the mainframe and the output was delivered to either the monitor or sent to a printer. Mainframe computer systems will most likely have more than one processor. The host processor has direct control over all the other processors, storage devices and input/output devices. The other processors relieve the host of certain routine processing requirements. For example, the back-end...
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...Ismail E-MAIL : azmir@ucsiuniversity.edu.my TUTORIAL 3 Chapter 3 – IT Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies TRUE or FALSE 1. A primary example of centralized processing is client/server computing. TRUE or FALSE 2. In N-tier computing, significant parts of Web site content, logic, and processing are performed by different servers. TRUE or FALSE 3. IT infrastructure consists of just those physical computing devices required to operate the enterprise. TRUE or FALSE 4. An application server may reside on the same computer as a Web server or on its own dedicated computer. TRUE or FALSE 5. The decision to outsource software development is also referred to as the rent-versus-buy decision. TRUE or FALSE 6. In green computing, reducing computer power consumption is a top priority. TRUE or FALSE 7. Autonomic computing is implemented primarily with enterprise or ISP servers. TRUE or FALSE 8. Whereas XML is limited to describing how data should be presented in the form of Web pages, HTML can perform presentation, communication, and data storage tasks. TRUE or FALSE 9. The collection of Web services that are used to build a firm's software systems constitutes what is known as a service-oriented architecture. TRUE or FALSE 10....
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...Case: Dell Inc.: Improving the Flexibility of the Desktop PC Supply Chain It was June 2005, seemingly a good time for Dell Inc. Since the dot-com bubble burst in 2001, the price of the company’s stock had roughly doubled. Both the company’s revenue and net income were reaching new heights. In spite of the confidence and optimism, however, Dell’s desktop PC manufacturing division found that its manufacturing costs had continued to surge. Tom Wilson, one of the division’s directors, revealed: “The recent increase in Level 5 manufacturing is alarming to us at Dell. From Dell’s perspective, this adds cost to our overall manufacturing process. We are not able to take as much advantage as we should of the lower cost structure of our contract manufacturers. Instead, we have to rely more heavily on the 3rd-party integrators (3PIs). Not only do we get lower-quality products because we currently don’t require 3PIs to perform integration unit testing, we also have difficulty forecasting for the 3PIs how much manufacturing capacity they should have available to support Dell’s demand.” History of the PC Industry In the 1960s, the first so-called personal computers (PCs)—non-mainframe computers—such as the LINC and the PDP-8 became available. They were expensive (around $50,000) and bulky (many were about the size of a refrigerator). However, they were called “personal computers” because they were small and cheap enough for individual laboratories and research projects. These computers also...
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...Q1. Some of the most innovative HR developments are in the area of live online training (LOT) using __________ or other online meeting software. D a. CIM b. TUN c. VIS d. WebEx Q2. An effective technology for e-training and e-learning is __________, which uses computer graphic displays that the user can adjust during the decision-making process to see the results of an intervention. D a. LOT b. flash c. WebEx d. visual interactive simulation (VIS), Q3. Cash flow projection is the process of identifying the financing of assets, including software, that need to be acquired or developed. It includes comparing alternatives or evaluating buy-versus-lease options. B a. True b. False Q4. Why are the three levels of management and decision making often modeled as a pyramid? . C a. To show the importance of senior management decision making on the organization. b. To show the importance of the decisions made at each management level. c. To show the hierarchy of the management levels. Q5. A leading sales automation software is __________, which is especially helpful to small businesses, enabling them to rapidly increase sales and growth. D a. Speedpass.com b. SoftwarePlus c. PriceMaster Plus d. Salesforce.com Q6. Generally speaking, why do organizations automate TPS data entry as much as possible? D a. To reduce labor costs b. To be able to capture online data c. For competitive...
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... IT infrastructure consists of the shared technology resources that provide the platform for the firm’s specific information system applications. Major IT infrastructure components include computer hardware, software, data management technology, networking and telecommunications technology, and technology services. 2. What are the major computer hardware, data storage, input, and output technologies used in business? * Computer Hardware: Mainframes, midrange computers, PC’s, workstations, and supercomputers. * Data Storage: Magnetic disk, optical disc, magnetic tape and storage networks. * Input devices: Keyboards, computer mice, touch screens (including those with multitouch), magnetic ink and optical character recognition devices, pen-based instruments, digital scanners, sensors, audio input devices, and radio-frequency identification devices. * Output devices: Display monitors, printers, and audio output devices. • List and describes the various type of computers available to businesses today. * Mainframes are a large-capacity, high-performance computer that can process large amounts of data very rapidly. * Midrange computers are servers computers are specifically optimized to support a computer network, enabling users to share files, software, peripheral devices (such as printers), or other network resources. * PC’s are desktop or laptop machines. * Workstations are desktop machines with powerful mathematical and graphic capabilities. ...
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...operating system simply switches to & executes another job. When that job needs to wait the CPU is switched to another job, and so on. Eventually, the first job finishes waiting and gets the CPU back. As long as at least one job needs to execute, the CPU is never idle. Time sharing systems must also provide a file system. The system resides on a collection of disks, hence disk management must be provided. Also time sharing systems provides a mechanism for protecting resources from inappropriate use. Process Management and OS manages many kinds of activities: ● User programs ● System programs: printer spoolers,name servers, file servers, etc. and Each is encapsulated in a process ● A process includes the complete execution context (code, data, PC,registers, OS resources in use, etc.) ● A process is not a program and A process is...
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...your prospective customers are not even aware of who you are, let alone what you do? In Europe, awareness of Unisys was low. When asked, “What names come to mind when you think of companies that provide information technology?’’ respondents in France placed Unisys behind IBM, Microsoft, Compaq, and Hewlett – Packard. In some countries, Unisys placed behind Digital, Groupe Bull, and Olivetti. In Germany, Unisys was not thought of at all. In most of Unisys’s target market, awareness of the name was much lower than it should have been. The familiarity with what it did was much lower than it should have been. Although some people had a reasonably warm feeling about Unisys, they still thought of the company in terms of being simply a mainframe supplier. Further research looked at people’s familiarity with Unisys in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy compared with Unisys’s major U.S. competitors. The picture was not a pretty one, with only 30 percent of respondents being “very familiar’’ or “somewhat familiar’’ with Unisys, compared with 90 percent for IBM, 78 percent for Hewlett-Packard, and 76 percent for Compaq. Worse still, this 30 percent had declined from 41 percent in 1992, though it does represent a recovery from 27 percent in 1996. Therefore, this meant that Unisys’s target market did not know the company very well and that it was in a worse position than it was five or six years ago. HISTORY: THE FORMATION OF UNISYS Two successful companies merged...
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...distinction among single processor computer, multiprocessor computer, local network, metropolitan network, and long-haul network has blurred. 5 Today’s Trends Three different forces have consistently driven the architecture and evolution of data communications and networking facilities: Traffic growth Development of new services Advances in technology 6 Communication Traffic Both local (within a building or building complex) and Long distance having transmission of Voice, video and data The increased emphasis on office automation, remote access online transactions, and other productive measures means that this trend is likely to continue. 7 New Service Development Growth in services and growth in traffic capacity go hand in hand. Services Versus Throughput Rates 8 Technology Advancement Trends in Technology enable the provision of increasing traffic capacity and the support of a wide range of services. More...
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...Information Technology Infrastructure P A R T II 4 IT Infrastructure: Hardware and Software 5 Foundations of Business Intelligence: Databases and Information Management 6 Telecommunications, the Internet, and Wireless Technology 7 Securing Information Systems Part II provides the technical foundation for understanding information systems by examining hardware, software, databases, networking technologies, and tools and techniques for security and control. This part answers questions such as these: What technologies and tools do businesses today need to accomplish their work? What do I need to know about these technologies to make sure they enhance the performance of my firm? How are ISBN 1-269-41688-X these technologies likely to change in the future? 107 Essentials of Management Information Systems, Tenth Edition, by Kenneth C. Laudon and Jane P. Laudon. Published by Prentice Hall. Copyright © 2013 by Pearson Education, Inc. IT Infrastructure: Hardware and Software LEARNING OBJECTIVES C H A P T E R 4 STUDENT LEARNING OBJECTIVES After completing this chapter, you will be able to answer the following questions: 1. 2. What are the components of IT infrastructure? What are the major computer hardware, data storage, input, and output technologies used in business? What are the major types of computer software used in business? What are the most important contemporary hardware and software trends? What are the principal issues in...
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...Unit (CPU). The CPU is the brain on the computer. The microprocessor is also responsible for containing the necessary hardware such as pins, or contacts to connect itself to the motherboard or socket/slot/etc. Hardware: Anything physical that can be touched in regards to computer systems. Things such as motherboards, RAM, HDDs, etc. Computer devices with exposed capacitors, pins, wires, contacts are hardware. BUS: The interconnectivity of wires between various components that the computer needs to send information to and from. The BUS is the main bottle neck of ANY computer. Eliminate the need for a bus and processing speeds will increase exponentially. Resource: The measurement or percentage of the system being utilized versus the amount of system that can be used to do other and or more tasks. Each task dictated to the computer requires a certain percentage of the system’s resources. The more memory, the faster the CPU(s), the quicker the BUS, the more resources you will have to do more tasks or “multi-task”. Storage: Storage usually comes in two flavors: Network Storage and Local Storage. Either way you look at it, storage is the amount of memory you have to retain data (non volatile). For the most part this includes HDDs, some sort of Flash Memory, and SSDs (my absolute favorite). Remember to be redundant; don’t learn about redundancy the hard way… ( I/O Device: Technically speaking, any device that can both give and receive data from/to a computer...
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...Management Information Systems, 13E Laudon & Laudon Lecture Files by Barbara J. Ellestad Chapter 5 IT Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies As information becomes a valuable resource of a digital firm, the infrastructure used to care for it takes on added importance. We’ll examine all of the components that comprise today’s and tomorrow’s IT infrastructure and how best to manage it. 5.1 IT Infrastructure When you mention the phrase “information technology infrastructure,” most people immediately think of just hardware and software. However, there is more to it than just those two. In fact, the most important and often most-ignored component is that of services. Integrating all three components forces a business to think in terms of the value of the whole and not just the parts. Including all three components in any discussion of IT infrastructure truly fits the cliché that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Defining IT Infrastructure If you define a firm’s IT infrastructure in terms of technology you limit the discussion to the hardware and software components. By broadening the definition to that of service-based, you are then bringing into the discussion the services generated by the first two components. Also, you are including the persware element that we discussed in Chapter 1. As technology advances the types of hardware and software available, it becomes more critical for the firm to focus on the services that a firm can provide to its customers...
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...There is little doubt that technological advances have made our lives easier. Thanks to them the world has become a much smaller place. We can now traverse the Oceans in a matter of hours. We can stay up to the minute with current affairs via the expansive news networks available through various media, including the internet. Gone are the days of the home based phone being our only option to communicate (voice) with loved ones and friends. Think of a world without heat in the winter and air conditioners in the summer. It existed believe it or not! A lot of our manual tasks are taken up by machines, which manufacture, assemble and pack the products for them. People are leading longer and healthier lives due to development of vaccines and availability of state of the art surgical equipment. The advent of technological era has brought many changes which have made a considerable impact on human life. If we take each of these advances and look into their history, it is very likely, if not guaranteed, that we will find predecessors that were improved upon through innovations of the particular technology. Those advances would have been considered transformational and the innovations would have been cutting edge. Throughout history, humanity has sought to better itself through science and technology, well before those terms even existed. Prehistoric man’s quest for survival could be argued to be the building block for our desire to innovate. Man needed to eat, so he ate berries...
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...SYSTEM CONCEPTS A system can be simply defined as a group of interrelated or interacting elements forming a unified whole. Many examples of systems can be found in the physical and biological sciences, in modern technology, and in human society. Thus, we can talk of the physical system of the sun and its planets, the biological system of the human body, the technological system of an oil refinery, and the socioeconomic system m of or a business organization. producing outputs in an organized transformation process. Such a interacting components or functions: • Input involves capturing and assembling elements that enter the system to be processed. For example, raw materials, energy, data, and human efforts must be secured and organized for processing. • Processing involves transformation process that convert input into output. Examples are a manufacturing process, the human breathing process, mathematical calculations. w w w .k in system (sometimes called a dynamic system) has three basic in d together toward a common goal by accepting inputs and ia A system is a group of interrelated components working .c o 1 • Output involves transferring elements that have been produced by a transformation process to their ultimate destination. services, For example, finished products, human be and management information must transmitted to their human users. Example A manufacturing system accepts raw materials as input...
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...reference to a foundation or base of common components around which a company might build a series of related products. This kind of in-house “product platform” became a popular topic in the 1990s for researchers exploring the costs and benefits of modular product architectures and component reuse.2 32 communicATio ns o f TH e Acm I was among this group, having studied reusable components and design frameworks in Japanese software factories, reusable objects at Microsoft, and reusable underbody platforms at automobile manufacturers.3 Product versus industry Platforms In the mid- and late 1990s, various researchers and industry observers, including myself, also began discussing technologies such as Microsoft Windows and the personal computer, as well as the browser and the Internet, as “industrywide platforms” for information technology. Most of us saw the PC as competing with an older industry platform—the IBM System 360 family of mainframes. It took a few more years to devise frameworks to help managers use the concept of an industry...
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... Gründe für den Erfolg 2 2 2 3 4 4 7 8 9 1. Geschichtlicher Hintergrund Primärminister Zhou legte 1956 in seinem Zwölfjahresplan die Gründung eines Instituts zur Computerforschung fest. Das „Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences“ war geboren, sein Aufgabengebiet war anfangs in erster Linie militärische Forschung. Keiner der Gründungsväter hatte je einen Computer gesehen, während die Firma IBM in den USA schon relevante Entwicklungen im Bereich integrierter Schaltkreise und Siliciumchips gemacht hatte. Ausgewählte chinesische Studenten wurden in die UdSSR geschickt, um erste Einblicke in die Computerforschung zu erhalten. Ihre anfänglichen Bemühungen resultierten in einem Prototypen namens “Model 103 Mainframe”. Das war ein Großrechner, der mit seinen 30 Berechnungen pro Sekunde im internationalen Vergleich nicht standhalten konnte. 1959 waren die Arbeiten am Model 104 abgeschlossen. Die damaligen Entwickungen basierten noch auf Vakuumelektronenröhren, die eine immense Hitzentwicklung verursachten. Um das Model 104 mit seinen 10000 Berechnungen pro Sekunde am Laufen zu halten, mussten die Forscher das gesamte Rechnergebäude mit riesigen Ventilatoren belüften. In den 60ern und 70ern wurden weitere Großrechner zur Berechnung von Massenvernichtungswaffen und Wettervorhersagen entwickelt, während sich im Westen bereits ab 1974 erste Personalcomputer etablieren. 2. Rahmenbedingungen zur Firmengründung Das sogenannte Zhongnancun galt als Zentrum...
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