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CAP 353: Information system

Homework No. 1

DoA: 10-02-10DoS: 24-02-10

Submitted to:

Ms kuljeet kaur

Submitted by:Tarun Baveja

MCA(hons)

Roll No 28

Reg No 10807675

Part AQ1:->How can information technology support acompany’sbusiness processes and decisionmaking and give it a competitive advantage?Give examples to illustrate your answer.

Sol Information technology (IT) refers to the managementand use of information using computer-based tools. It includesacquiring, processing, storing, and distributing information.Most commonly it is a term used to refer to businessapplications of computer technology, rather than scientific

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applications. The term is used broadly in business to refer toanything that ties into the use of computers.

How it supports a company’s business

processes and decision making.Mostly businesses today create data that can be stored andprocessed on computers. In some cases the data must be inputto computers using devices such as keyboards and scanners. Inother cases the data might be created electronically andautomatically stored in computers.

Small businesses generally need to purchase software

packages, and may need to contract with IT businesses thatprovide services such as hosting, marketing web sites andmaintaining networks. However, larger companies can considerhaving their own IT staffs to develop software, and otherwisehandle IT needs in-house. For instance, businesses working withthe federal government are likely to need to comply withrequirements relating to making information accessible.

For example most retail stores now use computers to help

their employees record customer purchases, keep track of inventory, pay employees.

Role of IT in decision making: it has drawn differentopinions – from “minor” to “vital”. The majority of respondershad agreed that this role very much depends upon the natureof the problem. Several responses indicated the importance of both the IT-supported information sources and analytical tools.Other responses worth noting here are:

• IT helps reducing uncertainty;

• IT can transform decision data volumes into manageablelevels;

• IT has a potential to boost confidence and insure from fataldecision mistakes;

• the rigid structure of IS in operation is a counterproductivefactor in providing decision support;

• IT is vital, but can hurt even more than help.

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For example : In any sports goods business company has toanalyses the quality of wood. With the use of informationtechnology It can be easily found which wood of tree is betterfor sport goods. Company has to find out which wood is

preferred by people for particular sport goods. After checkingthe database of that particular wood it can be easily found.

Competitive advantage of information technology

Every information available in the organization can beeffectively converted into the fruitful result and attainedsustainable competitive advantage if the following steps areobserved.

1. Assess existing and potential information intensity of product and process

2. Evaluate the likely impact of IT on their industrystructure

3. Identify the rank of activities that information firstaffects

4. Quantify how information technology brings newbusiness

5. Generate a plan of action for taking advantage of IT

Q2:->Identify several basic competitive

strategies and explain how they can useinformation technologies to comfront thecompetitive forces faced by a business.

Sol basic competitive strategies:

1. Growth strategies : increasing a company’s capacity toproduce goods and services expanding into global

markets, diversifying into new products and services, orintegrating into related products and services.

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2. Innovation strategy: finding new ways of doingbusiness. This strategy may involve developing uniqueproducts and services or entering unique markets ormarket niches. It may also involve marketing rdicalchanges to the business processes for producing.

3. Differentiation Strategy : Developing ways todifferentiate a firm’s products and services from those of its competitors or reduce the differentiation advantages of competitors.

4. Cost leadership Strategy: becoming a low cost reducerof products and services in the industry or finding ways tohelp suppliers or customers reduce their costs or increasethe costs of competitors.

5. Alliance strategies: establishing new business linkagesand alliances with customers, suppliers, competitors,consultants and other companies. These linkages mainclude mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, forming of other marketing, manufacturing.

Use of information technology by competitive strategies to comfrontcompetitive forces

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Competitive forces faced by business

Use of information technology to avoidcompetitive forces

1. To avoid Entry of competitors : ElectronicAdvertisements like in television channel or on internet,are used to avoid this kind of competitive forces.

2. To avoid Threat of substitutes . How easy can aproduct or service be substituted, especially madecheaper.

3. To avoid Bargaining power of buyers . The accurateprices of the items are shown to the customers so thatthey cannot bargain with sellers. For this company can useinternet or fax.

4. To avoid Bargaining power of suppliers : The samething for suppliers instead of prices they are shown theaccurate percentage of commission through internet orfax etc(facility of information technology).

5. To avoid Rivalry among the existing players . Does astrong competition between the existing players exist? Isone player very dominant or are all equal in strength andsize.

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Q3:-> Identify the major types and uses of micro-computer, midrange and mainframecomputer systems?

Sol Micro computers are the most important category of computer systems for both business people and consumers. Itis usually called a personal computer. A microcomputer is muchmore than a small computer for use by an individual.

Type and use of micro computer

• Desktop computers : A desktop computer is a personalcomputer (PC) in a form intended for regular use at asingle location, as opposed to a mobile laptop or portablecomputer .

• Laptop and notebook computers : A laptop is apersonal computer designed for mobile use and small andlight enough to sit on a person's lap while in use. [1] Alaptop integrates most of the typical components of adesktop computer , including a display , a keyboard , apointing device

Palmtop computers : A personal digital assistant (PDA),also known as a palmtop computer, is a mobile device whichfunctions as a Personal information manager and connects tothe internet . The PDA has an electronic visual display enabling it to include a web browser , but some newer modelsalso have audio capabilities, enabling them to be used asmobile phones or portable media players

Midrange computer: These are primarily high-end networkservers and other types of servers that can handle the large-scale processing of much business application. Although notas powerful as mainframe computers, they are less costly tobuy, operate, and maintain than mainframe systems andthus meet the computing needs.

Midrange computers, or midrange systems, are a class of computer systems which fall in between mainframe

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computers and microcomputers . The range emerged in the1960s and was more generally known at the time asminicomputers . Notable midrange computer lines includeDigital Equipment Corporation (PDP line),

Mainframe computer:

The term mainframe computer was created to distinguish thetraditional, large, institutional computer intended to servicemultiple users from the smaller, single user machines. Thesecomputers are capable of handling and processing very large

amounts of data quickly. Mainframe computers are used inlarge institutions such as government, banks and largecorporations.

Mainframes are measured in integer operations per second orMIPS. Mainframes are built to be reliable for transactionprocessing as it is commonly understood in the business world:a commercial exchange of goods, services, or money.

Midrange computers have been sold to small to medium-sizedbusinesses as their main computer, and to larger enterprisesfor branch- or department-level operations.

Part B

Q4:-> Outline the major technologies anduses o computer peripherals for input ,output and storage?

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Sol Technologies for input

Pointing devices: keyboards are still the most widely useddevices for entering data and text into computer systems.However, pointing devices are a better alternative for issuingcommands, making choices and responding to promptsdisplayed on your video screen.

Pen based computing : these technologies are still beingused in many handheld computers and personal digitalassistants. They have a pressure sensitive layer, similar to thatof a touch screen, under their slate-like liquid crystal display

screen.Speech recognition : it may be the future of data entry andcertainly promises to be the easiest method for wordprocessing, application navigation, and conversationalcomputing because speech is the easiest, most natural meansof human communication.

Speech recognition systems digitize, analyse, and classify your

speech and its sound patterns. The software compares youspeech patterns to a database of sound patterns in itsvocabulary and passes recognized words to your applicationsoftware.

Optical scanning : These devices read text or graphics andconvert them into digital input for your computer. Thus, opticalscanning enables the direct entry of data from sourcedocuments into a computer system.

Output technologiesVideo Output: Video displays are the most common type of computer output. Many desktop computers still rely on videomonitors that use a cathode ray tube(CRT) technology similarto the picture tubes used in home television sets.

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The another video output technology is liquid crystal displayshas been to provide a visual display capability for portablemicrocomputers and PDAs.

Printing : printing information on paper is still the mostcommon form of output after video displays. Thus, mostpersonal computer systems rely on an inkjet or laser printer.Printed output is still a common form of businesscommunicaitons and is frequently required for legaldocumentation.

Storage technologies:

Primary storage

Semiconductor memory : the primary storage of your computerconsists of microelectronic semiconductor memory chips. Someof the major attractions of semiconductor memory are its smallsize, great speed, and shock and temperature resistance.

There are two types of this kind of memory

1. RAM(random access memory): these memory chipsare the most widely used primary storage medium. Thismemory is volatile because as the power turn off thecontents in this memory are erased.

2. ROM(read only memory):as the name suggests we canonly read this memory we can not write in this memory.

The boot strap loader is found in this memory whichcauses the operating system to load into RAM.

Secondary storage:

1. Magnetic storage:

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Q5:-> What trends are occuring in thedevelopment and use of the major types of computer systems?

Sol

Computer systems are acting like one of us and working withus like any other human working along us. Computer Systemthese days are very much faster, reliable and safer rather thanthe past.. Many trends are occurring in Computer System likeat first the computers were very stiff to maintain but now-a-days software’s have made it very simple to sustain computers.

We can call them smarter or intelligent. Also people of today’sworld like to use that computer whose execution time is fast,having lesser faults or crashes etc.

The major trends or changes taking place in Computer Systemare:

1) Computer Systems are used for all kind of businessapplication.

2) Computer System are now-a-days have too much of suppleness.

3) Computer System is now used for day-to-day deeds.

4) Computer System is used for security purposes.

5) Now-a-days Computer Systems are also used for robbing.

Persons use software’s like Microsoft Outlook Express, YahooMessenger, MSN Messenger, Orkut etc. for dailycommunication. Security systems in banks, offices, courts, etc.are now-a-days being computerized. Some peoples, who knowa lot about Computer System now-a-days also, are using themin wrong manner and robbing banks and other organisation, by

breaking their security systems. This kind of robbing is knownas Hacking. People are expected that in future, we don’t need

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mouse and keyboard to input the instruction in them. ComputerSystem will read our brain and understand what we want.

Q6:-> Explain the following terms:

(a)DTP:

End users and organizations can use desktop publishing (DTP)software to produce their own printed materials such asnewsletters, brochures, manuals, and books with several typestyles, graphics, and colors on each page.

Typically text material and graphics can be generated by wordprocessing and graphics packages and imported as text andgraphics files. Optical scanners may be used to input text andgraphics from printed material. You can also use files of clip art,which are predawn graphic illustrations provided by thesoftware package or available from other sources. Thesepackages can also convert documents to HTML format.

(b)Presentation Graphics:

Presentation graphics are used to convert numeric data intographics displays such as line charts, bar graphs, pie charts,and many other types of graphics. Most of the top packagesalso help you prepare multimedia presentations of graphics,photos, animation, and video clips, including publishing to theWorld Wide Web

Presentation graphics have proven to be much more effectivethan tabular presentations of numeric data for reporting andcommunicating in advertising media, management reports, orother business presentations.

Presentation graphics software packages give you many easy-to-use capabilities that encourage the use of graphicspresentations (slide shows), which contain many integratedgraphics and multimedia displays.

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(c)Software licensing

When a company buys a software application they have notbuying right of ownership. Rather than they have purchase the

license to use the software under the term and conditions of software licensing agreement. The license often prohibitsreverse engineering, modifying, disclosing or transferring thesoftware .They also do not provide the right of resellingmultiple copies of the software. When the software is obtainedfrom the ASP the license to dispense use of software isgenerated to the ASP and in return the ASP agrees to payroyalty to software vendor.

Irrespective of whether a software application is purchased costor accessed via an ASP ,the software must be licensed for use.Software licensing is a contract of agreement between thesoftware publisher and the end user

(d)RAID

RAID (redundant array of independent disks; originallyredundant array of inexpensive disks) is a way of storing thesame data in different places (thus, redundantly) on multiplehard disks. By placing data on multiple disks, I/O (input/output)operations can overlap in a balanced way, improvingperformance. Since multiple disks increases the mean timebetween failures (MTBF), storing data redundantly alsoincreases fault tolerance

There are at least nine types of RAID plus a non-redundantarray (RAID-0):

• RAID-0• RAID-1:• RAID-2RAID-3• RAID-4• RAID-5• RAID-6• RAID-7• RAID-10

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(e) Application service providers

Application service providers are the corporations that functionand maintain application software and the computer systemresources. These corporations charge their customers on a per-use or on a monthly or annual fee basis.

ASP’S provide the software’s at lower cost and take short time.

Numbers of companies purchase the application software they

need to run their business from ASP’S.

They also manage companywide software patches andupgrades.

(f)Programming languages:

A programming language is an artificial language designed toexpress computations that can be performed by a machine,particularly a computer. Programming languages can be usedto create programs that control the behaviour of a machine, toexpress algorithms precisely, or as a mode of humancommunication .Many programming languages have some formof written specification of their syntax (form) and semantics

The language used by the processor is called machine code. The code that reaches the processor consists of a series of 0sand 1s known as ( binary data ).

Machine code is therefore difficult for humans to understand,which is why intermediary languages, which can be understoodby humans, have been developed. The code written in this typeof language is transformed into machine code so that theprocessor can process it.

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