Experiencing mis 6th by kronenke ch04

Chapter Hardware, Software, and Mobile Systems " If We Don’t Have an iPad App, We Don’t Have a Business." • GearUp not competitive without iPad app • Lack of knowledge could waste money and time • Outsourcing to India? Open source? • What have others done? • Conflict between low cost and technical competitiveness Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-2 Study Questions Q1: What business professionals need to know about computer hardware? Q2: What business professionals need to know about software? Q3: Is open source software a viable alternative? Q4: What are the differences between native and thin-client applications? Q5: Why are mobile systems increasingly important? Q6: What characterizes quality mobile user experiences? Q7: What are the challenges of personal mobile devices at work? Q8: 2023? Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-3 Q1: What Do Business Professionals Need to Know About Computer Hardware? Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-4 Server farm Large collection of coordinated servers Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-5 Computer Data Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-6 Important Storage-Capacity Terminology Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-7 Memory Swapping • When RAM too small to hold all open programs and data • CPU loads program segments into free memory – If none available, O/S swaps out existing segment, to a disk and copies requested segment to freed space • Swapping slows down computer Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-8 Specifying Hardware with Computer Data Sizes • CPU speed expressed in hertz • Slow = 1.5 GHz; Fast = 3+ GHz – 32-bit or 64-bit – 64-bit for 4+ GB memory  Processing large spreadsheets, database files, picture, sound, or movie files; using many large applications at same time • Cache and main memory are volatile Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-9 Q2: What Do Business Professionals Need to Know About Software? Basic Categories of Computer Software Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-10 Mobile Systems Cloud Use Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-39 Kindle Fire Roaming Message Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-40 Q7: What Are the Challenges of Personal Mobile Devices at Work? Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-41 Six Common BYOD Policies Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-42 Advantages of Example BYOD Policies Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-43 Q8: 2023? • Can Microsoft take Office 365 to mobile market via its Skype acquisition? • PC mules rare • Large-screen computing/connectivity devices available everywhere • Use public device to connect to cloud • Won’t need desktop office applications • Cost performance issues of desktop virtualization will be gone Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-44 Ethics Guide: Churn and Burn Conspiracy among hardware and software vendors? • Hardware vendors create new, faster computers • Software vendors create new products with more features only needed by some users • Time-consuming to learn Churning New software needs new hardware to run New hardware becomes obsolete fast Repeat steps and Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-45 Ethics Guide: Churn and Burn (cont’d) • Products have defects – Vendors turn these into a sales advantage • Should users accept these problems? • Should they rise up in protest? • What should vendors do? Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-46 Guide: Keeping Up to Speed • Relentless pace of technology change • 21st century business professional cannot bury head in sand • Use knowledge of IT to gain competitive advantage • Don’t ignore technology – Read articles, technology ads, attend seminars, workshops • Get involved as user representative in technology committees Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-47 Guide: Questioning Your Questions • Learn how to discern judgment quality and evaluate answers • Most difficult and creative tasks are generating questions and formulating strategy for getting answers • Be able to ask good questions and obtain good answers • Learn about new IS alternatives and how to apply them Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-48 Guide: Questioning Your Questions Questions can be bad in three ways: Irrelevant: Answer won’t tell you why Dead: Provide no insight into subject Asked wrong source  Don’t ask “What is it?” questions of valuable or expensive sources  Ask: “How can I use it? Is it the best choice for our company or situation?” Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-49 Active Review Q1: What business professionals need to know about computer hardware? Q2: What business professionals need to know about software? Q3: Is open source software a viable alternative? Q4: What are the differences between native and thin-client applications? Q5: Why are mobile systems increasingly important? Q6: What characterizes quality mobile user experiences? Q7: What are the challenges of personal mobile devices at work? Q8: 2023? Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-50 Case Study 4: The Apple of Your i • Tripled market share in three years • Second largest public company in world • Pioneered well-engineered home computers and innovative interfaces for students and knowledge workers • Every sales success feeds other sales successes Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-51 Case Study 4: The Apple of Your i (cont’d) Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc Publishing as Prentice Hall 4-52 4-53 ... • Open source – source available to public • Source code – computer code written by humans and understandable by humans • Machine code  11010010100101111110011101111001000111 • Closed source... underlying hardware • Applications written by professional programmers, technically oriented web developers, or business professionals • Cheaper to develop • Limited by capabilities of the browser • Thin-client... creates new feature or redesigns existing feature, or fixes a problem • Code evaluated and extended by others • Iteration, peer reviews and well-managed project yield high-quality code Copyright ©