Information System 3

Every computer has a central processing unit (CPU), which is sometimes called “the brain” of the computer. Although the design of the CPU has nothing in common with the anatomy of animal brains, this description is helpful because the CPU does have the “smarts” of the machine. The CPU selects instructions, processes them, performs arithmetic and logical comparisons, and stores results of operations in memory. Some computers have two or more CPUs. A computer with two CPUs is called a dual-processor computer. Quad-processor computers have four CPUs. Some high-end computers have 16 or more CPUs. CPUs vary in speed, function, and cost. Hardware vendors such as Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, and National Semiconductor continually improve CPU speed and capabilities while reducing CPU costs (as discussed under Moore’s Law in Lesson 1). Whether you or your department needs the latest, greatest CPU depends on the nature of your work. The CPU works in conjunction with main memory. The CPU reads data and instructions from memory and then stores the results of computations in main memory. Main memory is sometimes called RAM, for random access memory. All computers include storage hardware, which is used to save data and programs. Magnetic disks (also called hard disks) are the most common storage device. Solid-state storage (SSD) (or an SSD drive) is much faster than traditional magnetic storage because it stores information using nonvolatile electronic circuits. SSD drives are gaining in popularity but are several times more expensive than magnetic hard disks. USB flash drives are small, portable solid-state storage devices that can be used to back up data and transfer it from one computer to another. Optical disks such as CDs and DVDs are also popular portable storage media.

Types of Hardware

Figure 4-1 lists the basic types of hardware. Personal computers (PCs) are classic computing devices that are used by individuals. In the past, PCs were the primary computer used in business. Today, they are gradually being supplanted by tablets and other mobile devices. The Mac Pro is an example of a modern PC. Apple brought tablets to prominence with the iPad. In 2012, Microsoft announced Surface and Google announced the Nexus series, all tablets. Moving down the list of hardware, a mobile device called a phablet combines the functionality of a smartphone with the larger screen of a tablet. Devices like Samsung’s Galaxy Note or Apple’s iPhone Pro Max would fall into this crossover category. Smartphones are cell phones with processing capability; the Samsung Galaxy S and iPhone are good examples. Today, because it’s hard to find a cell phone that isn’t “smart,” people often just call them phones.

A server is a computer that is designed to support processing requests from many remote computers and users. A server is essentially a PC on steroids. A server differs from a PC principally because of what it does. The relationship between PCs and servers is similar to the relationship between clients and servers at a typical restaurant. Servers take requests from clients and then bring them things. In restaurants this is food and silverware. In computing environments servers can send Web pages, email, files, or data to PCs. PCs, tablets, and smartphones that access servers are called clients. As of 2018, a good example of a server is the Dell PowerEdge server. Finally, a server farm is a collection of, typically, thousands of servers. (See Figure 4-2.) Server farms are often placed in large truck trailers that hold 5,000 servers or more. Typically, a trailer has two large cables coming out of it; one is for power, and the other is for data communications. The operator of the farm backs a trailer into a pre-prepared slab (in a warehouse or sometimes out in the open air), plugs in the power and communications cables, and, voilà, thousands of servers are up and running!

Figure 4-2: Server Farm

Source: Andrew Twort/Alamy Stock Photo

Increasingly, server infrastructure is delivered as a service via the Internet that is often referred to as the cloud. We will discuss cloud computing in Lesson 6 after you have some knowledge of data communications.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the idea that objects are being connected to the Internet so they can interact with other devices, applications, or services. Everyday objects are being embedded with hardware capable of sensing, processing, and transmitting data. These objects can then connect to a network and share data with any other application, service, or device. Take your mobile phone, for example; it’s probably a smartphone. But it wasn’t always “smart.” It started out as a simple device that just handled voice calls. Over time it became a smart device by adding more processing power, more memory, Internet access, and Wi-Fi connectivity. It also gained the ability to interconnect with other devices and applications called machine to machine (M2M) connectivity (Figure 4-3). People began to use their mobile phones much differently. It also changed the way businesses operate. In December 2018, Amazon reported that it had over 162 million mobile browser shoppers and 122 million shoppers on its app.1

Figure 4-3: Smartphone Development

Source: Aa Amie/Shutterstock

What happens when other devices become smart? How would your life change if you had access to a smart car, smart home appliances, or an entire smart building? Within a few short decades it’s possible that you could interact with nearly every object around you from your smartphone. In fact, your devices will be able to talk to other devices, anticipate your actions, make changes, and configure themselves. This shift away from “dumb” devices to interconnected smart devices is not lost on businesses. Consumers like smart devices and are willing to pay more for them. Businesses want to redesign the existing devices they manufacture into smart devices and then sell them for twice as much. If they don’t, someone else will. The iPhone, for example, was introduced by Apple Inc., a computing hardware and software company. The mobile phone market was already mature. Industry leaders could have created a smartphone, but they didn’t. Apple’s success with portable audio players (iPod) and mobile phones (iPhone) was a shot across the bow of other hardware manufacturers. A wave of smart devices is coming. Impact of the Internet of Things The impact of IoT will be felt by many different high-tech industries. Smart devices need microprocessors, memory, wireless network connections, a power source, and new software. These devices will also need new protocols, more bandwidth, and tighter security, and they will consume more energy. Smart devices will enable computing to be done at the source of the data (the IoT device), which will save bandwidth and improve application responsiveness. This is called edge computing. Edge computing will reduce the amount of data transmitted, stored, and processed in the cloud (Lesson 6). A good example of the push toward using smart devices in business is General Electric’s (GE) Industrial Internet.2 An Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is the connection of industrial smart devices and sensors via a network that share data. IIoT analyze data from these smart devices and then making changes that increase efficiencies, reduce waste, and improve decision making. GE sees the greatest potential for industrial smart devices in hospitals, power grids, railroads, and manufacturing plants. GE estimates that an average airline using smart devices in its jet aircraft could save an average of 2 percent in fuel consumption. The resulting fuel and carbon dioxide savings would be the equivalent of removing 10,000 cars from the road. Microsoft has also made tremendous gains using smart devices. Microsoft has created a network of 125 smart buildings spread over 500 acres in Redmond, Washington (Figure 4-4).4 Its operations center processes 500 million data transactions every day from 30,000 devices, including heaters, air conditioners, lights, fans, and doors.

Figure 4-4: Microsoft’s Redmond, WA, Campus

Source: Ian Dagnall/Alamy Stock Photo

Microsoft engineers were able to reduce energy costs by 6 to 10 percent a year by identifying problems like wasteful lighting, competing heating and cooling systems, and rogue fans. For Microsoft, that’s millions of dollars. What if every corporate building were a smart building? When you consider that 40 percent of the world’s energy is consumed in corporate buildings, you can start to get an idea of the immense financial cost savings. Indirectly, this would also have a huge environmental and economic impact worldwide. The capacities of computer hardware are specified according to data units, which we discuss next.

Computers represent data using binary digits, called bits. A bit is either a zero or a one. Bits are used for computer data because they are easy to represent physically, as illustrated in Figure 4-5. A switch can be either closed or open. A computer can be designed so that an open switch represents zero and a closed switch represents one. Or the orientation of a magnetic field can represent a bit: magnetism in one direction represents a zero; magnetism in the opposite direction represents a one. Or, for optical media, small pits are burned onto the surface of the disk so that they will reflect light. In a given spot, a reflection means a one; no reflection means a zero.

Figure 4-5: Bits Are Easy to Represent Physically

Computer Data Sizes All forms of computer data are represented by bits. The data can be numbers, characters, currency amounts, photos, recordings, or whatever. All are simply a string of bits. For reasons that interest many but are irrelevant for future managers, bits are grouped into 8-bit chunks called bytes. For character data, such as the letters in a person’s name, one character will fit into one byte. Thus, when you read a specification that a computing device has 100 million bytes of memory, you know that the device can hold up to 100 million characters. Bytes are used to measure sizes of noncharacter data as well. Someone might say, for example, that a given picture is 100,000 bytes in size. This statement means the length of the bit string that represents the picture is 100,000 bytes or 800,000 bits (because there are 8 bits per byte). The specifications for the size of main memory, disk, and other computer devices are expressed in bytes. Figure 4-6 shows the set of abbreviations that are used to represent data storage capacity. A kilobyte, abbreviated KB, is a collection of 1,024 bytes. A megabyte, or MB, is 1,024 kilobytes. A gigabyte, or GB, is 1,024 megabytes; a terabyte, or TB, is 1,024 gigabytes; a petabyte, or PB, is 1,024 terabytes; an exabyte, or EB, is 1,024 petabytes; and a zettabyte, or ZB, is 1,024 exabytes. Sometimes you will see these definitions simplified as 1KB equals 1,000 bytes and 1 MB equals 1,000 KB, and so on. Such simplifications are incorrect, but they do ease the math.

To put these sizes in perspective, consider that in a single day a connected car generates 4 TB of data, Facebook creates 4 PB of data, and the total amount of stored data is approximately 44 ZB.5 The super-secret NSA data center in Utah is estimated to hold about 12 EB of data.6 And Cisco estimates that annual global Internet traffic volume will exceed 4.8 ZB by the end of 2022.7 Specifying Hardware with Computer Data Sizes Computer disk capacities are specified according to the amount of data they can contain. Thus, a 5 TB disk can contain up to 5 TB of data and programs. There is some overhead, so it is not quite 5 TB, but it’s close enough. You can purchase computers with CPUs of different speeds. CPU speed is expressed in cycles called hertz. In 2020, a slow personal computer had a speed of 4.0 Gigahertz with multiple processors. A fast personal computer had a speed of 5.0+ Gigahertz, with multiple processors. An employee who does only simple tasks such as word processing does not need a fast CPU; a multi-core 4.0 Gigahertz CPU will be fine. However, an employee who processes large, complicated spreadsheets or who manipulates large database files or edits large picture, sound, or video files needs a fast computer like a multi-processor workstation with 5.0 Gigahertz or more. Employees whose work requires them to use many large applications at the same time need 64 GB or more of RAM. Others can do with less. One last comment: The cache and main memory are volatile, meaning their contents are lost when power is off. Magnetic and optical disks are nonvolatile, meaning their contents survive when power is off. If you suddenly lose power, the contents of unsaved memory—say, documents that have been altered—will be lost. Therefore, get into the habit of frequently (every few minutes or so) saving documents or files that you are changing. Save your documents before your roommate trips over the power cord.

Q4-2 How Can New Hardware Affect Competitive Strategies?

Organizations are interested in new hardware because they represent potential opportunities, or threats, to their ability to generate revenue. It’s important to keep an eye on new tech hardware for the same reason you watch the weather forecast. You care about how the future will affect you. Next, we will look at five new hardware developments that have the potential to disrupt existing organizations.

The first disruptive force that has the power to change business is digital reality devices. Digital reality devices are an emerging technology with tremendous potential to revolutionize our daily lives. Much like the emergence of the Internet in the mid-1990s, these devices will create entirely new types of companies and change the way people live, work, shop, and entertain themselves. It’s estimated that the digital reality market will be $120 billion by 2026.8 There are different levels of digital reality on a continuum from completely real environments to completely virtual environments, or simulated nonphysical environments. Before you start to think about how digital reality devices will affect business, you need to understand how the levels of digital reality differ. First, reality is the state of things as they actually exist. If you’re reading the paper version of this textbook with your eyes, contact lenses, or glasses, you’re seeing the real world without any digital alteration. You are (hopefully) experiencing reality. Next comes augmented reality. Augmented reality (AR) is the altering of reality by overlaying digital information on real-world objects. Examples of AR devices include Google Glass Enterprise ($1,800), Epson’s Moverio Smart Glasses ($700), and ThirdEye Gen X2 ($1,950). Essentially, these devices work like heads-up displays, giving users information about the real world they’re experiencing. For example, an AR device could provide users directions in the form of virtual arrows being displayed on the roadway. Users could also read virtual emails displayed in the air or see virtual health data projected in front of them as they exercise. The next step on the digital reality continuum, as shown in Figure 4-7, is mixed reality. Mixed reality (MR) is the combination of the real physical world with interactive virtual images or objects. Microsoft (HoloLens 2, $3,500) and Magic Leap (Magic Leap 1, $2,295) released their MR devices in 2019. Both companies are marketing these devices to developers interested in creating digital reality applications. MR devices are generally perceived as having greater potential than AR devices due to their ability to interact with virtual objects in real time.

For example, using AR you could view a 2D virtual weather forecast projected on your wall. But with MR you would see a real-time 3D virtual model of your city created on your coffee table (Figure 4-8). It would show a virtual tornado moving toward the city, and you could interact with the 3D weather application to see its projected path. And this is just one example. Imagine watching sporting events live in high-definition 3D in the middle of your room.

Figure 4-8: Digital Reality Applications

Source: MONOPOLY919/Shutterstock

There’s one problem when discussing AR and MR devices. Currently, the term augmented reality isn’t applied consistently. It’s common to hear AR used to describe both AR and MR devices.9 But this is normal for emerging technologies. Terms are created, refined, and stored in common speech as the technology develops, so don’t be surprised to hear AR used to describe both types of digital reality. The last step on the digital reality continuum is virtual reality (VR), or a completely computer-generated virtual world with interactive digital objects. Here you’ll find devices like Facebook’s Oculus Rift ($400), Sony’s PlayStation VR ($309), and Samsung Gear VR ($145). These are completely immersive experiences that try to create a strong sense of presence, or the illusion that a virtual experience is real. In other words, if a device were able to create a strong sense of presence, you’d lean back and hold on tight as if you were on a virtual roller coaster about to go off the track. Impact of Digital Reality Devices Digital reality devices are developing in much the same way cellular phones developed over the past 20 years. In fact, it’s entirely possible that the AR market could disrupt the smartphone market. Imagine taking calls, browsing the Web, messaging friends, and watching a movie without ever taking your smartphone out of your pocket. The application of digital reality devices extends beyond personal use as well. Organizations are currently building digital reality applications for education, training, collaboration, new product design, “holoportation,” gaming, sports, advertising, tourism, and shopping. For example, Lowe’s new Holoroom allows customers to design and visualize their ideal room before they commit to major changes. Case Western Reserve University has partnered with Microsoft to develop 3D mixed-reality applications to teach anatomy in an interactive environment.10 The full impact of digital reality devices won’t be understood for years—we just don’t know how they’ll be used. Even experts in the field are just starting to understand the implications of how digital reality devices will change organizations. The shift from 2D flat screens to a 3D virtual world is like changing vocations from being a painter to being a sculptor. It requires new skills, processes, tools, and ways of thinking. Digital reality devices are truly one of the most transformative innovations in hardware to come along in the past 20 years.

Autonomous Vehicles

The second disruptive force that could change the way businesses operate is autonomous vehicles. The two types of autonomous vehicles that will be most transformative are self-driving vehicles and drones. We’ll look at some of the potential impacts both of these may have on businesses. A self-driving vehicle (also known as a self-driving car) uses a variety of sensors to navigate like a traditional vehicle but without human intervention. It will be full of advanced hardware and integrated software and is the epitome of a mobile system. In fact, it will be so mobile that it will be able to move without anyone being in the vehicle (Figure 4-9). Yes, self-driving vehicles are in your very near future.

Figure 4-9: Future Cars Will Drive Themselves

Source: Metamorworks/Shutterstock

A recent report by McKinsey & Company indicates that self-driving vehicles could reach widespread adoption as early as 2030,11 but KPMG estimates that widespread adoption won’t happen until 2050.12 Most auto manufacturers (GM, Toyota, BMW, Ford, etc.) say that self-driving vehicles are inevitable, and have already made large investments.13 As of 2020, auto manufacturers are still doing on-road testing of their self-driving vehicles. Waymo (Google) leads the pack with 20 million autonomous miles driven.14 Toyota has announced that its ePalette self-driving vehicles will provide transportation for the Summer Olympics in Tokyo.15 It looks like the race to develop self-driving vehicles is heating up. The competition will be fierce. Self-driving vehicles will make things easier, cheaper, and safer. They’ll also disrupt well- established industries. Self-Driving Vehicles Make Things Easier Imagine how self-driving vehicles will change the lives of a typical family. A self-driving car could allow Dad to review sales reports while “driving” to work. He’s much less stressed out—and more productive—during his commute than he was with his old car. The self-driving vehicle could then drop off the kids at school—without Dad in the car—and return home to take Mom to work. After work the family goes shopping and is dropped off curbside at the store. No need to park anymore. It’s safer, too. While shopping, Dad gets a message from his college-aged daughter that she needs the car sent to pick her up from the airport. Dad’s glad he won’t have to drive all the way out there. Self-driving vehicles can also plan routes, fill themselves up with gas, take themselves to get repaired, and reroute themselves if there’s an accident or traffic. There’s no more stress or aggressive driving either. Self-Driving Vehicles Make Things Cheaper You’ve seen how a self-driving vehicle can make your life easier. But what about cost? Will it be more expensive or less expensive than the car you have now? Self-driving vehicles will probably be much less expensive over time than your current car. Early adopters will pay a premium when self-driving vehicles first hit the market, but that’s true of most new products. Cost savings will show up in several ways. In the preceding scenario, you may have noticed that the family had only one car. Self-driving vehicles will be used more effectively than cars are used now. Most cars sit dormant for 22 hours a day. Sharing a self-driving vehicle could eliminate the need to have multiple cars. That’s a big cost savings. You’ll also see more cost savings because a self-driving vehicle will drive more efficiently (less braking, revving the engine, and street racing!). You will avoid costly traffic tickets, parking tickets, accidents, and expensive cabs. Your car insurance will drop dramatically. It may be so low that you won’t even need it anymore. In a report about the effect of self-driving vehicles on the insurance industry, KPMG estimated that accident frequency will drop by 90 percent by the year 2050. Subsequently, the personal automobile industry will shrink to 22 percent of its current size.16 The analysis is probably right. Self-driving vehicles will probably take a big chunk out of the 0B paid each year in car insurance premiums. Self-Driving Vehicles Will Make Things Safer Yes, you read that right—safer. Currently, 90 percent of motor vehicle crashes are caused by human error.17 Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for people ages 3 to 33. Spending time driving may be the most dangerous thing you do all day. Your self-driving vehicle will be able to see better than you, react more quickly than you, and have better information about your driving environment. It will be able to communicate with other cars around it, dynamically analyze traffic patterns, avoid construction sites, and contact emergency services if needed. Self-driving vehicles will mean safer driving, fewer accidents, fewer drunk drivers, fewer road-rage incidents, and fewer auto–pedestrian accidents. Cars will be able to go faster with fewer accidents. In the future, manual driving may be a risky and expensive hobby. Self-Driving Vehicles Will Disrupt Businesses Self-driving vehicles have the potential to disrupt well-established industries. Self-driving vehicles may mean fewer cars on the road. Fewer cars on the road may mean fewer cars sold (transportation), fewer auto loans written (finance), fewer automobile insurance policies underwritten (insurance), fewer auto parts sold due to fewer accidents (manufacturing), and fewer parking lots (real estate). If they didn’t have to drive, consumers might take more trips by car than by plane or train (transportation). The production of self-driving vehicles will mean more jobs for engineers, programmers, and systems designers. There will be more computer hardware, sensors, and cameras in the vehicle. Corporations may not completely see the far-reaching effects of self-driving vehicles on existing industries. They may even fundamentally change our society. What if driving a “manual” car becomes too costly? Teenagers in the future may never learn how to drive a car. Ask yourself: Do you know how to ride a horse? Your ancestors did. Drones The other type of autonomous vehicle that will transform businesses is a drone, or a remotely controlled unmanned aircraft. Companies like Amazon, FedEx, UPS, Boeing, and DHL are all testing drones for package delivery. The drone package delivery market is estimated to be worth billion by 2030.18 Amazon anticipated starting drone deliveries in late 2019, but they were still not happening by mid-2020. Figure 4-10 shows some of the advantages and disadvantages of drone delivery. While critics are quick to point out potential disadvantages of drone delivery, the cost savings and faster delivery times are huge. Consider Amazon’s push for drone delivery. McKinsey & Company estimate that it costs to ship a package, and Amazon’s shipping costs for 2019 were billion. Drone delivery is expected to reduce Amazon’s shipping costs by 50 percent.19 Amazon would use less fuel, buy fewer delivery vehicles, and hire fewer drivers.

Drones are also expected to speed up delivery too. Amazon Prime Air can ship via drone within 15 miles of a distribution center in less than 30 minutes. That’s amazingly fast compared to existing shipping times. But not everyone lives that close to a distribution center, and some packages may be too heavy. These are valid concerns. But Amazon could easily expand their distribution locations to expand their delivery range, and currently 86 percent of Amazon’s packages are below the 5-pound maximum payload capacity.20 That means Amazon could deliver most packages to most locations. Drone delivery can even deliver packages to your real-time location. Suppose you’re in a park having a picnic, and suddenly it looks like it’s going to rain. You can order an umbrella from Amazon and have it air dropped to you before the first raindrop hits the ground. Real-time drone delivery may boost impulse buys and change the way we think about shipping.

The third disruptive force that could change the way businesses operate is robots, or machines that are programmed to sense the environment, make decisions, and perform tasks automatically. Robots will transform businesses because they will automate much of the physical work currently being done by humans. Robots are becoming more than just industrial robots, or robots used in manufacturing processes. They’re becoming widely used in healthcare, shipping, agriculture, military, and food services industries. Robots have all of the benefits of automated labor mentioned in Lesson 3 including working 24 hours a day; and performing precise, accurate, and consistent work. Robots also don’t require health care, time off, vacations, breaks, sick days, or workman’s compensation. They don’t join unions, get mad, sue their employer, harass coworkers, or drink on the job. No one fully understands the impact that robotic workers will have on businesses or society as a whole. Researchers estimate that by 2030, nearly 800 million workers will be taken out of the current worldwide labor force.21 They will be replaced by robots with IQs higher than 90 percent of the U.S. population. Figure 4-11 shows growth of the annual worldwide supply of industrial robots. The International Federation of Robotics predicts that the demand for industrial robots will increase at the rate of 12 percent annually through 2023.22

Figure 4-11 Annual Worldwide Supply of Industrial Robots

Source: International Federation of Robotics

What types of jobs will these robots take? They’re not going to take over every job. There is still a need for human labor. In fact, these new robots will create jobs. People will be needed to make, program, and manage the new robotic workforce. Humans also excel at higher-level, nonroutine cognitive tasks. But robots will likely take jobs that involve routine physical and mental tasks. Companies will need to upskill their current employees by teaching them new skills that match the current needs within their organization. Upskilling employees will become more important as robots and AI continue to automate jobs held by humans. In the future you might work alongside a robot in a factory or interact with robots at kiosks, at grocery store checkout lines, at doctor’s offices, or in operating rooms. The Case for Robots For example, consider how robots might change the fast-food industry. Former McDonald’s CEO Ed Rensi was interviewed about recent protests for an increase in the minimum wage. Fast-food workers wanted a national minimum wage of per hour. Rensi stated that a single ,000 robotic worker would cost less and be more productive than a -an-hour human worker.23 He also pointed out that pushing for higher wages will only accelerate the adoption of automated labor. He might be right. A hamburger-making robot built by California-based Momentum Machines can make 400 burgers per hour, every hour, without a break. It can grind, grill, and assemble custom burgers more consistently, accurately, and cleanly than its human counterparts. Essentially, it can completely replace three human fast-food workers.24 And it’s not just fast-food companies that are jumping on the automation bandwagon. In 2018, Foxconn, a major supplier to Apple Inc. located in China, announced it was investing billion after successfully replacing 60,000 factory workers with robots in 2016. The Foxconn implementation was so successful that nearly 600 other companies are looking at similar automation plans.25 In 2019 European airplane manufacturer Airbus purchased Seattle-based MTM Robotics to automate the assembly of its airplanes.26 In the United States, Amazon is using 200,000 Kiva robots at 25 fulfillment centers to help process customer orders.27 The strategic implications of a robotic workforce cannot be understated. Consider the impact of an industrial robot that is physically similar to a human, with an embedded artificial intelligence (AI) mentioned in Lesson 3. Businesses will have an automated workforce that can perform certain types of both physical and cognitive work.

The fourth disruptive force that has the power to change businesses is 3D printing. 3D printing will not only change the competitive landscape, but it may change the nature of businesses themselves. Consider how Nike has used 3D printing to improve the way it designs and creates shoes. It recently used a 3D printer to create the world’s first 3D-printed shoe called the Nike ZoomX Vaporfly Next%.28 Nike chose to use a 3D printer to produce the shoe because it could create the optimal geometric shapes for optimal traction. Using a 3D printer, it could design and produce a lighter and stronger shoe much more quickly than before. In fact, Nike did just that when it produced a pair of custom-designed running shoes for Eliude Kipchoge who broke the world record running a marathon.29 An independent test of the newly designed shoes shows a 4 percent increase in running efficiency. 3D printers have the potential to affect a broad array of industries beyond sporting equipment. You can get an idea of the scope of change when you realize that 3D printers can print in more than just plastics (Figure 4-12). They can print in metal, wood, ceramics, foods, and biological material too.

Figure 4-12: 3D Printer

Source: Seraficus/iStock/Getty Images

Take the ability to 3D-print in a variety of materials and look for opportunities across the aerospace, defense, automotive, entertainment, and healthcare industries. What happens when it becomes feasible to 3D-print extra-large objects like cars,30 planes, boats, houses, and drones?

The fifth disruptive force that has the power to change businesses is financial technology (FinTech), or information technology designed to provide automated financial services. FinTech includes innovations like cryptocurrencies, online-only banks, financial robo-advisors, peer-to-peer lending, and digital wallets. FinTech companies are growing at a rapid rate too. Venmo, a company that provides digital payment services, grew 47 percent in 2019 and processed payments exceeding $31 billion.31 Financial institutions and technology companies are all competing in the FinTech space. For example, Google, Apple, Samsung, Alibaba, and PayPal have all developed their own digital wallets, or digital services or software that allow people to conduct electronic financial transactions. Well-known banks like Wells Fargo, Chase, Bank of America, Citi, and Barclay’s are promoting their own digital wallets too. Hundreds of FinTech companies are competing to provide a variety of digital financial services that will change the way businesses operate. One of the most important FinTech innovations with the potential to revolutionize entire economies is cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies Cryptocurrencies are digital-only currencies that use cryptographic protections to manage and record secure transactions. Bitcoin, introduced in 2009, is currently the most well-known cryptocurrency among the thousands available today. Cryptocurrencies are an important disruptive force because of their potential to transform world economies. There are lots of reasons to love cryptocurrencies. Compared to traditional payment methods, cryptocurrency transactions are faster and easier and have few to no fees. Governments can’t easily monitor, tax, or seize cryptocurrencies. Consumers holding cryptocurrencies are protected from inflation, too. For example, there are only 21 million possible bitcoins. Each bitcoin can be broken down into smaller fractions of a bitcoin, with the smallest unit, a satoshi, being 1/100,000,000 of one bitcoin. But there won’t be any more bitcoins created beyond the original 21 million. The same is not true of traditional fiat currencies, or government-approved legal tender. Historically, when governments run up huge debts, they just print more money to pay for those debts. This causes inflation, which increases prices and decreases the purchasing power of your money. Consumers around the world like cryptocurrencies because they protect their users from inflation. Risks of Cryptocurrencies There are risks to cryptocurrencies, too. The value of a cryptocurrency can drop to zero if enough big holders of the currency sell their coins. Bitcoin, for example, derives its value because enough people perceive it as valuable. There is nothing like gold backing its value, and it is not government-approved legal tender. It’s all perception. That can lead to extreme price volatility. Bitcoin also suffers from the fact that relatively few businesses accept it as payment, and it initially got a bad reputation for being used by organized crime. The Future of Cryptocurrencies Cryptocurrencies are slowly gaining acceptance. Banks and even some governments are launching their own cryptocurrencies. Business are using blockchain, or the decentralized public ledgering system used to record cryptocurrency transactions, to manage transactions in traditional sectors like shipping, real estate, voting, and stock trading. Even if they don’t replace traditional fiat currencies, the underlying technology behind cryptocurrencies is making all types of transactions more secure and easier to manage.

Q4-3 What Do Business Professionals Need to Know About Software?

Cyber-attacks on software can have physical consequences. Read the Security Guide to learn more.

As a future manager or business professional, you need to know the essential terminology and software concepts that will enable you to be an intelligent software consumer. To begin, consider the basic categories of software shown in Figure 4-13.

Every computer has an operating system (OS), which is a program that controls that computer’s resources. Some of the functions of an operating system are to read and write data, allocate main memory, perform memory swapping, start and stop programs, respond to error conditions, and facilitate backup and recovery. In addition, the operating system creates and manages the user interface, including the display, keyboard, mouse, and other devices. Although the operating system makes the computer usable, it does little application-specific work. If you want to check the weather or access a database, you need application programs such as an iPad weather application or Oracle’s customer relationship management (CRM) software. Both client and server computers need an operating system, though they need not be the same. Further, both clients and servers can process application programs. The application’s design determines whether the client, the server, or both process it. You need to understand two important software constraints. First, a particular version of an operating system is written for a particular type of hardware. For example, Microsoft Windows works only on processors from Intel and companies that make processors that conform to the Intel instruction set (the commands that a CPU can process). With other operating systems, such as Linux, many versions exist for many different instruction sets. Second, two types of application programs exist. Native applications are programs written to use a particular operating system. Microsoft Access, for example, will run only on the Windows operating system. Some applications come in multiple versions. For example, there are Windows and Macintosh versions of Microsoft Word. But unless you are informed otherwise, assume that a native application runs on just one operating system. Native applications are sometimes called thick-client applications. A Web application (also known as a thin-client application) is designed to run within a computer browser such as Firefox, Chrome, Opera, or Edge (formerly Internet Explorer). Web applications run within the browser and can run on any type of computer. Ideally, a Web application can also run within any browser, though this is not always true as you will learn. Consider next the operating system and application program categories of software.

The major operating systems are listed in Figure 4-14. Consider each.

Nonmobile Client Operating Systems Nonmobile client operating systems are used on personal computers. The most popular is Microsoft Windows. Some version of Windows resides on more than 88 percent of the world’s desktops, and, if we consider just business users, the figure is more than 95 percent. The most recent version of Windows is Windows 10. Net Applications estimates that overall market share of Windows as of 2020 is Windows 10 at 53 percent, Windows 7 at 29 percent, Windows 8.1 at 4 percent, and Windows XP at 1 percent.32 It’s interesting to note that Windows 7 is still installed on 29 percent of desktops despite the fact that Microsoft ended mainstream support for it in January 2015. Windows 8 was a major rewrite of prior versions. Windows 8 was distinguished by what Microsoft calls modern-style applications.33 These applications, now carried over into Windows 10, are touch screen oriented and provide context-sensitive, pop-up menus. They can also be used with a mouse and keyboard. Microsoft claims that modern-style applications work just as well on portable, mobile devices, such as tablet computers, as they do on desktop computers. One key feature of modern-style applications is the minimization of menu bars, status lines, and other visual overhead. Figure 4-15 shows an example of a modern-style version of searching for images in Microsoft Edge.

 Figure 4-15: Example of the Modern-Style Interface

Source: Microsoft Edge, Windows 10, Microsoft Corporation.

Apple Computer, Inc., developed its own operating system for the Macintosh, macOS. The current version is macOS Catalina. Apple touts it as the world’s most advanced desktop operating system. Windows 10 now gives it a run for the money in terms of that title. Until recently, macOS was used primarily by graphic artists and workers in the arts community. But for many reasons, macOS has made headway into the traditional Windows market. According to Net Applications, as of 2020, desktop operating system market share was divided between versions of Windows (88.1%), macOS (9.38%), and Linux (1.9%).34 macOS was designed originally to run the line of CPU processors from Motorola, but today a Macintosh with an Intel processor is able to run both Windows and the macOS. Unix is an operating system that was developed at Bell Labs in the 1970s. It has been the workhorse of the scientific and engineering communities since then. Unix is seldom used in business. Linux is a version of Unix that was developed by the open source community. This community is a loosely coupled group of programmers who mostly volunteer their time to contribute code to develop and maintain Linux. The open source community owns Linux, and there is no fee to use it. Linux can run on client computers, but usually only when budget is of paramount concern. By far, Linux is most popular as a server OS. According to DistroWatch.com, the top five most popular versions of Linux as of 2020 were MX Linux, Manjaro, Linux Mint, Debian GNU/Linux, and Ubuntu.35 Mobile Client Operating Systems Figure 4-14 also lists the three principal mobile operating systems. iOS is the operating system used on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. When first released, it broke new ground with its ease of use and compelling display, features that are now being copied by Android. With the popularity of the iPhone and iPad, Apple has seen iOS’s market share increase. According to Net Marketshare, as of 2020, iOS is used on 29 percent of mobile devices.36 The current version of iOS is iOS 13.5. Most industry observers would agree that Apple has led the way, both with the macOS and the iOS, in creating easy-to-use interfaces. Certainly, many innovative ideas have first appeared in a Macintosh or iSomething and then later were added, in one form or another, to the Android and Windows operating systems. Speaking of these OS, Android is a mobile operating system licensed by Google. Android devices have a very loyal following, especially among technical users. Net Marketshare estimates Android’s market share to be nearly 71 percent. Users who want Windows 10 on mobile devices will get a full version of Windows 10. Windows garners less than 1 percent of the mobile OS market share. The smartphone market has always been huge, but recently, e-book readers and tablets have substantially increased the market for mobile client operating systems. As of 2020, 81 percent of Americans owned a smartphone, and 52 percent owned a tablet in addition to their smartphone.38 Server Operating Systems The last three rows of Figure 4-14 show the three most popular server operating systems. Windows Server is a version of Windows that has been specially designed and configured for server use. It has much more stringent and restrictive security features than other versions of Windows and is popular on servers in organizations that have made a strong commitment to Microsoft. Unix can also be used on servers, but it is gradually being replaced by Linux. Linux is frequently used on servers by organizations that want, for whatever reason, to avoid a server commitment to Microsoft. IBM is the primary proponent of Linux and in the past has used it as a means to better compete against Microsoft. Although IBM does not own Linux, IBM has developed many business systems solutions that use Linux. By using Linux, neither IBM nor its customers have to pay a license fee to Microsoft.

Virtualization is the process by which one physical computer hosts many different virtual (not literal) computers within it. One operating system, called the host operating system, runs one or more operating systems as applications. Those hosted operating systems are called virtual machines (vm). Each virtual machine has disk space and other resources allocated to it. The host operating system controls the activities of the virtual machines it hosts to prevent them from interfering with one another. With virtualization, each vm is able to operate exactly the same as it would if it were operating in a stand-alone, nonvirtual environment. Three types of virtualization exist:

· PC virtualization

· Server virtualization

· Desktop virtualization

With PC virtualization, a personal computer, such as a desktop or laptop, hosts several different operating systems. Say a user needs to have both Linux and Windows running on a computer for a training or development project. In that circumstance, the user can load software like Oracle VirtualBox or VMWare Workstation on the host operating system in order to create Linux and Windows virtual machines. The user can run both systems on the same hardware at the same time if the host operating system has sufficient resources (i.e., memory and CPU power). With server virtualization, a server computer hosts one or more other server computers. In Figure 4-16, a Windows Server computer is hosting multiple virtual machines. Users can log on to any of those virtual machines, and they will appear as normal desktop computers. Figure 4-17 shows how one of those virtual machines would appear to a user of that virtual desktop. Notice that the user of that virtual machine is running a Web browser as if it is a local desktop. Server virtualization plays a key role for cloud vendors, as you’ll learn in Lesson 6.

Figure 4-16: Windows Server Computer Hosting Virtual Machines

Source: Windows 10, Microsoft Corporation.

Figure 4-17: Virtual Machine Example

Source: Windows 10, Microsoft Corporation; Screenshot of Google Chrome.

PC virtualization is interesting as well as quite useful, as you will learn in Lesson 6. Desktop virtualization, on the other hand, has the potential to be revolutionary. With desktop virtualization, a server hosts many versions of desktop operating systems. Each of those desktops has a complete user environment and appears to the user to be just another PC. However, the desktop can be accessed from any computer to which the user has access. Thus, you could be at an airport and go to a terminal computer and access your virtualized desktop. To you, it appears as if that airport computer is your own personal computer. Using a virtual desktop also means that you wouldn’t have to worry about losing a corporate laptop or confidential internal data. Meanwhile, many other users could have accessed the computer in the airport, and each thought he or she had his or her personal computer. Desktop virtualization is in its infancy, but it might have a major impact during the early years of your career.

When you buy a computer program, you are not actually buying that program. Instead, you are buying a license to use that program. For example, when you buy a macOS license, Apple is selling you the right to use macOS. Apple continues to own the macOS program. Large organizations do not buy a license for each computer user. Instead, they negotiate a site license, which is a flat fee that authorizes the company to install the product (operating system or application) on all of that company’s computers or on all of the computers at a specific site. In the case of Linux, no company can sell you a license to use it. It is owned by the open source community, which states that Linux has no license fee (with certain reasonable restrictions). Large companies such as IBM and smaller companies such as RedHat can make money by supporting Linux, but no company makes money selling Linux licenses.

Some applications are designed to be free but gather data about the people who use them. Read the Ethics Guide about how this is done.

Application software performs a service or function. Some application programs are general purpose, such as Microsoft Excel or Word. Other application programs provide specific functions. QuickBooks, for example, is an application program that provides general ledger and other accounting functions. We begin by describing categories of application programs and then describe sources for them. Horizontal-market application software provides capabilities common across all organizations and industries. Word processors, graphics programs, spreadsheets, and presentation programs are all horizontal-market application software. Examples of such software are Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Examples from other vendors are Adobe’s Acrobat, Photoshop, and PageMaker and Jasc Corporation’s Paint Shop Pro. These applications are used in a wide variety of businesses across all industries. They are purchased off the shelf, and little customization of features is necessary (or possible). They are the automobile equivalent of a sedan. Everybody buys them and then uses them for different purposes.

Read more about how software is developed and managed in the Career Guide.

Vertical-market application software serves the needs of a specific industry. Examples of such programs are those used by fitness centers to bill patrons and track their training progress, those used by auto mechanics to keep track of customer data and customers’ automobile repairs, and those used by parts warehouses to track inventory, purchases, and sales. If horizontal-market applications are sedans, then vertical-market applications would be construction vehicles, like an excavator. They meet the needs of a specific industry. Vertical applications usually can be altered or customized. Typically, the company that sold the application software will provide such services or offer referrals to qualified consultants who can provide this service. One-of-a-kind application software is developed for a specific, unique need. The U.S. Department of Defense develops such software, for example, because it has needs that no other organization has. You can think of one-of-a-kind application software as the automotive equivalent of a military tank. Tanks are developed for a very specific and unique need. Tanks cost more to manufacture than sedans, and cost overruns are common. They take longer to make and require unique hardware components. However, tanks are highly customizable and fit the requirements of a heavy-duty battle vehicle very well. If you’re headed into battle, you wouldn’t want to be driving a four-door sedan. Sometimes paying for a custom vehicle, while expensive, is warranted. It all depends on what you’re doing. Militaries, for example, purchase sedans, construction vehicles, and tanks. Each vehicle fills its own need. You can buy computer software in exactly the same ways: off-the-shelf software, off-the-shelf with alterations software, or custom-developed software. Organizations develop custom application software themselves or hire a development vendor. Like buying a tank, such development is done in situations where the needs of the organization are so unique that no horizontal or vertical applications are available. By developing custom software, the organization can tailor its application to fit its requirements. Custom development is difficult and risky. Staffing and managing teams of software developers is challenging. Managing software projects can be daunting. Many organizations have embarked on application development projects only to find that the projects take twice as long—or longer—to finish than planned. Cost overruns of 200 percent and 300 percent are not uncommon. We will discuss such risks further in Lesson 12. In addition, every application program needs to be adapted to changing needs and changing technologies. The adaptation costs of horizontal and vertical software are amortized over all the users of that software, perhaps thousands or millions of customers. For custom-developed software, however, the using organization must pay all of the adaptation costs itself. Over time, this cost burden is heavy. Because of the risk and expense, custom development is the last-choice alternative, used only when there is no other option. Figure 4-18 summarizes software sources and types.

Figure 4-18: Software Sources and Types

Firmware is computer software that is installed into devices such as printers, print servers, and various types of communication devices. The software is coded just like other software, but it is installed into special, read-only memory of the printer or other device. In this way, the program becomes part of the device’s memory; it is as if the program’s logic is designed into the device’s circuitry. Therefore, users do not need to load firmware into the device’s memory. Firmware can be changed or upgraded, but this is normally a task for IS professionals.

Knowledge Check

Q4-4 Is Open Source Software a Viable Alternative?

To answer this question, you first need to know something about the open source movement and process. Most computer historians would agree that Richard Matthew Stallman is the father of the movement. In 1983, he developed a set of tools called GNU (a self-referential acronym meaning GNU Not Unix) for creating a free Unix-like operating system. Stallman made many other contributions to open source, including the GNU general public license (GPL) agreement, one of the standard license agreements for open source software. Stallman was unable to attract enough developers to finish the free Unix system but continued making other contributions to the open source movement. In 1991 Linus Torvalds, working in Helsinki, began work on another version of Unix, using some of Stallman’s tools. That version eventually became Linux, the high-quality and very popular operating system discussed previously. The Internet proved to be a great asset for open source, and many open source projects became successful, including:

· LibreOffice (default office suite in Linux distributions)

· Firefox (a browser)

· MySQL (a DBMS; see Lesson 5)

· Apache (a Web server; see Lesson 6)

· Ubuntu (a Windows-like desktop operating system)

· Android (a mobile device operating system)

· Cassandra (a NoSQL DBMS; see Lesson 5)

· Hadoop (a Big Data processing system; see Lesson 3)

To a person who has never enjoyed writing computer programs, it is difficult to understand why anyone would donate his or her time and skills to contribute to open source projects. Programming is, however, an intense combination of art and logic, and designing and writing a complicated computer program can be exceedingly pleasurable (and addictive). Many programmers joyfully write computer programs—day after day. If you have an artistic and logical mind, you ought to try it. The first reason that people contribute to open source is that it is great fun! Additionally, some people contribute to open source because it gives them the freedom to choose the projects they work on. They may have a programming day job that is not terribly interesting—say, writing a program to manage a computer printer. Their job pays the bills, but it’s not fulfilling. In the 1950s, Hollywood studio musicians suffered as they recorded the same style of music over and over for a long string of uninteresting movies. To keep their sanity, those musicians would gather on Sundays to play jazz, and a number of high-quality jazz clubs resulted. That’s what open source is to programmers: a place where they can exercise their creativity while working on projects they find interesting and fulfilling. Another reason for contributing to open source is to exhibit one’s skill, both for pride and to find a job at a company. A final reason is to start a business selling services to support an open source product.

The term open source means that the source code of the program is available to the public. Source code is computer code as written by humans and understandable by humans. Figure 4-19 shows a portion of the computer code written for the iMed Analytics project (see Lesson 7 opener).

Figure 4-19: Source Code Sample

Source code is compiled into machine code that is processed by a computer. Machine code is, in general, not understandable by humans and cannot be modified. When a user accesses a website, the machine code version of the program runs on the user’s computer. We do not show machine code in a figure because it would look like this: 1101001010010111111001110111100100011100000111111011101111100111 . . . In a closed source project, say, Microsoft Office, the source code is highly protected and only available to trusted employees and carefully vetted contractors. The source code is protected like gold in a vault. Only those trusted programmers can make changes to a closed source project. With open source, anyone can obtain the source code from the open source project’s website. Programmers alter or add to this code depending on their interests and goals. In most cases, programmers can incorporate code they find into their own projects. They may be able to resell those projects depending on the type of license agreement the project uses. Open source succeeds because of collaboration. A programmer examines the source code and identifies a need or project that seems interesting. He or she then creates a new feature, redesigns or reprograms an existing feature, or fixes a known problem. That code is then sent to others in the open source project who evaluate the quality and merits of the work and add it to the product, if appropriate. Typically, there are many cycles of iteration and feedback. Because of this iteration, a well-managed project with strong peer reviews can result in very high quality code, like that in Linux.

The answer depends on to whom and for what. Open source has certainly become legitimate. According to The Economist, “It is now generally accepted that the future will involve a blend of both proprietary and open source software.”39 During your career, open source will likely take a greater and greater role in software. However, whether open source works for a particular situation depends on the requirements and constraints of that situation. You will learn more about matching requirements and programs in Lesson 12. In some cases, companies choose open source software because it is “free.” It turns out that this advantage may be less important than you’d think because in many cases support and operational costs swamp the initial licensing fee.

Q4-5 What Are the Differences Between Native and Web Applications?

Applications can be categorized as native applications that run on just one operating system or Web applications that run in browsers. In the latter case, the browser provides a more or less consistent environment for the application; the peculiarities of operating systems and hardware are handled by the browser’s code and hidden from the Web application. Figure 4-20 contrasts important characteristics of native and Web applications. Consider the Native Applications column first.

You know the answer to that question. If it were clear-cut, we’d only be discussing one alternative. It’s not. The choice depends on your strategy, your particular goals, the requirements for your application, your budget, your schedule, your tolerance for managing technical projects, your need for application revenue, and other factors. In general, Web applications are cheaper to develop and maintain, but they may lack the wow factor. You and your organization have to decide for yourselves!

Knowledge Check

Q4-6 Why Are Mobile Systems Increasingly Important?

Mobile systems are information systems that support users in motion. Mobile systems users access the system from any place—at home, at work, in the car, on the bus, or at the beach—using any smart device, such as a smartphone, tablet, or PC. The possibilities are endless. Mobile systems users move not only geographically but also from device to device. The user who starts reading a book on an iPad on a bus, continues reading that book on a PC at work, and finishes it on a Kindle Fire at home is mobile both geographically and across devices. As shown in Figure 4-21, the major elements in a mobile system are users in motion, mobile devices, wireless connectivity, and a cloud-based resource. A mobile device is a small, lightweight, power-conserving, computing device that is capable of wireless connectivity. Almost all mobile devices have a display and some means for data entry. Mobile devices include smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, and small, light laptops. Desktop computers, Xboxes, and large, heavy, power-hungry laptops are not mobile devices.

Figure 4-21: Elements of a Mobile Information System

You will learn about wireless connectivity and the cloud in Lesson 6. For now, just assume that the cloud is a group of servers on the other end of a connection with a mobile device. When downloading a book for a Kindle, for example, the cloud is one or more servers on the other end that store that book and download a copy of it to your device. The major reason for the importance of mobile systems is the size of their market. According to Cisco, at the end of 2019 there were 8.6 billion mobile devices generating 11.5 exabytes of traffic per month.41 By 2021, this will jump to 12.3 billion mobile devices generating more than 77 exabytes per month. That’s 1.5 devices for every person on the planet. Smartphones will account for nearly 99 percent of global mobile traffic. It took seven years after the launch of the first iPhone (2007–2014) for smartphones to achieve mainstream use by 70 percent of the U.S. market.43 That’s faster than any other technology except television in the early 1950s, which tied the smartphone adoption rate. The Pew Research Center Mobile Fact Sheet shows that 96 percent of people in the United States owned a mobile phone and 81 percent owned a smartphone.44 The size of the mobile e-commerce, or m-commerce, market is expected to exceed $488B by 2024.45 Additionally, mobile use is favored by the young. According to Pew Research Center’s measures of mobile device use, the younger the age group, the greater the percentage of people with mobile devices. Further, younger people have more devices per capita than older groups.46 These young cohorts will further increase mobile systems use in the years to come. Because of this vast and growing market, mobile systems are having a major impact on business and society today—impact that is forcing industry change while creating new career opportunities for mobile-IS-savvy professionals, as well as large numbers of new, interesting mobile-IS-related jobs. Figure 4-22 summarizes the mobile-system impact for each of the five components of an information system. We will discuss each of the components in this figure, starting with hardware.

Clearly, increasing demand for mobile systems means the sales of many more mobile devices, often at the expense of PC sales. Hewlett-Packard, a large PC manufacturer, learned this fact when it didn’t respond quickly enough to the onslaught of mobile devices and was forced to eliminate 27,000 jobs in 2012. In the future, there will be high demand for innovative mobile devices as well as cheap copycats. If you’re reading this course, you’re unlikely to be a hardware engineer, and if you’re not living in Asia, you’re also unlikely to be involved in hardware manufacturing. However, any market having 3.9 billion prospects is ripe with opportunities in marketing, sales, logistics, customer support, and related activities.

Software

The reduced size of mobile devices requires the invention of new, innovative interfaces. The mobile user is an active user and expects an active screen experience. The premium will be for moving graphics, changing Web pages, and animation. Applications will need to scale from the very smallest to the very largest while providing a user experience appropriate to the device’s size. Rapid technology change in mobile software continually levels the playing field. Today, for example, expert programmers in Objective-C better not relax. html5 and css3 are gaining popularity, and they will reduce the need for Objective-C expertise. Further, as you learned in Q4-5, while languages like Objective-C are difficult and time-consuming to learn, html5, css3, and JavaScript are less so. With the reduced barrier to entry, hordes of less experienced and less educated new entrants will appear as competitors. You might be one of them. Additionally, continually evolving software means new and exciting entrepreneurial opportunities. Are you sorry that you missed the early days working at Facebook? Right now, somewhere, there is another Mark Zuckerberg starting . . . well, what? Because of the continually changing software environment, new opportunities abound and will continue to do so for decades.

Data

Many more mobile systems mean an incredible amount of new data, data that professionals can use to create much more information. But, as you learned in Lesson 1, more data doesn’t necessarily mean more information. In fact, many business professionals believe they’re drowning in data while starving for information. What can be done with all of this mobile-systems data to enable humans to conceive information of greater value to them? Data mining and better reporting are good options that were discussed in Lesson 3. On the other hand, not all the news is good, at least not for many organizations. For one, smaller screens means less room for advertising, a factor that limited the success of the Facebook public offering in May 2012. Also, mobile systems increase the risk of organizations losing control over their data. In the past, employees used only computer equipment provided by the employer and connected only via employer-managed networks. In that situation, it is possible for the organization to control who does what with which data and where. No longer. Employees come to work with their own mobile devices. Data leakage is inevitable. With more people switching to mobile devices and with less room for ads, online advertising revenue may be sharply reduced, possibly endangering the revenue model that supports most of the Web’s free content. If this happens, dramatic change is just around the corner!

Mobile systems are always on. They have no business hours. And people who use mobile systems are equally always on. In the mobile world, we’re always open for business. It is impossible to be out of the office. One consequence of always-on is the blending of our personal and professional lives. Such blending means, in part, that business will intrude on your personal life, and your personal life will intrude on your business. This intrusion can be distracting and stressful; on the other hand, it can lead to richer, more complex relationships. Employees will expect to use their mobile devices at work, but should they? In truth, who can keep them from it? If the organization blocks them from connecting to the work-related networks, they can connect over the wireless networks that they pay for themselves. In this case, the organization is entirely out of the loop. Could employees send confidential corporate information through their personal mobile devices? We will discuss these issues in more detail in Q4-7. Mobile systems offer the potential of just-in-time data, which is data delivered to the user at the precise time it is needed. A pharmaceutical salesperson uses just-in-time data when she accesses a mobile system to obtain the latest literature on a new drug while waiting for the doctor to whom she will pitch it. She needn’t remember the drug’s characteristics any longer than it takes her to walk down the hallway and make the sale. Furthermore, some organizations will passively wait for change to happen, while others will proactively reengineer their processes to incorporate mobile systems for higher process quality. Either way, the need for business process change creates opportunity for creative, nonroutine business problem solvers.

Mobile systems change the value of our thinking. For example, just-in-time data removes the premium on the ability to memorize vast quantities of product data, but creates a premium for the ability to access, query, and present that data. Mobile systems increase the speed of business, giving an advantage to those who can nimbly respond to changing conditions and succeed with the unexpected. With the ability to be connected and always on, organizations may find they can be just as effective with part-time employees and independent contractors. The increasing regulatory complexity and cost of full-time employees will create an incentive for organizations to do just that. As that occurs, professionals who can thrive in a dynamic environment with little need for direct supervision will find that they can work both where and when they want, at least a good part of the time. Once you’re always on and remote, it doesn’t matter if you’re always on in New Jersey or at a ski area in Vermont. New lifestyle choices become possible for such workers. These mobile workers can work where they want and for whom they want. There won’t be a boss looking over their shoulder. They can work multiple jobs with different companies at the same time! Companies may have to change the way they pay workers. Instead of paying employees by the hour, they would need to focus more on paying for productivity. This shift toward focusing on performance will empower great employees and make it harder for slackers to hide out in an organization. Companies will benefit from mobile workers too. They won’t need as much expensive commercial office space. What an incredible time to be starting a business career!

Q4-7 What Are the Challenges of Personal Mobile Devices at Work?

So far, we’ve focused on mobile applications that organizations create for their customers and others to use. In this question we will address the use of mobile systems within organizations. In truth, organizations today have a love/hate relationship with their employees’ use of their own mobile devices at work. They love the cost-saving possibility of having employees buy their own hardware, but they hate the increased vulnerability and loss of control. The result, at least today, is a wide array of organizational attitudes. Consider a recent report by AccessData that estimates 80 percent of companies allow BYOD, but only 40 percent have created an official mobile-use policy.47 If you aren’t already bringing your own device to work, you’ll soon have to. But understand that many companies have avoided setting official mobile-use policies.

Figure 4-23 summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of employee use of mobile systems at work. Advantages include the cost savings just mentioned as well as greater employee satisfaction of using devices that they chose according to their own preferences rather than organization-supplied PCs. Because employees are already using these devices for their own purposes, they need less training and can be more productive. All of this means reduced support costs.

On the other hand, employee use of mobile devices has significant disadvantages. First, there is the real danger of lost or damaged data. When data is brought into employee-owned computing devices, the organization loses control over where it goes or what happens to it. IBM, for example, disallowed the use of Apple’s voice searching application, Siri, on employees’ mobile devices for just that reason.48 Also, if an employee loses his or her device, the data goes with it, and when employees leave the organization, the data on their personal devices needs to be deleted somehow. Organizations also lose control over the updating of software and the applications that users employ. This control loss leads to compatibility problems; users can process data, for example edit documents, with software that is incompatible with the organization’s standard software. The result to the organization is a mess of inconsistent documents. Possibly the greatest disadvantage of employee use of their own devices is the risk of infection. The organization cannot know where the users have been with their devices or what they’ve done when they’ve been there. The possibility of severe viruses infecting the organization’s networks is real. Finally, all of these disadvantages can also lead, ironically, to greater support costs. Given all that, organizations cannot avoid the issue. Whatever the costs and risks, employees are bringing their own devices to work. Ignoring the issue will simply make matters worse.

Survey of Organizational BYOD Policy

A bring your own device (BYOD) policy is a statement concerning employees’ permissions and responsibilities when they use their own device for organizational business. Figure 4-24 arranges BYOD policies according to functionality and control. Starting in the lower left-hand corner, the most primitive policy is to ignore mobile use. That posture, which provides neither functionality to the employee nor control to the organization, has no advantages and, as just stated, cannot last.

Figure 4-24: Six Common BYOD Policies

The next step up in functionality is for the organization to offer its wireless network to mobile devices, as if it were a coffee shop. The advantage to the organization of this policy is that the organization can sniff employees’ mobile traffic, thus learning how employees are using their devices (and time) during work. The next policy provides more functionality and somewhat more control. Here the organization creates secure application services using https (explained in Lesson 10) that require employee sign-on and can be accessed from any device, mobile or not. Such applications can be used when employees are at work or elsewhere. These services provide controlled access to some organizations’ assets. A fourth policy is more of a strategic maneuver than a policy. The organization tells employees that they can sign on to the organization’s network with their mobile devices, but the employee is financially responsible for any damage he or she does. The hope is that few employees know what their exposure is and hence decide not to do so. A more enlightened policy is to manage the users’ devices as if they were owned by the organization. With this policy, employees turn over their mobile devices to the IS department, which cleanses and reloads software and installs programs that enable the IS department to manage the device remotely. Numerous vendors license products called mobile device management (MDM) software that assist this process. These products install and update software, back up and restore mobile devices, wipe employer software and data from devices in the event the device is lost or the employee leaves the company, report usage, and provide other mobile device management data. This policy benefits the organization, but some employees resist turning over the management of their own hardware to the organization. This resistance can be softened if the organization pays at least a portion of the hardware expense. The most controlling policy is for the organization to declare that it owns any mobile device that employees connect to its network. To be enforceable, this policy must be part of the employee’s contract. It is taken by organizations that manage very secure operations and environments. In some military/intelligence organizations, the policy is that any smart device that ever enters the workplace may never leave it. The advantages of these six policies are summarized in Figure 4-25.

BYOD policies are rapidly evolving, and many organizations have not yet determined what is best for them. If your employer has a committee to develop such policies, join it if you can. Doing so will provide a great way to gain exposure to the leading technology thinkers at your organization.

Knowledge Check

Q4-8 2031?

There’s a really old movie called You’ve Got Mail (1998) starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. In it, the characters get really excited when they get “mail.” The term email was so new at the time that it hadn’t even caught on yet. You can see people in the movie reading newspapers and paper books. Oh, how times have changed. Fast-forward to today. Email now arrives seconds after it’s sent. You check your email during commercial breaks while you’re watching TV, while you’re driving in traffic, and while you’re sitting on the toilet. Instead of checking your email with bated breath, you’re dreading seeing more work pile up in your inbox. Or worse—bills, spam, and viruses. New hardware and software have changed everyday life. People are always on, always connected, always communicating, always working and playing. This trend will continue. The Internet of Things will allow us to be continually connected to more and more devices. You’ll be able to control your home, and everything in it, from your smartphone. Your home will be so smart that it will analyze you. It will see what, how, and when you do things and then anticipate your needs. Imagine your TV turning on every morning at just the right time so you can watch the markets open (see Figure 4-26). You smell fresh-baked bread, your shower turns on by itself, and your car knows exactly when to self-start so it’s warm when you get in. Your self-driving vehicle will let you work on your way to work. You’ll see these anticipatory systems at your job too.

Figure 4-26: Smart Home

Source: Elenabsl/Shutterstock

How will advances in hardware and software affect the types of jobs you’ll go to? Ten years from now, the best-paying jobs will be ones that don’t currently exist. The following are hot jobs today: IoT architect, marketing technologist, Big Data architect, and DevOps manager. These job titles didn’t exist 10 years ago. Ten years from now, there will be an entirely new set of jobs that you haven’t heard of before. How do you prepare for future jobs? What types of jobs will pay well? Regardless of your current college major, your future job will probably require a high level of tech skill. The best way to prepare for these types of jobs is to cultivate creativity, novel problem solving, and good judgment and have a sincere desire to learn new things.

So What? New From CES 2020

When was the last time that you upgraded your phone, tablet, laptop, TV, or headphones? If you stop and think about the frequency with which the average person purchases new devices, it can be quite surprising. It can be even more shocking to dig around in drawers or closets to find old devices from many years ago. Tinkering with an original iPhone feels like a technology from a previous generation. But at some point, every abandoned device that now sits in a box collecting dust was the peak of innovative cutting-edge technology.

Source: Marish/Shutterstock

The epicenter of shiny new technologies is the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which has been held every January in Las Vegas for more than 50 years. Check out a sampling of some of the latest and greatest technologies that are under development and were featured at the 2020 CES show; they may soon be available for early-adopting gadget aficionados in a store near you!

· Foldable screens49: One of the biggest selling points tech companies use to market their products is convenience—in other words, how can they make your life easier! A hot trend this year at CES is foldable screens for computers and tablets. Foldable screens have been introduced in some mobile phone models, but this technology is now being applied to larger form factors to ease space and size requirements needed to lug around these larger devices. Who doesn’t want a full-sized tablet or computer that can be halved in size and slid into a smaller pocket or bag?

· City of the future50: CES is admittedly focused on the “micro” world of gadgetry, but there are some “macro” ideas out there. Toyota unveiled its plans for a city of the future, which will be built in Japan on a plot of just under 200 acres. The city will feature a variety of innovative technologies, including autonomous cars, IoT-laden homes, and numerous robots. Most intriguing is that this city is not just a proof of concept for geeks and nerds to gush over—it will actually have residents who are living in the city!

· Segway S-Pod51: If you have recently traveled to a city that features a number of sightseeing opportunities, you have probably been startled by a Segway tour group sneaking up on your six o’clock and zipping past. The inherently awkward-looking original Segway often draws prolonged stares and a few chuckles from onlookers, but they are a sleek method to cruise around and cover ground in a hurry. At CES this year, Segway introduced the Segway S-Pod, based on the same ideas as the original design, but the S-Pod is shaped like a stroller for adults but without the front wheel. Operators can control the S-Pod using a joystick, and this new version includes some handy new safety features, too.

· Impossible Pork52: At CES people are usually talking about bytes, not bites, but this year there was good reason to talk about both. There has been a recent movement to master the technology of creating plant-based meat that is convincingly a tasty substitute for actual meat products. Impossible Burgers have gained in popularity over the last year or two, and the company used CES as an opportunity to market its new Impossible Pork product. Aside from the health benefits of eating plant-based pork in place of meat, there are also sustainability benefits due to the atmospheric effects of raising livestock (which accounts for a non-trivial amount of greenhouse gas emissions annually).

Hold That Thought Let’s say CES inspired you to go out and buy a bunch of sleek new toys. Inevitably, there comes a time when we all have to round up our abandoned gadgets and try to find a way to dispose of them. In some cases, we do the responsible thing and drop our devices off at designated e-recycling locations. More often than not, these devices are tossed in the trash and disposed of with everything else that we throw away. This trend has a number of profound implications.53 First, most gadgets contain toxic chemicals that can become extremely harmful environmentally as devices are irresponsibly disposed of and decompose. Second, gadgets also contain trace amounts of valuable materials that could be salvaged and reused again if recycled properly. While you may think that tossing the occasional cell phone or tablet into the garbage is not that big of a deal, consider the following statistic: It is estimated that the amount of e-waste that will be generated worldwide by 2021 may exceed 57 million tons. Unfortunately, even doing the right thing by recycling e-waste can still result in mass exports of trashed devices to lesser-developed countries that are not equipped or willing to handle the materials properly. Ultimately, simply throwing away old devices can result in concentrated areas of e-waste in landfills, which can have devastating effects on the environment and the people living nearby. In light of this, as companies continue to develop and market fun and flashy devices for us to consume, it is creating a push effect that can lead us to hastily and irresponsibly dispose of our aging devices. Let’s all be sure to repurpose or recycle our old technologies when replacing them with the next best thing! Questions

1. Imagine you have partnered with a company to develop the next best gadget to be featured at an upcoming CES. What gadget would you create? (You can be motivated by trying to create something that would fill a need of yours, or you can try to develop something that you think would be a massive commercial success.)  Show Answer

2. Take a few minutes to take inventory of all of your electronic devices. Next, identify the typical life span of each of these products. Estimate how many devices you might abandon over the span of 10 years. What sustainability score would you give yourself?  Show Answer

3. Sustainability becomes an even more important issue when considering e-waste at an organizational level (i.e., think how much e-waste is created by your local university, municipality, or hospital). How might cloud computing reduce e-waste?  Show Answer

4. Phones are one of the devices that we replace most frequently. Brainstorm three different ways that a phone could be repurposed for something else instead of just being thrown away.  Show Answer

Security Guide

Cyber-Physical Attacks Gary checked his watch and wondered how long he had been sitting in the server room. The constant hum of the fans and the cooler temperature made it the perfect place to relax and find a reprieve on this hot summer day. More importantly, it was a place that his boss wouldn’t think to look for him. Things had been incredibly hectic over the past several weeks. About a month ago, he and his team had responded to a report from an executive that had been the target of a spear phishing attack. (A spear phishing attack is like a basic phishing attack, but it is designed to target a specific individual.) The executive had been distracted on a phone call when checking email, and she clicked on a file attachment in one of the messages. When the file didn’t load and nothing else happened, she looked more closely at the email and realized it was suspicious. That was when Gary and his team were called in to investigate.

Source: Sergey Nivens/Shutterstock

The information security team had examined the email and the payload of the email attachment, but they hadn’t been able to find anything meaningful. Monitoring of internal network activity had revealed that traffic seemed more or less the same, and no alarms had been set off with their top-of-the-line intrusion detection system (IDS). Furthermore, no one in the company reported any sort of suspicious activity on their devices, even the executive who had been the target of the initial attack. Frankly, it didn’t make any sense—why would someone go to the extent of sending a malicious email that didn’t do anything? Gary was starting to think that maybe it wasn’t an attack at all—maybe it was just a mistake. Just then, the server room door sprung open, and Richard, one of Gary’s security team members, rushed in and asked, “Gary—are you in here?” Gary flagged him down and asked Richard what was happening. “Gary, I don’t believe it—I know we never found anything linked to that spear phishing attack, but I think we may have just found what it was targeting. I just spoke to Eric down on our production line, and he said one of the machines has gone haywire. “It turns out that we have been producing a part for F-16 fighter jet engines for the past several months that had the specifications changed and the part is faulty—visually, it looks fine, but the dimensions are slightly off, and it is prone to failure. The only person who has access to change the plans is our production supervisor, and he didn’t do it. “He wasn’t sure how someone could access the configuration files without breaking in to the system, so he figured he should call the security team. Is it possible that the malware from that spear phishing attack was somehow designed to target that one specific machine?” Gary’s blood ran ice cold as this possibility sank in. He looked at Richard and slowly asked, “Did we just become the next Stuxnet?” Bits and Bytes Go Boom While the scenario presented here may seem far-fetched, it is not. In fact, there have been a number of instances of cyberattacks that were deployed to either cause physical damage or demonstrate the ability to cause physical damage. The most notorious of these is Stuxnet, which was released around 2009–10.54 Stuxnet is a piece of malware that was developed in collaboration between the United States and Israel. It was not a general piece of malware to impact all computers; Stuxnet was specifically designed to target Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities.55 The malware was somehow introduced to an internal network at the facility—a network that had no path to the external Internet. Once the malware was deployed, it infected programmable logic controllers (PLCs), which were used to govern the speeds at which uranium enrichment centrifuges were programmed to spin. Unbeknownst to facility workers, the speed of the centrifuges was increased and decreased until they broke, causing irreparable damage and setting back Iran’s nuclear program. While Stuxnet is the most high-profile example of a cyberattack having an adverse physical impact, this type of attack has actually occurred again. Back in 2014–15, it was reported that a steel mill in Germany had been the target of hackers. The attack was designed to disrupt control systems that ultimately prevented one of the blast furnaces from being shut off.56 While no injuries were reported, massive damage to the facility occurred. An analysis of the attack revealed that hackers were able to gain access to the network by using a spear phishing attack—once they got the credentials to access the office network, they then compromised the systems used to control the blast furnace.57 In an interview with Edward Snowden about cyber risks on physical infrastructure, Snowden stressed that any infrastructure component has the potential to be disrupted, damaged, or destroyed if it is connected to the Internet.58 Power grids are often one of the first areas of infrastructure that are thought of as a potential target. While the nature of the U.S. power grid is such that power disruption to the entire country would be unlikely (it has been reported that nine key power facilities would have to go offline to accomplish this), a regional disruption for an extended period of time is possible. In fact, experts predict that a blackout resulting from damaged or destroyed power equipment from a cyberattack could result in an outage lasting for months or even a year.59 Discussion Questions

1. In the hypothetical scenario presented at the beginning of this article, it is reported that changes to the production specifications were altered by external hackers and malware. Is it possible that the production supervisor could have done it?  Show Answer

2. The article mentions that the Stuxnet attack relied on compromising programmable logic controllers (PLCs). Do some online research and find out if PLCs are used for any other applications. Does this introduce risk to other types of organizations?  Show Answer

3. Why do you think phishing attacks have the success rates that they do? Do you think it is likely that you would be the target of a spear phishing attack?  Show Answer

4. What do you think would happen if a regional power outage was to occur in the northeastern United States for several months? How would the time of year impact the implications of a power outage of this scale?  Show Answer

Career Guide

Source: Marshall Pettit, Preparis, Inc., Senior Software Engineer

· Name: Marshall Pettit

· Company: Preparis, Inc.

· Job Title: Senior Software Engineer

· Education: University of Utah

1. How did you get this type of job? Networking. Never underestimate the value of professional lunches and close friends. Although my education and earlier experience differed substantially from my current job, a brilliant friend encouraged me to pursue my dreams as a software developer and gave me a strong referral to a company that had recently offered him a job. We started together, and he became an important mentor for me.

2. What attracted you to this field? Web software development has always fascinated me since taking an elective during my undergraduate business management studies. Building complex yet elegant business systems using commands in a text editor is as fulfilling as building a home from raw materials and seeing it take shape.

3. What does a typical workday look like for you (duties, decisions, problems)? Each workday requires self-motivation and a strong commitment to our team. I meet briefly each morning with my team to review our progress and make sure it is in line with the goals and objectives we select at the beginning of each iteration, spanning 2 or 3 weeks. I also make myself available throughout the day to review their code and individual work, as they do for me.

4. What do you like most about your job? My home is my office, and my schedule is flexible. This allows me opportunities to coach my children’s sports teams, help with their homework, and support their daily needs.

5. What skills would someone need to do well at your job? Learning quickly! Programming languages, platforms, and paradigms consistently change. Staying abreast of these changes is important for making positive contributions on a continuing basis.

6. Are education or certifications important in your field? Why? Formal education is important in every field. Although my education differs from my current responsibilities, it provides me greater depth when interacting with business leaders as we develop solutions for the customers we serve. Certificates are not as important in my field. Instead, consistent informal study and practice at coding challenge websites pay greater dividends.

7. What advice would you give to someone who is considering working in your field? Just do it. Take a leap of faith and run with the challenges ahead. Courageously tackling your dream job in spite of the imaginary barriers around it will be both fun and rewarding.

8. What do you think will be hot tech jobs in 10 years? Artificial intelligence will provide the most intriguing opportunities in the coming years. Opportunities in machine learning, data science, and business intelligence will grow substantially.

Ethics Guide

Big Data = Big Surveillance Wendy glanced over at the clock and was startled to see that it was 2 p.m. She had been watching the news for about 4 hours straight, and she was pretty sure that she had seen the same loop of headlines and news stories about three times. Despite the redundancy, she couldn’t seem to turn it off. Life in the middle of a pandemic couldn’t seem more surreal—it was like living on the set of a crazy movie. She was starting to wonder if subconsciously she was trying to barrage herself with bad news to the point that she was desensitized from the possibility of feeling any worse.

Source: Petovarga/Shutterstock

The saving grace of this whole situation was her ability to go outside and get some fresh air. Her neighborhood provided a nice loop to walk around a few times a day. Even if she couldn’t stop to strike up a conversation with neighbors, just seeing other people after being cooped up inside the house all day was a welcome relief. She had prided herself on following all of the recommended safety guidelines: vigorous handwashing, social distancing, wearing a mask in public, going to the store only when necessary, and so on. What else was she going to do, anyway—she had lost her job a few weeks before and hadn’t been able to find anything else to replace it. She just hoped her job would be there waiting for her once things started to normalize. Walking a Fine Line She blinked and realized that her eyes were burning from too much TV time—time to go for a walk! She laced up her shoes, grabbed her phone, and headed out the door. It was a beautiful day, and she was feeling adventurous—this would be a good day to go a bit farther and check out some of the trails in the woods around the neighborhood. She ended up going much farther than she had anticipated, but the beauty of the forest was breathtaking and begged to be explored—countless birds were singing as she waded through a seemingly endless ocean of green fern fronds that ebbed and flowed with the breeze. A startling vibration in her pocket caught her attention—she must have found a patch of service again. She pulled out her phone to look at the screen. Was it another news headline—the latest health statistics, stock market data, or unemployment figures? Her jaw dropped in disbelief as she read the text on the screen:

This message is from the National Pandemic Response Task Force. You have been identified as violating a shelter-in-place order by traveling too far from your registered home address. This is your first and only warning. Additional violations will result in punitive actions by local, state, and/or federal authorities.

Wendy quickly dropped her phone into her pocket and started heading back toward the neighborhood. Burning Resistance The quiet was eerie. Usually the din of a distant airplane would interrupt the silence, but the grounding of most commercial flights had left the inky-black evening sky uninterrupted by flashing lights or any semblance of noise. Beth grabbed a few birch logs off the woodpile and tossed them into the fire pit. The force of the new logs hitting the glowing pile of embers sent a shower of sparks into the air—one by one they burned themselves out and seemed to magically disappear. The highly flammable birch bark quickly erupted into flames, and the reinvigorated fire cast a newfound yellowish glow that illuminated the surrounding trees in the yard. In the firelight Beth could see a few silhouettes moving toward her from across the yard. By the profiles alone she could easily identify her longtime neighborhood friends. After weeks of being tormented in self-quarantine, they had all agreed enough was enough. They determined that getting infected at some point in the future would be inevitable, so why not get it over with now? Besides, sitting at home was boring, and if she and her friends got it over with, they could travel and take advantage of historically low airfare. Beth embraced each of her friends as she welcomed them to the inviting fire and brought the group some snacks and drinks. They laughed, and cried laughing, as they shared stories about hunting for toilet paper and took turns using their phones to share their favorite quarantine memes. They all agreed that it felt good to be back together. They had all taken for granted that there was something special about being able to look someone in the eye, not look at them displayed on a screen, when talking. Suddenly, a number of simultaneous white glows stole their attention from the fire. They each grabbed for their vibrating phones and, in unison, as if they had practiced this before, read the following prompt on the screen:

This message is from the National Pandemic Response Task Force. You have been identified as violating social distancing orders by being in close proximity to persons not registered to this home address. Please disband immediately. This is your first and only warning. Additional violations will result in punitive actions by local, state, and/or federal authorities.

They looked up at the exact same moment and said, “Are you kidding me?” One of the friends asked, “What happened to living in a free country?” They all shut off their phones, and Beth retreated to the house to bring out another round of drinks—there was no way this party was ending early. Discussion Questions

1. During the COVID-19 pandemic, telecommunications companies and governments used the GPS data captured by cell phones to track and analyze the movements of citizens. While the hypothetical warning messages described in this case were not actually used, consider the potential use of cell phone tracking data to monitor and communicate with citizens in times of a crisis.

a. Is this behavior ethical according to the categorical imperative?

b. Is this behavior ethical according to the utilitarian perspective?

2. Most cell phone users do not realize that their devices are constantly recording location data and sending this data back to telecommunications providers. Telecommunication providers often share or sell this data to third parties. How do you feel about this practice relative to your responses to questions 1a and 1b?

3. Which of the two protagonists did you relate with most? How do you think your response to this question reveals your position on the ethics of tracking cell phone users and analyzing location data for a variety of government or business applications?

4. Those in positions of power often use crises to expand their power in ways that would be frowned upon under normal circumstances. If you agree that tracking/analyzing cell phone location data in a crisis is ethical, do you think that these types of tracking efforts will immediately be curtailed once a crisis is over or that the ethics of doing so will change?

Active Review

Use this Active Review to verify that you understand the ideas and concepts that answer the lesson’s study questions.

· Q4-1 What do business professionals need to know about computer hardware? List types of hardware and give an example of each. Define bit and byte. Explain why bits are used to represent computer data. Define the units of bytes used to size memory. Describe the impact of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and machine to machine communication on businesses.

·

· Q4-2 How can new hardware affect competitive strategies? Define IoT and describe a smart device. Explain why smart devices are desirable. Give two examples of how businesses could benefit from smart devices. Describe the difference between AR, MR, and VR. Explain why sense of presence is important in virtual environments. Describe how autonomous vehicles could be safer and cheaper and make life easier. Explain how drones and robots may force workers to upskill in order to keep working at the same company. Explain how 3D printing works and how it could affect new product design, manufacturing, distribution, and consumer purchasing. List some FinTech innovations and explain why they have the potential to be so impactful. Describe some of the benefits and risks of using a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin.

·

· Q4-3 What do business professionals need to know about software? Review Figure 4-14 and explain the meaning of each cell in this table. Describe three kinds of virtualization and explain the use of each. Explain the difference between software ownership and software licenses. Explain the differences among horizontal-market, vertical-market, and one-of-a-kind applications. Describe the three ways that organizations can acquire software.

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· Q4-4 Is open source software a viable alternative? Define GNU and GPL. Name three successful open source projects. Describe four reasons programmers contribute to open source projects. Define open source, closed source, source code, and machine code. In your own words, explain why open source is a legitimate alternative but might or might not be appropriate for a given application.

·

· Q4-5 What are the differences between native and Web applications? In your own words, summarize the differences between native applications and Web applications. In high-level terms, explain the difference between object-oriented languages and scripting languages. Explain each cell of Figure 4-20. State which is better: native or Web applications. Justify your answer.

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· Q4-6 Why are mobile systems increasingly important? Define mobile systems. Name and describe the four elements of a mobile system. Describe the size of the mobile market and explain why there are 3.9 billion mobile prospects. Explain why the mobile market will become stronger in the future. Explain why a problem for one organization is an opportunity for another. Using the five-component model, describe particular opportunities for each component. Define just-in-time data and explain how it changes the value of human thinking.

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· Q4-7 What are the challenges of personal mobile devices at work? Summarize the advantages and disadvantages of employees’ using mobile systems at work. Define BYOD and BYOD policy. Name six possible policies and compare them in terms of functionality and organizational control. Summarize the advantage of each to employers.

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· Q4-8 2031? Explain how email usage has changed over the past 20 years. Describe how an anticipatory system might work. Explain how advances in hardware and software might change the types of jobs you take in the future.

Using Your Knowledge with eHermes Suppose you are part of this eHermes team. Briefly summarize how the knowledge in this lesson would help you contribute. Explain why eHermes decided not to develop its own AI. Summarize the challenges it would face if it did decide to develop its own AI.

Using Your Knowledge

· 4-1. Microsoft offers free licenses of certain software products to students at colleges and universities that participate in its Microsoft Imagine program (formerly known as the Microsoft DreamSpark program). If your college or university participates in this program, you have the opportunity to obtain hundreds of dollars of software for free. Here is a partial list of the software you can obtain:

· Microsoft Access 2019

· Microsoft OneNote 2019

· Microsoft Windows Server 2019

· Microsoft Project 2019

· Microsoft Visual Studio 2019

· Microsoft SQL Server 2019

· Microsoft Visio 2019

Life just seems to get more and more hectic. While organizations today aggressively invest in technology to promote the efficiency and effectiveness of their processes, ubiquitous technology also means that workers never really get away from their projects, meetings, or inboxes. More and more, work seems to take over life, leaving little time for oneself.

Source: JHVEPhoto/Shutterstock

However, the proliferation of technology in society over the past few decades has been shadowed by a growing number of health-conscious adults. As an example of this trend, just look at the different types of competitive races and fitness challenges that have cropped up everywhere (e.g., marathons, bike races, etc.). In short, work is following people home via laptops and mobile devices, but increasing numbers are also seeking to exercise more and live a healthier lifestyle. These are clearly competing objectives. By the early 2010s, spin classes had become a widely popular option for people who wanted a high-octane workout. Going to ride a stationary bike in a spin studio with dozens of other people became commonplace. Customers loved jamming out to the peppy music, being barked at by motivating instructors, and feeling a sense of community while sweating it out with riders on either side. However, spin studios weren’t exactly a perfect experience. Classes in nice studios with top instructors were expensive. Additionally, finding an available spot in a class with a popular time slot and instructor could be difficult and feel like a part-time job. Furthermore, inconveniences like having to find parking in crowded strip malls, customizing bike settings before each class, and recognizing the germ implications of sharing bikes for high-sweat workouts were not palatable to everyone. There had to be a better way . . .

Spinning Wheels of Innovation

The interaction of these (and other) factors resulted in the opportunity to create a new connected-fitness product. In 2012, Graham Stanton, Hisao Kushi, John Foley, Tom Cortese, and Yony Feng recognized these factors and started Peloton, a company focused on providing high-end boutique-style spin classes in the comfort of your home. Their vision yielded the development of the Peloton stationary bike. The first Peloton bike was formally released in 2014 at a price point of $2,245. The bike features highly customizable elements (e.g., seat height, saddle distance, handlebar height, etc.) that can be fine-tuned to a home rider’s preferences. The bike also has a large touchscreen that is used to navigate menus, set up and manage user accounts, display metrics (e.g., cadence, resistance, watts), and most importantly, stream live or pre-recorded spin classes. (Customers have to pay a monthly fee to access the live/recorded spin class archives; that fee is currently $39.) Users participate in “virtual spin studios” composed of geographically dispersed riders who compete with each other on a virtual leaderboard. The instructors play preselected playlists and interact with riders on the leaderboard during the class. In addition to telling riders what to do during the workout, they often encourage or call out specific riders by their usernames and congratulate them on workout milestones. (Good job hitting your 100th ride!) Peloton has since released a treadmill concept based on the stationary bike, but at a higher price point of $4,295.

Peloton went through six different rounds of funding with total capital raised from all rounds approaching $1 billion. Funding was based on growth, with revenue increasing from $500 million in 2017 to just under $1 billion in 2019; additionally, the number of subscribers paying monthly for access to live and archived spin classes grew from under 100K in 2017 to over 500K in 2019.62 Peloton went public in September 2019 and raised $1.16 billion in its IPO with an initial stock price of $29; the stock price closed at $25.76 for an 11.2 percent loss. Revenue and subscriber projections for 2020 were about $1.5 billion and about 900K, respectively. However, due to the COVID-pandemic, which resulted in gyms closing and people being trapped at home for extended periods of time, Peloton saw a surge in subscribers during the first quarter of 2020 with 174,100 new accounts added.63 This unexpected increase raised its projections for 2020 to about 1.05 million new subscribers.64

Peloton really capitalized on the first-mover advantage of being an early developer of a sleek, connected-fitness platform. However, the long-term success of Peloton may be uncertain. Litigation has become commonplace for Peloton as the company attempts to protect itself from fast followers (e.g., Peloton is suing Echelon for copying trademarks, false advertising, and stealing the concept of the leaderboard). If Peloton loses out on these lawsuits, the dam may begin to break, as countless companies will develop and release their own version of the “Peloton” for all sorts of exercise platforms. Additionally, investors aren’t really sure how to perceive Peloton stock just yet—is it a tech company or an exercise company, just like people ask if Sonos and Uber are tech companies or a speaker and a taxi company, respectively. The ultimate classification of the company may distort how investors view potential stability and profitability, especially as things in the exercise world normalize after the pandemic. Will people be content working out at home, or will there be a mass exodus back to gyms? If the latter, Peloton will be knocked out of the slipstream it is currently benefiting from and be pushed into a strong headwind. Questions

Consider the terms on the left-hand side of Figure 5-5. You know what tables are. To understand what is meant by relationships among rows in tables, examine Figure 5-6. It shows sample data from the three tables Email, Student, and Office_Visit. Notice the column named Student Number in the Email table. That column indicates the row in Student to which a row of Email is connected. In the first row of Email, the Student Number value is 1325. This indicates that this particular email was received from the student whose Student Number is 1325. If you examine the Student table, you will see that the row for Andrea Baker has this value. Thus, the first row of the Email table is related to Andrea Baker.

Figure 5-6: Example of Relationships Among Rows

Now consider the last row of the Office_Visit table at the bottom of the figure. The value of Student Number in that row is 4867. This value indicates that the last row in Office_Visit belongs to Adam Verberra. From these examples, you can see that values in one table relate rows of that table to rows in a second table. Several special terms are used to express these ideas. A key (also called a primary key) is a column or group of columns that identifies a unique row in a table. Student Number is the key of the Student table. Given a value of Student Number, you can determine one and only one row in Student. Only one student has the number 1325, for example. Every table must have a key. The key of the Email table is EmailNum, and the key of the Office_Visit table is VisitID. Sometimes more than one column is needed to form a unique identifier. In a table called City, for example, the key would consist of the combination of columns (City, State) because a given city name can appear in more than one state. Student Number is not the key of the Email or the Office_Visit tables. We know that about Email because there are two rows in Email that have the Student Number value 1325. The value 1325 does not identify a unique row; therefore, Student Number cannot be the key of Email. Nor is Student Number a key of Office_Visit, although you cannot tell that from the data in Figure 5-6. If you think about it, however, there is nothing to prevent a student from visiting a professor more than once. If that were to happen, there would be two rows in Office_Visit with the same value of Student Number. It just happens that no student has visited twice in the limited data in Figure 5-6. In both Email and Office_Visit, Student Number is a key, but it is a key of a different table, namely Student. Hence, the columns that fulfill a role like that of Student Number in the Email and Office_Visit tables are called foreign keys. This term is used because such columns are keys, but they are keys of a different (foreign) table than the one in which they reside. Before we go on, databases that carry their data in the form of tables and that represent relationships using foreign keys are called relational databases. (The term relational is used because another, more formal name for a table like those we’re discussing is relation.) You’ll learn about another kind of database, or data store, in Q5-8 and in Case Study 5.

Recall the definition of database: A database is a self-describing collection of integrated records. The records are integrated because, as you just learned, rows can be linked together by their key/foreign key relationship. Relationships among rows are represented in the database. But what does self-describing mean?

Databases may contain data that could be used in unintended, or even unethical ways. See the Ethics Guide for an example case.

It means that a database contains, within itself, a description of its contents. Think of a library. A library is a self-describing collection of books and other materials. It is self-describing because the library contains a catalog that describes the library’s contents. The same idea also pertains to a database. Databases are self-describing because they contain not only data, but also data about the data in the database. Metadata is data that describes data. Figure 5-7 shows metadata for the Email table. The format of metadata depends on the software product that is processing the database. Figure 5-7 shows the metadata as it appears in Microsoft Access. Each row of the top part of this form describes a column of the Email table. The columns of these descriptions are Field Name, Data Type, and Description. Field Name contains the name of the column, Data Type shows the type of data the column may hold, and Description contains notes that explain the source or use of the column. As you can see, there is one row of metadata for each of the four columns of the Email table: EmailNum, Date, Message, and Student Number. The bottom part of this form provides more metadata, which Access calls Field Properties, for each column. In Figure 5-7, the focus is on the Date column (note the light rectangle drawn around the Date row). Because the focus is on Date in the top pane, the details in the bottom pane pertain to the Date column. The Field Properties describe formats, a default value for Access to supply when a new row is created, and the constraint that a value is required for this column. It is not important for you to remember these details. Instead, just understand that metadata is data about data and that such metadata is always a part of a database.

Figure 5-7: Sample Metadata (in Access)

Source: Access 2019, Windows 10, Microsoft Corporation.

The presence of metadata makes databases much more useful. Because of metadata, no one needs to guess, remember, or even record what is in the database. To find out what a database contains, we just look at the metadata inside the database.

Q5-3 What Is a Database Management System (DBMS)?

A database management system (DBMS) is a program used to create, process, and administer a database. As with operating systems, almost no organization develops its own DBMS. Instead, companies license DBMS products from vendors such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and others. Popular DBMS products are DB2 from IBM, Access and SQL Server from Microsoft, and Oracle Database from the Oracle Corporation. Another popular DBMS is MySQL, an open source DBMS product that is license-free for most applications.1 Other DBMS products are available, but these five process the great bulk of databases today. Note that a DBMS and a database are two different things. For some reason, the trade press and even some books confuse the two. A DBMS is a software program; a database is a collection of tables, relationships, and metadata. The two are very different concepts.

Database developers use the DBMS to create tables, relationships, and other structures in the database. The form in Figure 5-7 can be used to define a new table or to modify an existing one. To create a new table, the developer just fills the new table’s metadata into the form. To modify an existing table—say, to add a new column—the developer opens the metadata form for that table and adds a new row of metadata. For example, in Figure 5-8 the developer has added a new column called Response?. This new column has the data type Yes/No, which means that the column can contain only one value—Yes or No. The professor will use this column to indicate whether he has responded to the student’s email. A column can be removed by deleting its row in this table, though doing so will lose any existing data.

Figure 5-8: Adding a New Column to a Table (in Access)

Source: Access 2019, Windows 10, Microsoft Corporation.

Processing the Database

The second function of the DBMS is to process the database. Such processing can be quite complex, but fundamentally, the DBMS provides applications for four processing operations: to read, insert, modify, or delete data. These operations are requested in application calls upon the DBMS. From a form, when the user enters new or changed data, a computer program behind the form calls the DBMS to make the necessary database changes. From a Web application, a program on the client or on the server calls the DBMS to make the change.

Users tend to reuse the same password across many different sites. See how an organization’s data may become compromised in the Security Guide.

Structured Query Language (SQL) is an international standard language for processing a database. All five of the DBMS products mentioned earlier accept and process SQL (pronounced “see-quell”) statements. As an example, the following SQL statement inserts a new row into the Student table:

· INSERT INTO Student

· ([Student Number], [Student Name], HW1, HW2, MidTerm)

· VALUES

· (1000, ‘Franklin, Benjamin’, 90, 95, 100);

As stated, statements like this one are issued “behind the scenes” by programs that process forms and reports. Alternatively, they can be issued directly to the DBMS by an application program. You do not need to understand or remember SQL language syntax. Instead, just realize that SQL is an international standard for processing a database. SQL can also be used to create databases and database structures. You will learn more about SQL if you take a database management class.

A third DBMS function is to provide tools to assist in the administration of the database. Database administration involves a wide variety of activities. For example, the DBMS can be used to set up a security system involving user accounts, passwords, permissions, and limits for processing the database. To provide database security, a user must sign on using a valid user account before she can process the database. Permissions can be limited in very specific ways. In the Student database example, it is possible to limit a particular user to reading only Student Name from the Student table. A different user could be given permission to read the entire Student table, but limited to update only the HW1, HW2, and MidTerm columns. Other users can be given still other permissions. In addition to security, DBMS administrative functions include backing up database data, adding structures to improve the performance of database applications, removing data that are no longer wanted or needed, and similar tasks. For important databases, most organizations dedicate one or more employees to the role of database administration. Figure 5-9 summarizes the major responsibilities for this function. You will learn more about this topic if you take a database management course.

Knowledge Check

Q5-4 How Do Database Applications Make Databases More Useful?

A set of database tables, by itself, is not very useful; the tables in Figure 5-6 contain the data the professor wants, but the format is awkward at best. The data in database tables can be made more useful, or more available for the conception of information, when it is placed into forms like that in Figure 5-2 or other formats. A database application is a collection of forms, reports, queries, and application programs2 that serves as an intermediary between users and database data. Database applications reformat database table data to make it more informative and more easily updated. Application programs also have features that provide security, maintain data consistency, and handle special cases. The specific purposes of the four elements of a database application are:

Database applications came into prominence in the 1990s and were based on the technology available at that time. Many existing systems today are long-lived extensions to those applications; the ERP system SAP (discussed in Lesson 8) is a good example of this concept. You should expect to see these kinds of applications during the early years of your career. Today, however, many database applications are based on newer technology that employs browsers, the Web, and related standards. These browser-based applications can do everything the older ones do, but they are more dynamic and better suited to today’s world. To see why, consider each type.

In most cases, a traditional database is shared among many users. In that case, the application shown in Figure 5-10 resides on the users’ computers and the DBMS and database reside on a server computer. A network, in most cases not the Internet, is used to transmit traffic back and forth between the users’ computers and the DBMS server computer.

Figure 5-10: Components of a Database Application System

Single-user databases like those in Microsoft Access are an exception. With such databases, the application, the DBMS, and the database all reside on the user’s computer. Traditional forms appeared in window-like displays like that in Figure 5-2. They serve their purpose; users can view, insert, modify, and delete data with them, but by today’s standards, they look clunky. Figure 5-11 shows a traditional report, which is a static display of data, placed into a format that is meaningful to the user. In this report, each of the emails for a particular student is shown after the student’s name and grade data.

 Figure 5-11: Example of a Student Report

Source: Access 2019, Windows 10, Microsoft Corporation.

Figure 5-12 shows a traditional query. The user specifies query criteria in a window-like box (Figure 5-12A), and the application responds with data that fit those criteria (Figure 5-12B). Traditional database application programs are written in object-oriented languages such as C++ and VisualBasic (and even in earlier languages like COBOL). They are thick applications that need to be installed on users’ computers. In some cases, all of the application logic is contained in a program on users’ computers, and the server does nothing except run the DBMS and serve up data. In other cases, some application code is placed on both the users’ computers and the database server computer. As stated, in the early years of your career, you will still see traditional applications, especially for enterprise-wide applications like ERP and CRM. Most likely, you will also be concerned, as a user if not in a more involved way, with the transition from such traditional applications into browser-based applications.

 Figure 5-12A: Sample Query Form Used to Enter Phrase for Search

Source: Access 2019, Windows 10, Microsoft Corporation.

 Figure 5-12B: Sample Query Results of Query Operation

Source: Access 2019, Windows 10, Microsoft Corporation.

Browser Forms, Reports, Queries, and Applications

The databases in browser-based applications are nearly always shared among many users. As shown in Figure 5-13, the users’ browsers connect over the Internet to a Web server computer, which in turn connects to a database server computer (often many computers are involved on the server side of the Internet).

Figure 5-13: Four Application Programs on a Web Server Computer

Browser applications are thin-client applications that need not be preinstalled on the users’ computers. In most cases, all of the code for generating and processing the application elements is shared between the users’ computers and the servers. JavaScript is the standard language for user-side processing. Languages like C# and Java are used for server-side code, though JavaScript is starting to be used on the server with an open source product named Node.js. Browser database application forms, reports, and queries are displayed and processed using html and, most recently, using html5, css3, and JavaScript as you learned in Lesson 4. Figure 5-14 shows a browser form that is used to create a new user account in Microsoft 365. The form’s content is dynamic; the user can click on the blue arrow next to Additional Details to see more data. Also, notice the steps on the left-hand side that outline the process that the administrator will follow when creating the new account. The current step is shown in color. Compare and contrast this form with that in Figure 5-2; it is cleaner, with much less chrome.

Figure 5-14: Account Creation Browser Form

Source: Windows 10, Microsoft Corporation.

Figure 5-15 illustrates a browser report that shows the content of a SharePoint site. The content is dynamic; almost all of the items can be clicked to produce other reports or take other actions. The user can search the report in the box in the upper-right-hand corner to find specific items. Browser-based applications can support traditional queries, but more exciting are graphical queries, in which query criteria are created when the user clicks on a graphic.

Figure 5-15: Browser Report

Source: SharePoint, Microsoft Corporation.

Security requirements are more stringent for browser-based Internet applications than for traditional ones. Most traditional applications run within a corporate network protected from threats common on the Internet. Browser-based applications that are open to the public, over the Internet, are far more vulnerable. Thus, protecting security is a major function for browser-based Internet application programs. Like traditional database application programs, they need to provide for data consistency and to handle special conditions as well. As an example of the need for data consistency, consider the problems introduced by multi-user processing.

Most traditional and browser-based applications involve multiple users processing the same database. While such multi-user processing is common, it does pose unique problems that you, as a future manager, should know about. To understand the nature of those problems, consider the following scenario, which could occur on either a traditional or browser-based application. At a ticket vendor’s website, two customers, Andrea and Jeffrey, are both attempting to buy tickets to a popular event. Andrea uses her browser to access the site and finds that two tickets are available. She places both of them in her shopping cart. She doesn’t know it, but when she opened the order form, she invoked an application program on the vendor’s servers that read a database to find that two tickets are available. Before she checks out, she takes a moment to verify with her friend that they still want to go. Meanwhile, Jeffrey uses his browser and also finds that two tickets are available because his browser activates that same application that reads the database and finds (because Andrea has not yet checked out) that two are available. He places both in his cart and checks out. Meanwhile, Andrea and her friend decide to go, so she checks out. Clearly, we have a problem. Both Andrea and Jeffrey have purchased the same two tickets. One of them is going to be disappointed. This problem, known as the lost-update problem, exemplifies one of the special characteristics of multi-user database processing. To prevent this problem, some type of locking must be used to coordinate the activities of users who know nothing about one another. Locking brings its own set of problems, however, and those problems must be addressed as well. We will not delve further into this topic here, however. Be aware of possible data conflicts when you manage business activities that involve multi-user processing. If you find inaccurate results that seem not to have a cause, you may be experiencing multi-user data conflicts. Contact your IS department for assistance.

Q5-5 How Are Data Models Used for Database Development?

In Lesson 12, we will describe the process for developing information systems in detail. However, business professionals have such a critical role in the development of database applications that we need to anticipate part of that discussion here by introducing two topics—data modeling and database design. Because the design of the database depends entirely on how users view their business environment, user involvement is critical for database development. Think about the Student database. What data should it contain? Possibilities are: Students, Classes, Grades, Emails, Office_Visits, Majors, Advisers, Student_Organizations—the list could go on and on. Further, how much detail should be included in each? Should the database include campus addresses? Home addresses? Billing addresses? In fact, there are unlimited possibilities, and the database developers do not and cannot know what to include. They do know, however, that a database must include all the data necessary for the users to perform their jobs. Ideally, it contains that amount of data and no more. So, during database development, the developers must rely on the users to tell them what to include in the database. Database structures can be complex, in some cases very complex. So, before building the database the developers construct a logical representation of database data called a data model. It describes the data and relationships that will be stored in the database. It is akin to a blueprint. Just as building architects create a blueprint before they start building, so, too, database developers create a data model before they start designing the database.

To learn more about a career as a data engineer, see the Career Guide.

Figure 5-16 summarizes the database development process. Interviews with users lead to database requirements, which are summarized in a data model. Once the users have approved (validated) the data model, it is transformed into a database design. That design is then implemented into database structures. We will consider data modeling and database design briefly in the next two sections. Again, your goal should be to learn the process so that you can be an effective user representative for a development effort.

Figure 5-16: Database Development Process

The entity-relationship (E-R) data model is a tool for constructing data models. Developers use it to describe the content of a data model by defining the things (entities) that will be stored in the database and the relationships among those entities. A second, less popular tool for data modeling is the Unified Modeling Language (UML). We will not describe that tool here. However, if you learn how to interpret E-R models, with a bit of study you will be able to understand UML models as well. Entities An entity is a thing that the users want to track. Examples of entities are Order, Customer, Salesperson, and Item. Some entities represent a physical object, such as Item or Salesperson; others represent a logical construct or transaction, such as Order or Contract. For reasons beyond this discussion, entity names are always singular. We use Order, not Orders; Salesperson, not Salespersons. Entities have attributes that describe characteristics of the entity. Example attributes of Order are OrderNumber, OrderDate, SubTotal, Tax, Total, and so forth. Example attributes of Salesperson are SalespersonName, Email, Phone, and so forth. Entities have an identifier, which is an attribute (or group of attributes) whose value is associated with one and only one entity instance. For example, OrderNumber is an identifier of Order because only one Order instance has a given value of OrderNumber. For the same reason, CustomerNumber is an identifier of Customer. If each member of the sales staff has a unique name, then SalespersonName is an identifier of Salesperson. Before we continue, consider that last sentence. Is the salesperson’s name unique among the sales staff? Both now and in the future? Who decides the answer to such a question? Only the users know whether this is true; the database developers cannot know. This example underlines why it is important for you to be able to interpret data models because only users like you will know for sure. Figure 5-17 shows examples of entities for the Student database. Each entity is shown in a rectangle. The name of the entity is just above the rectangle, and the identifier is shown in a section at the top of the entity. Entity attributes are shown in the remainder of the rectangle. In Figure 5-17, the Adviser entity has an identifier called AdviserName and the attributes Phone, CampusAddress, and EmailAddress.

Figure 5-17: Student Data Model Entities

Observe that the entities Email and Office_Visit do not have an identifier. Unlike Student or Adviser, the users do not have an attribute that identifies a particular email. We could make one up. For example, we could say that the identifier of Email is EmailNumber, but if we do so we are not modeling how the users view their world. Instead, we are forcing something onto the users. Be aware of this possibility when you review data models about your business. Do not allow the database developers to create something in the data model that is not part of your business world. Relationships Entities have relationships to each other. An Order, for example, has a relationship to a Customer entity and also to a Salesperson entity. In the Student database, a Student has a relationship to an Adviser, and an Adviser has a relationship to a Department. Figure 5-18 shows sample Department, Adviser, and Student entities and their relationships. For simplicity, this figure shows just the identifier of the entities and not the other attributes. For this sample data, Accounting has three professors—Jones, Wu, and Lopez—and Finance has two professors—Smith and Greene. The relationship between Advisers and Students is a bit more complicated because in this example, an adviser is allowed to advise many students and a student is allowed to have many advisers. Perhaps this happens because students can have multiple majors. In any case, note that Professor Jones advises students 100 and 400 and that student 100 is advised by both Professors Jones and Smith.

 Figure 5-18: Example of Department, Adviser, and Student Entities and Relationships Diagrams like the one in Figure 5-18 are too cumbersome for use in database design discussions. Instead, database designers use diagrams called entity-relationship (E-R) diagrams. Figure 5-19 shows an E-R diagram for the data in Figure 5-18. In this figure, all of the entities of one type are represented by a single rectangle. Thus, there are rectangles for the Department, Adviser, and Student entities. Attributes are shown as before in Figure 5-17.

 Figure 5-19: Sample Relationships Version 1

Additionally, a line is used to represent a relationship between two entities. Notice the line between Department and Adviser, for example. The vertical bar on the left side of the relationship means that an adviser works in just one department. The forked lines on the right side of that line signify that a department may have more than one adviser. The angled lines, which are referred to as crow’s feet, are shorthand for the multiple lines between Department and Adviser in Figure 5-19. Relationships like this one are called 1:N, or one-to-many relationships, because one department can have many advisers, but an adviser has at most one department. Now examine the line between Adviser and Student. Notice the crow’s feet that appear at each end of the line. This notation signifies that an adviser can be related to many students and that a student can be related to many advisers, which is the situation in Figure 5-19. Relationships like this one are called N:M, or many-to-many relationships, because one adviser can have many students and one student can have many advisers. Students sometimes find the notation N:M confusing. Interpret the N and M to mean that a variable number, greater than one, is allowed on each side of the relationship. Such a relationship is not written N:N because that notation would imply that there are the same number of entities on each side of the relationship, which is not necessarily true. N:M means that more than one entity is allowed on each side of the relationship and that the number of entities on each side can be different. Figure 5-20 shows the same entities with different assumptions. Here, advisers may advise in more than one department, but a student may have only one adviser, representing a policy that students may not have multiple majors. Which, if either, of these versions is correct? Only the users know. These alternatives illustrate the kinds of questions you will need to answer when a database designer asks you to check a data model for correctness. Figures 5-19 and 5-20 are typical examples of an entity-relationship diagram. Unfortunately, there are several different styles of entity-relationship diagrams. This one is called, not surprisingly, a crow’s-foot diagram version. You may learn other versions if you take a database management class.

 Figure 5-20: Sample Relationships Version 2 The crow’s-foot notation shows the maximum number of entities that can be involved in a relationship. Accordingly, they are called the relationship’s maximum cardinality. Common examples of maximum cardinality are 1:N, N:M, and 1:1 (not shown). Another important question is “What is the minimum number of entities required in the relationship?” Must an adviser have a student to advise, and must a student have an adviser? Constraints on minimum requirements are called minimum cardinalities. Figure 5-21 presents a third version of this E-R diagram that shows both maximum and minimum cardinalities. The second vertical bar on the lines means that at least one entity of that type is required. The small oval means that the entity is optional; the relationship need not have an entity of that type. Using this notation, if there are two vertical bars, both the minimum and maximum cardinality are one. If there is a vertical bar with a crow’s foot, then the minimum cardinality is one and the maximum is many.

 Figure 5-21: Sample Relationships Showing Both Maximum and Minimum Cardinalities

Thus, in Figure 5-21 a department is not required to have a relationship to any adviser, but an adviser is required to belong to a department. Similarly, an adviser is not required to have a relationship to a student, but a student is required to have a relationship to an adviser. Note, also, that the maximum cardinalities in Figure 5-21 have been changed so that both are 1:N. Is the model in Figure 5-21 a good one? It depends on the policy of the university. Again, only the users know for sure.

Knowledge Check

Q5-6 How Is a Data Model Transformed into a Database Design?

Database design is the process of converting a data model into tables, relationships, and data constraints. The database design team transforms entities into tables and expresses relationships by defining foreign keys. Database design is a complicated subject; as with data modeling, it occupies weeks in a database management class. In this section, however, we will introduce two important database design concepts: normalization and the representation of two kinds of relationships. The first concept is a foundation of database design, and the second will help you understand important design considerations.

Normalization is the process of converting a poorly structured table into two or more well-structured tables. A table is such a simple construct that you may wonder how one could possibly be poorly structured. In truth, there are many ways that tables can be malformed—so many, in fact, that researchers have published hundreds of papers on this topic alone. Consider the Employee table in Figure 5-22a. It lists employee names, hire dates, email addresses, and the name and number of the department in which the employee works. This table seems innocent enough. But consider what happens when the Accounting department changes its name to Accounting and Finance. Because department names are duplicated in this table, every row that has a value of “Accounting” must be changed to “Accounting and Finance.”

Figure 5-22: A Poorly Designed Employee Table

Data Integrity Problems Suppose the Accounting name change is correctly made in two rows but not in the third. The result is shown in Figure 5-22b. This table has what is called a data integrity problem: Some rows indicate that the name of Department 100 is “Accounting and Finance,” and another row indicates that the name of Department 100 is “Accounting.” This problem is easy to spot in this small table. But consider a table like the Customer table in the Amazon database or the eBay database. Those databases have millions of rows. Once a table that large develops serious data integrity problems, months of labor will be required to fix them. Data integrity problems are serious. A table that has data integrity problems will produce incorrect and inconsistent results. Users will lose confidence in the data, and the system will develop a poor reputation. Information systems with poor reputations become serious burdens to the organizations that use them. Normalizing for Data Integrity The data integrity problem can occur only if data are duplicated. Because of this, one easy way to eliminate the problem is to eliminate the duplicated data. We can do this by transforming the table design in Figure 5-22a into two tables, as shown in Figure 5-23. Here the name of the department is stored just once; therefore, no data inconsistencies can occur. Of course, to produce an employee report that includes the department name, the two tables in Figure 5-23 will need to be joined back together. Because such joining of tables is common, DBMS products have been programmed to perform it efficiently, but it still requires work. From this example, you can see a trade-off in database design: Normalized tables eliminate data duplication, but they can be slower to process. Dealing with such trade-offs is an important consideration in database design. The general goal of normalization is to construct tables such that every table has a single topic or theme. In good writing, every paragraph should have a single theme. This is true of databases as well; every table should have a single theme. The problem with the table design in Figure 5-22 is that it has two independent themes: employees and departments. The way to correct the problem is to split the table into two tables, each with its own theme. In this case, we create an Employee table and a Department table, as shown in Figure 5-23.

Figure 5-23: Two Normalized Tables

As mentioned, there are dozens of ways that tables can be poorly formed. Database practitioners classify tables into various normal forms according to the kinds of problems they have. Transforming a table into a normal form to remove duplicated data and other problems is called normalizing the table.3 Thus, when you hear a database designer say, “Those tables are not normalized,” she does not mean that the tables have irregular, not-normal data. Instead, she means that the tables have a format that could cause data integrity problems. Summary of Normalization As a future user of databases, you do not need to know the details of normalization. Instead, understand the general principle that every normalized (well-formed) table has one and only one theme. Further, tables that are not normalized are subject to data integrity problems. Be aware, too, that normalization is just one criterion for evaluating database designs. Because normalized designs can be slower to process, database designers sometimes choose to accept non-normalized tables. The best design depends on the users’ processing requirements.

Representing Relationships

Figure 5-24 shows the steps involved in transforming a data model into a relational database design. First, the database designer creates a table for each entity. The identifier of the entity becomes the key of the table. Each attribute of the entity becomes a column of the table. Next, the resulting tables are normalized so that each table has a single theme. Once that has been done, the next step is to represent the relationships among those tables.

For example, consider the E-R diagram in Figure 5-25a. The Adviser entity has a 1:N relationship to the Student entity. To create the database design, we construct a table for Adviser and a second table for Student, as shown in Figure 5-25b. The key of the Adviser table is AdviserName, and the key of the Student table is StudentNumber. Further, the EmailAddress attribute of the Adviser entity becomes the EmailAddress column of the Adviser table, and the StudentName and MidTerm attributes of the Student entity become the StudentName and MidTerm columns of the Student table. The next task is to represent the relationship. Because we are using the relational model, we know that we must add a foreign key to one of the two tables. The possibilities are: (1) place the foreign key StudentNumber in the Adviser table or (2) place the foreign key AdviserName in the Student table. The correct choice is to place AdviserName in the Student table, as shown in Figure 5-25c. To determine a student’s adviser, we just look into the AdviserName column of that student’s row. To determine the adviser’s students, we search the AdviserName column in the Student table to determine which rows have that adviser’s name. If a student changes advisers, we simply change the value in the AdviserName column. Changing Jackson to Jones in the first row, for example, will assign student 100 to Professor Jones.

Figure 5-25: Representing a 1:N Relationship

For this data model, placing StudentNumber in Adviser would be incorrect. If we were to do that, we could assign only one student to an adviser. There is no place to assign a second adviser. This strategy for placing foreign keys will not work for N:M relationships, however. Consider the data model in Figure 5-26a; here advisers and students have a many-to-many relationship. An adviser may have many students, and a student may have multiple advisers (for multiple majors).

Figure 5-26: Representing an N:M Relationship

To see why the foreign key strategy we used for 1:N relationships will not work for N:M relationships, examine Figure 5-26b. If student 100 has more than one adviser, there is no place to record second or subsequent advisers. To represent an N:M relationship, we need to create a third table, as shown in Figure 5-26c. The third table has two columns, AdviserName and StudentNumber. Each row of the table means that the given adviser advises the student with the given number. As you can imagine, there is a great deal more to database design than we have presented here. Still, this section should give you an idea of the tasks that need to be accomplished to create a database. You should also realize that the database design is a direct consequence of decisions made in the data model. If the data model is wrong, the database design will be wrong as well.

As stated, a database is a model of how the users view their business world. This means that the users are the final judges as to what data the database should contain and how the records in that database should be related to one another. The easiest time to change the database structure is during the data modeling stage. Changing a relationship from one-to-many to many-to-many in a data model is simply a matter of changing the 1:N notation to N:M. However, once the database has been constructed and loaded with data, and forms, reports, queries, and application programs have been created, changing a one-to-many relationship to many-to-many means weeks of work. You can glean some idea of why this might be true by contrasting Figure 5-25c with Figure 5-26c. Suppose that instead of having just a few rows, each table has thousands of rows; in that case, transforming the database from one format to the other involves considerable work. Even worse, however, is that someone must change application components as well. For example, if students have at most one adviser, then a single text box can be used to enter AdviserName. If students can have multiple advisers, then a multiple-row table will need to be used to enter AdviserName and a program will need to be written to store the values of AdviserName into the Adviser_Student_Intersection table. There are dozens of other consequences, consequences that will translate into wasted labor and wasted expense. Thus, user review of the data model is crucial. When a database is developed for your use, you must carefully review the data model. If you do not understand any aspect of it, you should ask for clarification until you do. Entities must contain all of the data you and your employees need to do your jobs, and relationships must accurately reflect your view of the business. If the data model is wrong, the database will be designed incorrectly, and the applications will be difficult to use, if not worthless. Do not proceed unless the data model is accurate. As a corollary, when asked to review a data model, take that review seriously. Devote the time necessary to perform a thorough review. Any mistakes you miss will come back to haunt you, and by then the cost of correction may be very high with regard to both time and expense. This brief introduction to data modeling shows why databases can be more difficult to develop than spreadsheets.

Q5-7 How Can eHermes Benefit from a Database System?

eHermes wants to speed up the process of inventorying the new items it receives from sellers. Currently, sales associates have to wait for customers to enter lengthy product descriptions that are often incomplete or incorrect. If associates can take a picture of the new item and use Google’s image classifier to automatically recognize it, eHermes will be able to automatically fill in its database. The information would likely be more detailed and accurate than what eHermes is currently getting, and items could be sold much more quickly. This process would require a lot of data storage and multiple data flows. Images would be sent from mobile storefronts and stored either locally or on the cloud. Then the images would be sent to cloud services to be processed. Once an item is identified, eHermes would query additional sites for product information, reviews, and past sales data. The entire process needs to be fast and scalable as eHermes grows. eHermes can choose one of two database architectures. For the first one, it can store the images on a file server and keep metadata about each image in a relational database that it can query. That metadata will include the address of the image on the file server. Alternatively, eHermes can utilize one of the new NoSQL DBMS products like MongoDB—an open source document-oriented DBMS—to store the images in the same database as the metadata. (See Q5-8.) Seth Wilson, director of IT services, investigates these two alternatives and discusses his findings with Kamala Patel, an automation expert. They are both intrigued by the possible use of MongoDB, but they know that their interest is, in part, a desire to learn something new. They don’t really know how well that product works, nor do they know how robust the MongoDB query facility will be. On the other hand, they can readily modify their existing Microsoft SQL Server database to store the metadata. In the metadata, they can store the URL of the file server location that has the images (for example, https://abc.ehermes.com/image1). In this way, they can use the Microsoft SQL Server to store the data and then query it using the graphical query designer. Because Microsoft SQL Server can also process native SQL, they can use it for the most sophisticated query operations if needed. Seth and Kamala discuss these alternatives and decide to use Microsoft SQL Server to store the metadata. They know this approach is less risky because it uses known technology. Also, both of them are skilled at using Microsoft SQL Server, and they can develop the database and application quickly with less risk. Seth and Kamala create a short presentation of this recommendation and present it to Jessica Ramma, eHermes’ CEO, who approves it. After the approval, Seth creates the E-R diagram shown in Figure 5-27 and discusses it with Kamala. She thinks that they might want to add a Manufacturer entity rather than just the manufacturer’s name in the ClassifiedProducts entity. They decide, however, that they aren’t dealing with that many manufacturers and that adding the extra entity might make the application too hard to use, at least at present. So, with that decision, they proceed to create the database and related applications. You’ll have an opportunity to do the same with a team of your colleagues in Collaboration Exercise 5.

Figure 5-27: E-R Diagram for eHermes’ Database

Q5-8 2031?

With ever-cheaper data storage and data communications, we can be sure that the volume of database data will continue to grow, probably exponentially, through 2031. All that data contains patterns that can be used to conceive information to help businesses and organizations achieve their strategies. That will make business intelligence, discussed in Lesson 3, even more important. Furthermore, as databases become bigger and bigger, they’re more attractive as targets for theft or mischief, as we saw in recent attacks at Facebook (420 million accounts), OxyData (380 million accounts), Microsoft (250 million accounts), and Capital One (100 million accounts). Those risks will make database security even more important, as we discuss in Lesson 10. Additionally, the DBMS landscape is changing. While for years relational DBMS products were the only game in town, the Internet changed that by posing new processing requirements. As compared to traditional database applications, some Internet applications process many, many more transactions against much simpler data. A tweet has a much simpler data structure than the configuration of a Kenworth truck, but there are so many more tweets than truck configurations! Also, traditional relational DBMS products devote considerable code and processing power to support what are termed ACID (atomic, consistent, isolated, durable) transactions. In essence, this acronym means that either all of a transaction is processed or none of it is (atomic), that transactions are processed in the same manner (consistent) whether processed alone or in the presence of millions of other transactions (isolated), and that once a transaction is stored it never goes away—even in the presence of failure (durable). ACID transactions are critical to traditional commercial applications. Even in the presence of machine failure, Vanguard must process both the sell and the buy sides of a transaction; it cannot process part of a transaction. Also, what it stores today must be stored tomorrow. But many new Internet applications don’t need ACID. Who cares if, one time out of 1 million, only half of your tweet is stored? Or if it’s stored today and disappears tomorrow? These new requirements have led to three new categories of DBMS:

1. NoSQL DBMS. This acronym is misleading. It really should be non-relational DBMS. It refers to new DBMS products that support very high transaction rates processing relatively simple data structures, replicated on many servers in the cloud, without ACID transaction support. MongoDB, Cassandra, Bigtable, and Dynamo are NoSQL products.

2. NewSQL DBMS. These DBMS products process very high levels of transactions, like the NoSQL DBMS, but provide ACID support. They may or may not support the relational model. Such products are a hotbed of development with new vendors popping up nearly every day. Leading products are yet unknown.

3. In-memory DBMS. This category consists of DBMS products that process databases in main memory. This technique has become possible because today’s computer memories can be enormous and can hold an entire database at one time, or at least very large chunks of it. Usually these products support or extend the relational model. SAP HANA is a computer with an in-memory DBMS that provides high-volume ACID transaction support simultaneously with complex relational query processing. Tableau Software’s reporting products are supported by a proprietary in-memory DBMS using an extension to SQL.

Does the emergence of these new products mean the death knell for relational databases? It seems unlikely because organizations have created thousands of traditional relational databases with millions of lines of application code that process SQL statements against relational data structures. No organization wants to endure the expense and effort of converting those databases and code to something else. There is also a strong social trend among older technologists to hang onto the relational model. However, these new products are loosening the stronghold that relational technology has enjoyed for decades, and it is likely that by 2031 many NoSQL, NewSQL, and in-memory databases will exist in commerce. Furthermore, existing DBMS vendors like Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM will not sit still. With substantial cash and highly skilled developers, they will likely incorporate features of these new categories of DBMS into their existing or new products. Acquisitions of some of the NewSQL startups, in particular, are likely. What does that mean to you as a business professional? First, such knowledge is useful; stay abreast of developments in this area. When you are given a problem, you might choose to utilize one of these new types of databases. Unless you are an IT professional, however, you won’t work with them directly. It will be to your advantage to know about them, however, and to suggest their use to the IS personnel who support your requirements. Also, watch these developments from an investor’s perspective. Not all such products will be open source; even if they are, there will be companies that integrate them into their product or service offerings, and those companies may well be good investment opportunities. If you’re interested in IS as a discipline or as a second major, pay attention to these products. You still need to learn the relational model and the processing of relational databases; they will be the bread and butter of the industry, even in 2031. But exciting new opportunities and career paths will also develop around these new DBMS products. Learn about them as well, and use that knowledge to separate yourself from the competition when it comes to job interviews.

So What? Slick Analytics

Spreadsheet software designed for small businesses is often misused. For example, if you use spreadsheet software to manage a data set with several hundreds of thousands of rows of data, you will find that simple operations like sorting and saving updates to the data take several minutes. It is difficult to work effectively and efficiently when minutes are wasted on rudimentary operations. As companies continue to collect larger and larger data sets, there is demand for more robust and scalable data management solutions. These solutions must facilitate rather than hinder the rapid collection and analysis of important data. Nowadays, a great deal of data collection, storage, and analysis has moved to the cloud. You may not realize it, but you are probably taking advantage of some sort of cloud-based storage solution right now. If you use applications like Dropbox, OneDrive, or Google Drive, you’re using the cloud. You no longer need to transfer files from one device to the next using a flash drive or other physical storage medium. You can access your files on any device with Internet connectivity. As a student, you’ve probably found cloud storage tremendously convenient (e.g., when sharing large files for a group project with peers). Businesses are harnessing the same power and convenience offered by the cloud, but on a much larger scale. Companies aren’t just looking for the convenient file access, though; chief information officers (CIOs) are looking to merge the storage and analysis of data into one synergistic operation. Drilling for Answers Laredo Petroleum is an example of a company that has recognized the benefits offered by cloud analytics.4 In a recent interview, the CIO described the cumbersome data analysis process the company had been using to improve its drilling operations. The company’s old approach entailed the use of numerous spreadsheets and manual calculations that took a long time to perform. By the time actionable insights had been extracted from the data, the value of the information had already been diminished due to old age. One important question Laredo Petroleum must answer is when it should clean chemical deposits in its wells. Cleaning these deposits boosts the efficiency of wells, but sending maintenance teams to clean the wells is costly. Laredo Petroleum transitioned from the antiquated spreadsheet-based approach of analyzing this problem to using a cloud-based analytics platform. This new approach made data management more scalable, data analysis more robust, and data accessibility better. Data could now be accessed on both traditional PCs and mobile devices at any time and in any location.

Source: Everything possible/Shutterstock

Cloud analytics provide a much nimbler information systems architecture. It can respond to changes in market conditions more easily (e.g., the dramatic drops in oil prices in 2008 and 2015 have affected how Laredo Petroleum does business). Laredo Petroleum isn’t the only company that has identified cloud analytics as a viable solution for surviving and thriving in a world driven by Big Data. A recent study reported that global cloud analytics would grow by 24 percent annually through 2026.6 The widespread interest in cloud analytics is likely driven by improvements in data storage and analysis functionality like enhanced scalability, parallelism across devices, resource pooling, and agile virtualization. Cloudburst? It’s easy to tout the benefits of cloud services, but you may be wondering if there are downsides. Think about your own use of cloud services. Are there any aspects of storing your files in the cloud that concern you? Some people are apprehensive about storing their photos and financial data (e.g., tax returns) in the cloud. Are their data being stored securely? Is it safe to allow your personal data out in the “wild” where it is out of your control? There are other risks too. Could your data be permanently lost due to a system failure or a malicious insider at your cloud service provider? Could a denial-of-service attack against your cloud service provider render your data inaccessible for an extended period of time?7 As with any system, security often comes at the expense of convenience. As a business leader, you must consider if the benefits of cloud-based services outweigh the potential risks, which in some cases may turn into real losses. Questions

1. Have you chosen to store any of your personal data in the cloud? If so, do you store all of your data or only certain types of data? If not, what factors have inhibited you from putting your data in the hands of a cloud provider? If you don’t use cloud-based storage, how do you back up your data?  Show Answer

2. This article discussed the specific example of a petroleum company using cloud-based data analytics to improve decision making. What other industries can you identify that would benefit from the ability to capture large quantities of data in real time, analyze the data, and then use the results of those analyses to make better decisions?  Show Answer

3. This article mentions that some users may decide to manage their data “in house” rather than use cloud-based services and risk losing access to their data in the event of a denial-of-service (DoS) attack. Take a few minutes to research what a DoS attack is and how it could prevent users from accessing their data. Be prepared to explain this concept to another classmate or the class.  Show Answer

4. In a business setting, what types of organizations would place greater value on security rather than convenience? What types of organizations would prioritize convenience over security?  Show Answer

Security Guide

Don’t Reuse that Password Consider the following scenario ... You are browsing the Internet looking for a new pair of shoes. You finally find a site that has the color combination you prefer and the best-fitting shoe size for you in stock. You proceed to the checkout, and you are prompted to either check out as a guest or create an account on the site to receive a 10 percent discount.

Source: Vitalii Vodolazskyi/Shutterstock

The potential money saved is enough to motivate you to take the time to create an account, providing your email address as your username and creating a password to go with it. You hadn’t anticipated spending time creating this account, so in an effort to hurry through the checkout process to buy the shoes, you decide to use the actual password that is linked to your email account (one less thing to remember, right?). You finish the transaction using a gift card and eagerly anticipate the arrival of your new shoes in just a few days. A few weeks later you are out with friends and they tell you about their new favorite app. It is a platform that allows people to share short videos that tend to be really funny. While anyone can download the app and view content right away, you have to set up a profile to be able to remove some of the advertisements and enable the app’s functionality to vote, share videos with other app users, generate customized video content based on the videos you like, and add comments. Since the interactivity and customized feed seem like the best part of the app, you decide to create a profile and use the same email address and password that you used for your shoe purchase. Yet again, your preference for time saved and convenience has trumped any inkling that using the same password for multiple accounts could be a risky habit. Unfortunately for you, this habit continues as you use the same password again and again for social media sites, university accounts, financial institutions, and more. Dominoes Delivering Credentials Weeks later, you see a news report about a popular ecommerce site that just reported a security breach—it turns out that it was the site from which you purchased your new shoes. You aren’t concerned because you did not use a credit card for the purchase of the shoes but rather used a gift card—they don’t have anything too sensitive about you to be worried about ... However, hackers were able to gain access to one of the company’s databases that stored the basic personal data and account credentials of users in plaintext (i.e., the usernames and passwords were not encrypted). The hackers dumped all of this data on the dark web, and other bad actors have now been using automated tools to try the stolen usernames and passwords on different types of websites. (This is called credential stuffing.) Within 48 hours, you suddenly start getting notifications from friends on social media that they received requests from you asking to borrow money, you log in to your bank account and see an outgoing pending transfer for $850 to an unknown account, you find a number of Apple products that have been charged to your account and shipped to unknown addresses, and your email account has been flagged for sending numerous phishing attacks. You have just become a victim of the password reuse domino effect. The domino effect occurs when using the same password and email address for different accounts, which means that when one account is compromised, all of your accounts can easily be compromised. And while this scenario sounds like it is far-fetched, password reuse horror stories like this happen regularly.8 The Sad Reality In the world of behavioral information security, there are a number of challenges, including training employees to resist social engineering attacks, helping executives avoid spear phishing attacks, training users to identify indicators of suspicious emails, and so on. Relatively, it should be easy to convince people to simply use different passwords for different accounts, but this remains a vexing problem for both private individuals and organizations. One study looked at roughly 28 million sets of credentials and revealed that about 50 percent of users had reused or only slightly modified their passwords.9 Additionally, an analysis of these same credentials found that a third of the altered passwords and all of the reused passwords could quickly be cracked. More recently, Microsoft compiled billions of leaked passwords and found that over 40 million Microsoft users had reused passwords. Clearly, password reuse is rampant. Aside from trying to educate people about the risks of password reuse, a number of technical solutions have been developed. For example, two-factor authentication requires that more than just a password is needed to access an account (e.g., you must also enter a code sent to your cell phone to log in). Additionally, password management software makes it easier to store and deploy unique passwords (instead of trying to memorize them), some web browsers provide alerts when sites have been compromised and passwords should be changed,11 and even keystroke analysis has been proposed as a way to identify reused passwords. While these technical safeguards exist, they can only help if users will actually utilize these solutions in an effort to help themselves. Discussion Questions

1. Think about your own password reuse behavior. Do you reuse passwords for your own personal accounts? If so, has the scenario provided in this article changed your perception of password reuse so that you will avoid doing so in the future?  Show Answer

2. As a follow-up to question 1, have you ever had to create an account for an employer, and did you reuse a password for that account? If not, was it because you recognized the potential risk to your employer if one of your personal accounts was breached? Did this act as a deterrent that was not present for you to try to protect yourself?  Show Answer

3. The article mentions keystroke analysis as a way to detect and ultimately prevent password reuse. How do you think that the evaluation of someone’s typing behavior could be used to identify password reuse?  Show Answer

4. How does password reuse compare or contrast to physical use of the same key for every door that you have to open over the course of a week? Think about the implications of losing that one key that opens all of your physical doors.  Show Answer

Career Guide

Source: Kailey Smith, Artemis Health, Director of Data Engineering

· Name: Kailey Smith

· Company: Artemis Health

· Job Title: Director of Data Engineering

· Education: University of Utah

1. How did you get this type of job? I started at Artemis Health as a senior data quality engineer after being recruited by one of the co-founders on LinkedIn due to my experience with healthcare data. Because we’re a startup, everyone is required to wear a lot of hats, and because of my eagerness to get things done and follow up with the people I was working with, they asked me to manage the team.

2. What attracted you to this field? I’ve always enjoyed working with computers and figuring things out, but after taking my first information systems course at the University of Utah, I was sold. This is a field that will be growing and expanding with new and exciting opportunities. There are so many different areas to explore, and you can definitely be paid pretty well!

3. What does a typical workday look like for you (duties, decisions, problems)? I manage the data team of ETL and SQL engineers, so we work very closely with our customers’ data. I work with our COO to find different ways to improve our existing processes, making high-level decisions about how we can migrate to a different system or how we can better implement our next client, but I also jump in on client issues to determine where the bad data is coming from.

4. What do you like most about your job? I like that there are a variety of things for me to do on a daily basis, and I love solving problems! My company is helping our clients find different ways they can save money on their employee benefits, and a lot of that has to do with the healthcare industry. We have been able to uncover some very interesting things that our customers haven’t even thought of.

5. What skills would someone need to do well at your job? Working with data really takes someone who is analytical and has an eye for detail. Patience is also important. You can spend a whole day going down the wrong path and start over the next day and find the answer within an hour. As far as technical skills, you need to understand data modeling, SQL, and data analysis.

6. Are education or certifications important in your field? Why? Continually educating yourself on new technology is important for anyone going into the information systems world. If you can show that you’re willing to learn on your own as well as on the job, employers will be far more willing to hire you. Microsoft certifications are only really useful if the company you are going to work for uses those applications.

7. What advice would you give to someone who is considering working in your field? Keep an open mind. Try out new things. When I was in school, I was focused on the security side of things because it sounded more exciting, but I ended up working more on the data side. Figure out what really excites you, but the more you learn, the more opportunities will open up to you.

8. What do you think will be hot tech jobs in 10 years? Big Data is definitely the “next big thing,” but as technology becomes increasingly used in different ways, security is going to be more and more important. It’s really so hard to predict because things are changing so rapidly!

Ethics Guide

Searching for Clues and your Face The balding tires on Detective Millett’s police cruiser crunched through the gravel as he slowly worked his way on winding country roads to the crime scene. A body had been found this morning near a flood control area by a couple of overly ambitious joggers. This location was miles from the nearest house or business, and even with his police training, Millett wasn’t sure if he would want to go running out here. (On second thought, maybe that was just because he hated running.) The yellow crime tape flapping in the wind and sudden crackling on the police radio brought him back into focus. He eased the cruiser off the road and parked between a small group of monstrous white pines.

Source: Metamorworks/Shutterstock

The status of the crime scene was grim, and the injuries sustained by the victim were severe. Millett was already thinking that some of the evidence and sustained injuries followed a pattern that had been reported in a number of other homicides in the area over the previous 6 to 8 months. So far, no evidence had been found that could even begin to point to a suspect. Maybe there would be something at this crime scene that would generate a few leads. Maybe, just maybe, forensics would rush in and be the heroes like everyone always saw on TV. The crime scene seemed to suggest that the path of the victim and perpetrator converged from two different directions. Just then, a greenhorn officer ran over clutching a dirt-covered cell phone in gloved hands. He explained that he had found the phone about 20 yards away near some bushes and that there had been a divot next to the phone, like it had been thrown there with a decent amount of velocity. The phone appeared to be on and working, and in a crazy stroke of luck, the phone did not appear to be password protected. They started a preliminary search of the phone just to see if there were any recent pictures or text messages that would indicate who the victim was, when the crime happened, and, even more importantly, who the perpetrator might be. The officer searching the phone selected the Photos application and brought up the first image in the gallery—as it filled the screen, the officers gasped. There was a photo of an unknown individual from these very same woods taken right about the time that they believed the crime had been committed. The photo appeared candid, meaning that the subject of the photo didn’t seem to know that a picture was being taken. Maybe the victim sensed something was suspicious about this person and took a picture without them knowing. Portions of the person’s face were relatively clear, but a hood was obstructing some of the higher and lower areas of the face. Due to the blocked areas, Millett thought that the chances of getting an ID from the photo were slim. What seemed like golden evidence initially might just lead them on a wild goose chase. As the other personnel finished processing the crime scene, Millett headed back to his cruiser. As he drove home, he couldn’t help but feel pessimistic about the likelihood of solving this crime. There’s an App for That Weeks had gone by since Detective Millett had reported to the crime scene over by the flood control area. Despite countless forensics tests and even publishing the photo of the suspect in the media, there were no credible leads in the case. Besides being a cop, if there was any way that Millett would describe himself, it would be Luddite; he tried to avoid technology at all costs. His small-town department didn’t have tons of extra money sitting around, so it didn’t have a lot of gadgets, gizmos, and other tech that bigger departments could afford. While this was usually a good thing, because of this case, he was ready to try anything. Maybe there was a potential investigative lifeline that technology could offer—something he didn’t even know about. He called his longtime buddy from the academy who happened to work at a big metropolitan department. His friend told him about a company named PureSite that had created a massive database of publicly available images from the Internet. Law enforcement agencies could buy access to search the company’s database to try to match images of victims or suspects to make an identification. It sounded like a compelling idea, so Millett pulled open his laptop to find the company’s website to see if it could be a feasible solution. While the first result of a Web search came up with PureSite’s page, Millett couldn’t help but notice a number of news articles that also came up in the search results. Even a quick skim of the headlines caused him to hesitate. Apparently, this company had been the target of quite a bit of controversy. Its collection of face images had been considered in violation of privacy, especially since its data set included images of children. In one report, Millet read about a state attorney general who had even filed a lawsuit against the company for what he considered unscrupulous and unethical behavior. PureSite had defended itself by saying that all of the images were freely available on the Internet—it was not like it was illegally harvesting private images on social media. However, PureSite’s position did not seem to defuse the criticism. Millett slumped back in his chair and shook his head. He wanted to solve this crime more than anything, but the last thing he needed was a public relations nightmare on top of a steadily growing pile of unsolved cases. He wasn’t sure what to do. Discussion Questions

1. Evaluate Detective Millett’s predicament and assume that he chose to buy access to PureSite’s services to aid in solving the crime.

a. Is this behavior ethical according to the categorical imperative?

b. Is this behavior ethical according to the utilitarian perspective?

2. How do you personally feel about the high likelihood that images of you, or other data about you, are stored in corporate databases like PureSite’s archive?

3. Does your response to question 2 change if you consider that PureSite is charging money and making a profit from using data linked to you and countless others while you receive no benefit?

4. If you knew the victim of a crime, and law enforcement officers were trying to decide whether to use the PureSite platform to help solve the case, would you want them to do so?

Active Review

Use this Active Review to verify that you understand the ideas and concepts that answer the lesson’s study questions.

· Q5-1 What is the purpose of a database? State the purpose of a database. Explain the circumstances in which a database is preferred to a spreadsheet. Describe the key difference between Figures 5-1 and 5-2.

·

· Q5-2 What is a database? Define the term database. Explain the hierarchy of data and name three elements of a database. Define metadata. Using the example of Student and Office_Visit tables, show how relationships among rows are represented in a database. Define the terms primary key, foreign key, and relational database.

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· Q5-3 What is a database management system (DBMS)? Explain the acronym DBMS and name its functions. List five popular DBMS products. Explain the difference between a DBMS and a database. Summarize the functions of a DBMS. Define SQL. Describe the major functions of database administration.

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· Q5-4 How do database applications make databases more useful? Explain why database tables, by themselves, are not very useful to business users. Name the four elements of a database application and describe the purpose of each. Explain the difference between a database application and a database application program. Describe the nature of traditional database applications. Explain why browser-based applications are better than traditional ones. Name the primary technologies used to support browser-based applications.

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· Q5-5 How are data models used for database development? Explain why user involvement is critical during database development. Describe the function of a data model. Sketch the database development process. Define E-R model, entity, relationship, attribute, and identifier. Give an example, other than one in this text, of an E-R diagram. Define maximum cardinality and minimum cardinality. Give an example of three maximum cardinalities and two minimum cardinalities. Explain the notation in Figures 5-20 and 5-21.

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· Q5-6 How is a data model transformed into a database design? Name the three components of a database design. Define normalization and explain why it is important. Define data integrity problem and describe its consequences. Give an example of a table with data integrity problems and show how it can be normalized into two or more tables that do not have such problems. Describe two steps in transforming a data model into a database design. Using an example not in this lesson, show how 1:N and N:M relationships are represented in a relational database. Describe the users’ role in the database development. Explain why it is easier and cheaper to change a data model than to change an existing database. Use the examples of Figures 5-25c and 5-26c in your answer.

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· Q5-7 How can eHermes benefit from a database system? Summarize the two database architectures that eHermes could use for its image database. Describe the architecture it used and explain the rationale for that choice.

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· Q5-8 2031? Explain how an increase in database data in the next decade will affect business intelligence and security. Summarize two major requirements that some Internet database applications created. Explain the characteristics of the ACID processing of a transaction. Briefly describe the characteristics of NoSQL, NewSQL, and in-memory DBMS products. Summarize how you should respond to these developments.

Using Your Knowledge with eHermes You can readily understand why the knowledge of this lesson would be useful to you if you have a job like Seth’s or Kamala’s. But what if you are Jessica (the CEO) or Victor (the COO)? The knowledge in this lesson will prepare you to make better decisions like the one that Jessica made in Q5-7. It will also help Victor understand the level of budget required to fund this project. Even if you never create a single query during your career, you will make many decisions that involve the use, creation, and maintenance of databases.

Using Your Knowledge

· 5-1. MyLab MIS Draw an entity-relationship diagram that shows the relationships among a database, database applications, and users.

· 5-2. MyLab MIS Consider the relationship between Adviser and Student in Figure 5-21. Explain what it means if the maximum cardinality of this relationship is:

a. N:1

b. 1:1

c. 5:1

d. 1:5

· 5-3. MyLab MIS Identify two entities in the data entry form in Figure 5-28. What attributes are shown for each? What do you think are the identifiers?

Figure 5-28: Sample Data Entry Form

Source: Excel 2019, Windows 10, Microsoft Corporation.

Source: Karol Ciesluk/Shutterstock

Warning systems like lane departure alerts, tire pressure sensors, or collision avoidance would also be missing. The car wouldn’t be able to help the driver avoid an accident if something went wrong. In short, the driver would have to rely on a highly restricted data set (e.g., looking ahead, checking mirrors, and listening for weird noises for indications of engine trouble) to operate the vehicle. Now, compare this hypothetical scenario to a company operating in today’s highly competitive and digitally driven economy. Data is now the lifeblood of many businesses. One of the greatest challenges a business can face is harnessing the power of its data. This is typically achieved through data analysis and visualization, often in the form of real-time data dashboards. Over time, managing a company using a cloud-based infrastructure is a business paradigm that has become somewhat “murky.” Software engineers who develop and manage applications often have different mentalities, use different tools, and can even have different objectives compared to system administrators, who deploy and manage the actual infrastructure. However, transitioning to a cloud platform forces these two groups to converge and interact in new ways, ways that were not already supported by any existing technology or collaborative tools.

Throwing Companies a Bone

In 2010, Olivier Pomel and Alexis Lê-Quôc recognized this gap in the market and began working to develop a tool that would allow real-time monitoring and data analysis for cloud operations. This included alerts and dashboards for the operation of servers, databases, networks, applications, and so on.12 A key element of the platform is its easy integration (often called turnkey) with numerous cloud infrastructures and other enterprise tools. The company’s start came at the perfect time as more and more corporations were moving their operations to the cloud. Over the years, Datadog’s growth included acquisition of a handful of smaller companies. After five rounds of funding totaling roughly $150 million, Datadog’s rapid growth and success resulted in the company’s IPO in September 2019. Initial shares were priced at $27, and the price increased to $37.55 by the closing bell on the first day of trading (a 39% increase); the company’s market valuation hit $11 billion.13 The company is now reporting quarterly revenues well over $100 million.14

Many are wondering if this dog is resting on its haunches or if it is poised for another attack. Generally, the trend of migrating technology infrastructures to the cloud should continue, and Datadog should be in a position of prolonged future growth. The company is also expected to retain its edge in innovation by adding new functionality and features.15 Additionally, it has been predicted that the COVID-19 pandemic will positively impact adoption of the Datadog platform as companies need to be data-driven and nimble now more than ever.16 In addition to expansion with new clientele, an analysis of spending by existing Datadog customers (analyzed by calculating the dollar-based retention rate) indicates that existing customers are indeed spending more on Datadog products and services over time.17 However, if the economy heads into recession, investments in fancy monitoring tools and digital dashboards may become a hard sell in corporate boardrooms. Also, Datadog may reach a saturation point with the “low-hanging-fruit” class of customers and find it increasingly difficult to fuel new sales. Has this dog already had its day? Questions

· 5-13. Why do you think so many companies are migrating to the cloud? Consider your own use of technology—do you benefit from any cloud technologies?  Show Answer

· 5-14. Have you ever used a technology that summarizes/reports data in the form of a digital dashboard? What was the technology, and how did you use it to make a decision? Be ready to share your response with the class.  Show Answer

· 5-15. Go to the Customers page on the Datadog website. Take a look at one of the customer case studies available on that page. Be ready to share a brief synopsis with the rest of the class about how Datadog helped the company in the case study.  Show Answer

· 5-16. Do you think a university would benefit from using Datadog? How?  Show Answer

· 5-17. Based on Datadog’s long track record of growth and the other factors described in the last section of the article, how do you think the company will perform in the coming years in light of some of the potential risks?  Show Answer

Complete the following writing exercises