Name ___ __________
This is an individual assignment so
please do not confer with your classmates regarding the exam
.
This exam will be submitted through Sakai Assignments and will be subject to a TurnItIn analysis. You may submit to Sakai three times: the first two submissions will be TRIAL submissions for you to assess your TurnItIn originality percentage. If you are unsatisfied with that percentage after your first submission, modify your paper and submit to the second TRIAL assignment. Please be sure to submit to the FINAL Sakai assignment when you are satisfied with your paper.
Section 1: True False (20 Points Total: 1 Point Each)
Please enter either “T” or “F”
1. Analysis from IT consultancies such as Gartner Group (e.g. “Hype Cycles” and “Magic Quadrants”) should be accepted as 100% true and not questioned.
2. An IT competitive advantage is typically short-lived.
3. The primary purpose of computer cookies is to report a user’s activities to marketers.
4. A relational database table is analogous to an Excel spreadsheet, comprised of rows and columns.
5. Pure digital goods have an initial high cost to develop.
6. “Coopetition” is a feature of business ecosystems.
7. The higher up the corporate hierarchy information travels, the coarser it gets.
8. Hadoop is a tool used to analyze smaller, more manageable, quantities of data.
9. One of the advantages of the Cloud for corporations is its ability to rapidly scale up or down, depending on the need.
10. Before an organization determines whether to implement new IT systems, it is imperative to understand what the business drivers are first.
11. An example of SaaS is salesforce.com.
12. “Metadata” refers to portions of the Deep Web accessible only via a special browser.
13. One of the objectives of Knowledge Management is to convert explicit knowledge into tacit knowledge.
14. Blogs and Tweets are examples of structured data.
15. SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS are all database variants.
16. A website that wants to link to an external webpage will often employ an API.
17. New capabilities such as Apple Pay will help promote industry standards.
18. Virtualization typically substitutes software for hardware.
19. Most companies know where their systems are vulnerable and plan for zero day attacks.
20. LANs connect WANs together.
Section 2: Multiple Choice (20 Points Total: 1 Point Each)
Choose the best answer.
Subsection A (Questions 1-5). 1 point each. Indicate which IT strategic role(s) is(are) most likely to produce the listed benefit.
Strategic Roles:
1. Automation
2. Empowerment
3. Control
4. Collaboration
___ Enhance front-line employees’ access to customer information.
___
Reduction in the total time, on average, to complete a transaction by digitizing the work activities associated with the transaction
___Standardize customer support scripts and processes in order to reduce variances in error rates and customer satisfaction ratings across customer support representatives
___ Enable a firm’s best product designers, located across the globe, to contribute in significant ways to the ‘look and feel’ of a new product line
___ Reduce non-productive employee time in a repair shop by more closely monitoring when assigned repair jobs are started and completed
Subsection B (Questions 6-10). 1 point each. Indicate the stage of IT Infrastructure evolution most likely to produce the listed objective.
Infrastructure Stages:
1. Local Optimization
2. Technology Standardization
3. Process Optimization
____ Enable a firm to present a ‘single face to the external customer’ across all operating areas
____ Allow each operating area to configure IT-enabled business solutions that best meet its unique needs
____ Reduce hardware procurement costs across all operating areas
____ Use a single set of data definitions across all operating areas
____ Reduce desktop support costs across all operating areas
Questions 11-15: 2 points each.
11. An example of sensor-driven decision analytics is:
A. Sensors mounted in cars to help avoid accidents
B. Sensors that help align items on an assembly line
C. Data center energy management enabled by sensors
D. Sensors on the “goody cabinet” that will send a message to a dieter when the cabinet is opened
12. Gartner Group has suggested that there are four types of analytics capabilities. These are:
A. Descriptive, Diagnostic, Predictive, Prescriptive
B. Descriptive, Diagnostic, Contiguous, Spurious
C. Descriptive, Predictive, Contingent, Prescriptive
D. Descriptive, Diagnostic, Remote, Local
13. During Intel’s “Protect” era, the company was concerned with these types of risk:
A. Hacking, employee sabotage, compliance, hardware failure
B. Competitor advantages, compliance, password exposure, data leakage
C. E-discovery, business continuity, compliance, IP
D. Data stewardship, compliance, SOX, data leakage
14. Which informal expression might Lego have used to describe its relationship with its user community?
A. “Still waters run deep”
B. “Let sleeping dogs lie”
C. “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”
D. “You cant judge a book by looking at its cover”
15. What word best describes the maturity of “Cloud Computing”
A. Mature
B. Evolving
C. Ostentatious
D. Obsolete
Instructions
: On Sections 3 & 4, please answer the questions as clearly and succinctly as possible while at the same time providing adequate depth to your answers.
Section 3: Short Answer (20 points total: 2 Points Each)
1. Describe the difference between IS and IT.
2. List two benefits that an ERP offers to implementing organizations
3. What are the 4 strategic uses of IT and give an example of each.
4. Explain how the Internet can be used to exploit cognitive surplus.
5. Give an example of a long-tail product and briefly explain why it is considered “long tail”.
6. How has Allergan driven business agility by utilizing the Cloud?
7. List three of the arguments for why the Internet makes you dumber made by Nick Carr.
8. How can the consumerization of IT impact a company’s EA?
9. Companies often begin their migration to the Cloud by assuming that this will reduce the cost of their IT. What other benefits does moving to the Cloud offer?
10. Explain what Dr. Omar El Sawy is trying to convey in the graphic below. How does this affect you as a businessperson?
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Section 4: Mini-Case Analysis (40 Points Total)
Please read the following fictional mini-case and answer the questions. Each question is worth 10 points.
Mini-Case: Murthy Technologies
Murthy Technologies is a growing maker of IT products such as mobile technologies (cell phones, tablets, etc.), other computer hardware (e.g. wireless routers), as well as mysterious software “widgets” that can advise parents of the best Halloween costume for their children. The company began as a small entrepreneurial start-up in founder Ashwin Murthy’s garage, and has achieved rapid recognition due to the ingenious designs and advanced functionality of Murthy’s products.
Dr. Murthy expanded his company out of the garage by hiring friends from around the world to help him design, market, and distribute his devices. This has resulted in a collegial, yet somewhat jumbled, organization. The corporate headquarters is located in Westlake Village, CA, USA, but most of the global staff works either out of their homes or in small offices in exotic locales such as Mumbai, India, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Kiel, Germany.
Murthy maintains a global sales staff and has recently launched an automated customer service capability on its website. While Murthy’s staff is doing a serviceable job in marketing the company’s products, Dr. Murthy believes that the time is ripe to take a huge leap into the “major leagues” of his industry. Murthy products are sold via retailers such as Best Buy, through OEMs (specialty custom designed products), and online. The products are delivered to their destinations by logistics partners such as UPS (small quantities) as well as by trucking companies, who can fill a semi trailer with Murthy products. Murthy Corporation’s current industry position is 28, but the company aspires to be in the top 10 by 2016. Although Murthy’s designs are unique, Dr. Murthy worries that his competitors will be able to copy his products and bring them to market in a short amount of time. As a result, he has begun to license some of his products to major tech giants. The Google “Costume Advisor” algorithm is especially popular around Halloween.
Component parts are sourced from a variety of suppliers. Manufacturing is currently done in a large company-owned factory in Thailand. Murthy Technologies plans on outsourcing additional manufacturing to other plants wherever in the world it can ensure that quality will be high and labor costs will be competitive. “Quality” is the operative word here, because the company’s ability to compete is based on its brand reputation and its ability to adjust to a rapidly changing demand environment. In addition to labor costs, Murthy seeks to reduce other costs in such areas as its sales force and management staff.
Murthy Technologies’ computer systems are a collection of off-the-shelf software packages, internally developed applications, locally designed web sites, and several consultant-built applications. The corporate websites can take orders for products, but are not completely integrated with Murthy’s backend systems. Murthy has recently hired a new CIO, Sandra Schultz, and is building its corporate IT group to prepare for the anticipated spurt of growth.
Ms. Schultz has been getting very little sleep recently as she tries to get her arms around the enormity of her new job. She sees IT as key to helping Murthy Technologies take the giant leap its founder has envisioned. In addition to the need to refresh Murthy’s tired legacy systems, she also must contend with headaches like government regulations (which have recently forced Murthy into additional reporting requirements), the need to streamline business processes through IT, and mandates from big retailers like Wal-Mart (who wants Murthy to implement RFID chips on their products). And if all this weren’t enough, Ms. Schultz must find ways to glean more competitive advantages through IT and build a platform for future IT capabilities.
Sandra Schultz is overwhelmed. She received her MBA from Pepperdine’s Graziadio School of Business and has tapped the Wave Network to find qualified and energetic students to help her creatively find ways to exploit technology in order to improve business competitiveness. You have been hired as a consultant to Ms. Schultz’s Office of the CIO. Please answer the following questions posed by Ms. Schultz.
1. Ms. Schultz realizes that all IT investment decisions need to start with an understanding of her firm’s business drivers. She has heard that there is a comprehensive approach to understanding business models called the Business Model Canvas. She has asked that you please perform a Business Model Canvas analysis for Murthy Technologies.
2. Dr. Murthy is fond of saying that “it is an N=1 and R=G world today”. Ms. Schultz has no idea what this means. Help Ms. Schultz to understand by explaining the concept and how it might impact Murthy Technologies.
3. While Ms. Schultz is getting very little sleep, Dr. Murthy is getting even less because he worries that proprietary information is leaking to the outside world. His immediate reaction is to place draconian controls on his data in order to stop undesirable outflows. Is this the right approach? Is there an example of how another company effectively handled this problem (Ms. Schultz vaguely remembers a case study from her Pepperdine days)? Please explain your answers.
4. There is a great wealth of expertise within the company, but Dr. Murthy worries that “we don’t know what we know”. How can Ms. Schultz help capture and organize this expertise? What are two potential challenges to achieving this outcome?
1
IT
Connection
View
(~1970-95)
IT
Immersion View
(~1991-2011)
Fusion View
(~2003 -?)
IT
IT
IT as Tool
IT as
Environment
IT as Fabric
Changing Conception of IT Platforms
Figure 5-4
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istm_603_midterm_fall_session_b_2014.docx
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