MIS STRATEGY 2 PAGES assignment

Professor Dai

10-1-2015

Chun Pong Lam

The Weather Channel

The weather Channel launched on 1982, it is the first the first 24-hour network devoted to weather programming and the first national TV network able to automatically customize content based on viewer location. Base on this accomplishment, information system really added mighty value into their company. On the earlier of the weather channel tasks, real time reporting had taken biggest part of their company, real time reporting can be used on heavy traffic, hurricane, tsunami, earthquake reporting and more purpose. On that time, live broadcasting using satellites to live broadcast the news and other emergency events. Their TV centralized Infrastructure have been set since 1980s, audience already accustomed to watch weather information and be prepared before going out. By the time cell phone become popular, people can call the weather channel hotline to inquiry about the weather. This service seem to connect to normal daily life, on the other hand, it is a very hard time for the weather channel. This action needs database to handle nationwide weather information system by area code. By 1995, the weather channel first launches their website. Several years after the website launched, there are not much demand, and the demand which specified on requesting information on website, in the early stage of the weather channel website (1995-2003). On that time, the weather channel website provides the weather information of the day on their website, the explanation of low demand is the weather channel only provide those data of the day onto website. The information system that they mostly need for their website is collect data nationwide and publish into website, other form of internet access are not yet ready for their website. By time goes by, smart phone coming up so quick and popular, the weather channel has to keep their path with trend. They need to start a whole new mobility for their users. In this century, I would dare to state that people are observing smart phone due to the first IPhone released.

First IPhone released on 2007, which one of their best features came along – AppStore. AppStore provide a platform that everyone can create customized application for different uses. The weather channel is one of the mobile leader since joining the mobile space, The Weather Channel surpasses 50 million cumulative app downloads on all smart phones and tablets. This number can really shows the weather channel can closely keep on the trend path. However, above have mentioned IPhone series might be the originator of smart phone, yet, IPhone keep participate about half of market share on smart phone market. The weather channel had put many efforts on optimizing IPhone application, and the result is after 7 years of competitive application market, The Weather Channel is named the number 2 all-time free app for iPad and number 7 all-time free app for iPhone. This milestone not only relate to smart phone or table, it also generated millions of new users to the weather channel. Also due to this dramatic user generation, the company has expand so fast that their IT engineer only can pray information will not come in at the same time from 144 different servers around the nation. In about 2014, the weather channel stated their company get 50 million pages views daily from those 144 different servers. The company had decide to find a better way to control those numerous data which is give the control a third party company to handle the AWS (Amazon Web Service) system. This is might cost more than normal method, but it really saved a lot of time for those engineers in the weather channel can develop other more important system. Lastly, their API (application programming interface) team has done very nicely, their mobile application are now used for all over the world, their application have over 10 Billion requests per day and almost 1 billion smartphone users around the world.