CAP 353: Information system

Homework No. 1

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

Part A

Q1:->How can information technology support a company’s

business processes and decision making, and give it a
competitive advantage? Give examples to illustrate your answer.

Ans:-

Business processes

Information technology provides a platform for a company to

connect the global world with Internet. Internet has a wide range
of customers, buyers, service providers, technical staff, etc. with
the help of Internet business can run on a single website like
General Electric Company
Information system and technology provide various channels to
communication like E-mail, Instant messages, SMS servers, etc to
all employees at any time all over the world. This type of software
helps to saving time and cost of the company.

Decision making

Software’s are very important for a company for instant

Information of stocks, assets valuation, sales, purchases, and
service.

Decision making is very easy to the management after IT because

its provide latest information to the management for employee,
stocks, sales, purchase, and services, etc .The management can
make a decision after check IT reports.

.
:CONCLUSION
Information technology plays a vital role in the success of an“
enterprise. For example, the Internet and Internet-like internal
networks, or intranets, and external inter organizational
networks, called extranets, can provide the information
infrastructure a business needs for efficient operations, effective
”.management, and competitive advantage
Q2:->Identify several basic competitive strategies and explain
how they can use information technologies to confront the
competitive forces faced by a business.

Ans:- A variety of competitive strategies can be developed to help

a firm confront these competitive forces. These include:

Cost Leadership Strategy

*Become a low cost producer of products and services

*Find ways to help suppliers or customers reduce their costs
*Increase the costs of competitors.

Use of IT

*online build to order

*online seller to order

*online auctions

Differentiation Strategy

*Develop ways to differentiate products and services from

competitors.
*Reduce the differentiation advantages of competitors.

Use of IT

*online customer design

*customer online shipment tracking

Innovation Strategy - Find new ways of doing business

*Develop new products & services

*Enter new markets or marketing segments
*Establish new business alliances
*Find new ways of producing products/services
*Find new ways of distributing products/services

Use of IT
*online discount stock trading
*online package tracking and flight management
*online full service customer system

Growth Strategies
*Significantly expand the company’s capacity to produce goods
and services
*Expand into global markets
*Diversify into new products and services
*Integrate into related products and services.

Use of IT
*global intranet
*merchandise ordering by global satellite network POS inventory
tracing.

Alliance Strategies

*Establish new business linkages and alliances with customers,

suppliers, competitors, consultants and other companies
(mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, forming virtual
companies, etc.).

Use of IT
*automatic inventory replenishment by supplier
*virtual manufacturing alliances

Q3:-> Identify the major types and uses of micro-computer,

midrange and mainframe computer systems ?

Ans:

• Microcomputers are used as personal computers, but are

also interconnected in a variety of telecommunications
networks. Small computers, and can be classified into
Desktop, Laptop, Notebook, and PDA (Personal Digital
Assistant)/Palmtop.
Ex.: Internationl Business Machines (IBM) PC 1981 model.

• Midrange computers are increasingly being used as powerful

network servers and for many multi-user business data
processing and scientific applications. Also called
Minicomputers and Medium-sized computers. Also small, but
is used on business purposes.
Ex.: Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP series
computers in early 1960s.

• Mainframe computers are larger and more powerful and are

used to handle information processing needs for large
organizations. Large fast and inexpensive and used in
businesses
 Ex: UNIVAC 1 in 1951

Part B

Q4:->Outline the major technologies and uses of computer

peripherals for input , output and storage?

Ans:-input technologies:

• Keyboard: most widely-used

• Graphical user interface (GUI)

• Icons, menus, windows, buttons, bars

• Used for selection

Pointing Devices

• Electronic Mouse

• Trackball – Stationary device like a mouse

• Roller ball used to move cursor on screen.

• Pointing Stick – Small eraser head-like device in keypad

Moves cursor in direction of pressure placed on stick

• Touchpad – Small rectangular touch-sensitive surface

• Moves the cursor in the direction of finger moves on

the pad

• Touch Screen – use computer by touching screen

• Video display screen that emits a grid of infrared

beams, sound waves, or a slight electric current

• Grid is broken when the screen is touched.

Pen-based Computing

• Used in Tablet PCs and PDAs

• Pressure-sensitive layer like touch screen under liquid

crystal display screen
• Have software that digitizes handwriting, hand printing, and
hand drawing

Speech Recognition Systems

• Discrete: pause between each word

• Continuous: conversationally-paced speech

• System compares your speech patterns to library of sound

patterns

• Training: to recognize your voice patterns

• Speaker independent system: understand voice never

heard before

• Used in voice-messaging computers

Optical Scanning

• Read text or graphics and convert them into digital input

• Desktop or flatbed scanners

• Optical Character Recognition (OCR):

• Read characters and codes

• Used to read merchandise tags, sort mail, score tests

• Optical scanning wands

• Read bar codes such as the Universal Product Code

(UPC)

Output Technologies

• Video displays

• Cathode ray tube (CRT) like a television

• Most desktop PC screens

• Liquid crystal displays (LCDs)

• Laptop and PDAs, some PCs

• Printed Output

• Inkjet printer
 • Spray ink on page

• Laser printer

• Electrostatic process like photocopying machine

• Voice response systems

• Video output

Q5:-> What trends are occuring in the development and use of

the major types of computer systems?

Q6:-> Explain the following terms:

(a)DTP :- End users and organizations can use desktop publishing

(DTP) software to produce their own printed materials such as
newsletters, brochures, manuals, and books with several type
styles, graphics, and colors on each page.
Typically text material and graphics can be generated by word
processing and graphics packages and imported as text and
graphics files. Optical scanners may be used to input text and
graphics from printed material. You can also use files of clip art,
which are predawn graphic illustrations provided by the software
package or available from other sources. These packages can also
convert documents to HTML format.
End users and organizations can use desktop publishing (DTP)
software’s to produce their own printed material that look
professionally published. These are like:

 Adobe page maker

 Microsoft publishers
 QuarkXPress
 InDesign

(b)Presentation Graphics:- Presentation packages are used to

convert numeric data into graphics displays such as line charts,
bar graphs, pie charts, and many other types of graphics. Most of
the top packages also help you prepare multimedia presentations
of graphics, photos, animation, and video clips, including
publishing to the World Wide Web
  They are easier to comprehend and communicate than
numerical data
 Use of multiple-color and multiple-media displays can more
easily emphasize key points, strategic differences, and
important trends in the data.
 Presentation graphics have proven to be much more
effective than tabular presentations of numeric data for
reporting and communicating in advertising media,
management reports, or other business presentations.

 Presentation graphics software packages give you many

easy-to-use capabilities that encourage the use of graphics
presentations (slide shows), which contain many integrated
graphics and multimedia displays.
Examples:
• Microsoft PowerPoint
• Freelance
• Coral Presentations.
· Graphics and multimedia presentations can be transferred in
HTML format to web sites on corporate intranets or the World
Wide Web.

(c)Software licensing :- regardless of weather a software

application is purchased COST or accessed via an ASP ,the
software must be licensed for use. Software licensing is a
contract of agreement between the software publisher and the
end user. It include
 Intellectual property rights
 Copyright
 Trade mark
 Trade secrets

It is believe that when a company buys a software

application they have not purchase right of ownership.
Rather than they have purchase the license to use the
software under the term and conditions of software
licensing agreement. The license often prohibits reverse
engineering, modifying, disclosing or transferring the
software .They also do not provide the right of reselling
multiple copies of the software. When the software is
obtained from the ASP the license to dispense use of
software is generated to the ASP and in return the ASP
agrees to pay royalty to software vendor.

(e)RAID

A RAID (redundant array of inexpensive/independent disk)

appears to the operating system to be a single logical hard disk.
RAID employs the technique of disk striping, which involves
partitioning each drive's storage space into units ranging from a
sector (512 bytes) up to several megabytes. The stripes of all the
disks are interleaved and addressed in order.

In a single-user system where large records, such as medical or

other scientific images, are stored, the stripes are typically set up
to be small (perhaps 512 bytes) so that a single record spans all
disks and can be accessed quickly by reading all disks at the
same time.

In a multi-user system, better performance requires establishing

a stripe wide enough to hold the typical or maximum size record.
This allows overlapped disk I/O across drives.

There are at least nine types of RAID plus a non-redundant array

(RAID-0):

• RAID-0
• RAID-1:
• RAID-2RAID-3
• RAID-4
• RAID-5
• RAID-6
• RAID-7
• RAID-10
• RAID-50 (or RAID-5+0)
• RAID-53 (or RAID-5+3)
• RAID-S

(e) Application service providers :-application service providers

are the companies that own ,operate and maintain application
software and the computer system resources . These companies
charge their customers on a per-use or on a monthly or annual fee
basis.

 Numbers of companies purchase the application software

they need to run their business from ASP’S.

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

time.

 Asp’s have their fee structure that is cheaper then

producing application software by own.

 They also manage companywide software patches and

upgrads.
 (f)Programming languages:-

A "programming language" is a language designed to describe a

set of consecutive actions to be executed by a computer. A
programming language is therefore a practical way for us to give
instructions to a computer.

On the other hand, the term "natural language" defines a means

of communication shared by a group of individuals (for example:
English or French)

The language used by the processor is called machine code. The

code that reaches the processor consists of a series of 0s and 1s
known as (binary data).

Machine code is therefore difficult for humans to understand,

which is why intermediary languages, which can be understood by
humans, have been developed. The code written in this type of
language is transformed into machine code so that the processor
can process it.

The assembler was the first programming language ever used.

This is very similar to machine code but can be understood by
developers. Nonetheless, such a language is so similar to machine
code that it strictly depends on the type of processor used (each
processor type may have its own machine code). Thus a program
developed for one machine may not be ported to another type of
machine. The term "portability" describes the ability to use a
software program on different types of machines. A software
program written in assembler code, may sometimes have to be
completely rewritten to work on another type of computer!

A programming language has therefore several advantages:

• it is much more understandable than machine code;

• it allows greater portability, i.e. can be easily adapted to run
on different types of computers.