BIT part 1

Chapter 1

Q1. What are the characteristics of the modern business environment?
The characteristics of the modern business environment include the integration of management and information technology

Q2. What is meant by a web-based, global platform, what does it provide, and how has it affected business?
A web-based, global platform provides a way to communicate without boundaries. Individuals can now connect, compute, communicate, collaborate and compete everywhere and anywhere, any time and all the time. Furthermore, we can access limitless amounts of information services and entertainment, as well as exchanging knowledge producing and selling goods and services. However, web-based global platform does not just affect individuals, but has changed the way businesses operate through globalisation. Now businesses can use the World Wide Web to communicate, compete and access information on a global scale, much more efficiently than seen in the past.

Q3. What are the main pressures that characterise the modern global business environment?
There are many pressures, which characterise the modern global business environment, some of which include market pressures (involving strong competition and the global economy). Another pressure include the changing nature of the workforce where new skills have been learned, new locations have been introduced, new hours the norm, and consumers have subsequently become more powerful. Technology pressures such as innovation, which in this day and age is forever on the rise, and products and services have high obsolescence, as well as information overload (or digital obesity). Furthermore political, societal and legal spheres are additional market pressures, including social pressures such as the digital divide and terrorism where there are new ways to commit big ticket crime. Social responsibility, compliance with government rules and regulations, alongside ethical and moral issues are forever pressures within the global business environment.

Q4. What are/discuss some of the common IT orientated organisational responses to these pressures.
There are four main responses to organisational pressures
1. Strategy systems – help increase profits and/or market share, better negotiate with suppliers, or to prevent competitors from entering their markets
2. Customer focus – concentrates on exceptional customer service, specialising in services such as IT are specially designed to keep the customer satisfied and happy
3. Make-to-order and mass customisation – focusing on customised products and services at a reasonable cost to satisfy consumer’s needs and wants.
4. E-Business and E-Commerce – where business is carried out electronically.

Q5. How are IT architecture and IT infrastructure interrelated?
IT architecture integrates the information requirements of the overall organisation and the physical facilities of the IT infrastructure, which includes the IT components, services and management. IT infrastructure involves the physical facilities to carry out the IT architecture plans of information and future direction.

Q6. Is the Internet an infrastructure, an architecture, or an application program? Or something else. Why?
The Internet is a web based information tool.

Chapter 2
Q1. What is the difference between an “application” and a “computer-based information systems”?
A computer-based information system is a system that uses a computer technology to perform some or all of the untended tasks, whereas an application is a computer program designed to support a specific task or business process.

Q2. What is an information system?
The following combination of components makes up an information system, hardware, software, databases, networks (both external and internal) procedures and people

Q3. According to Porter, what are the five forces that could endanger a firm’s position in its industry or marketplaces?
Porter’s Five (5) forces:
1. “Threat of entry of new competitors” – this threat is high when it is easy to enter the market place and low when barriers to entry exist.
2. “The bargaining power of suppliers” – supplier power is high when buyers have few choices from whom to purchase goods from.
3. “Bargaining power of customer” – buyer power is high when many choices are present from whom to buy and low when buyers have fewer choices
4. “The threat of substitute products or services” – the threat is high when there are many substitutes for an organisations products or services
5. “Rivalry among existing firm in the industry” – threat is high when there is intense competition among many firms in an industry.

Q4. In relation to Porter’s value chain model, what is meant by primary activities and support activities, and how does IT support activities?
Primary activities are business activities that are related to the production and distribution of the firm’s products and services, which create value for which customers are willing to pay. These are divided into 5 primary activities:
1. Inbound logistics (inputs)
2. Operation (manufacturing and testing)
3. Outbound logistics (storage and distribution)
4. Marketing and sales
5. Services
Support activities differ to primary activities as do not add direct value to the firm’s products or services, but rather contribute to the firm’s competitive advantage by activities. Such support activities are as follows
- The firms infrastructure (accounting, finance, management)
- Human resources management
- Product and technology development
- Procurement

Q5. Discuss the logic of building information systems in accordance with the organisational hierarchical structure.
The logic of building information systems is in conformity with the organisational structure as it helps the business to collect, process, analyse, store information – with high speed and volume. With the implementation of information systems, businesses can communicate and collaborate among several organisational, increasing their sources of available information, which assists their work on a global scale.

Q6. How has the Internet affected each of the five forces in Porter’s competitive force model?
The impact of Internet has increased competition, which has a negative impact on profitability. However, it has certainly changed the nature of competition.

Tech Guide 1

Q1. What is computer hardware and what are the major hardware components?
Hardware refers to the physical equipment used for the input, processing, output and storage activities of a computer system. Examples of hardware include PC’s, Servers, Printers, Mouse’, Monitors. Major hardware components include the PC and the Motherboard. Hardware consists of
- Central processing unit (CPU)
- Primary storage
- Secondary storage
- Input technologies
- Communication technologies

Q2. What is Moore’s Law? What does it mean in relation to computers?
Gordon Moore’s Law is a prediction that the microprocessor complexity would double approximately every two years. It was estimated in 1970 that computer speed would increase 1 million times by 2000. Furthermore, computers are increasing in technology and speed, continuing to improve as an information-processing tool.

Q3. In basic terms, describe how a microprocessor functions.
The microprocessor is made up of several parts, each performing special functions. Firstly there is the Control Unit, which sequentially accesses programme instructions, decodes them and controls the flow of data to and from the Arithmetic-Logic Unit (ALU), registers, primary and secondary storage, caches and various output devices. Secondly there is the ALU, which performs all the mathematic calculations and formulae, and makes logical comparisons.

Q4. What factors determine the speed of the microprocessor?
There are several factors, which determine the speed of the microprocessor, and these are listed below:
- Line width – distance between transistors
- Word length – number of binary units (aka bits) that the CPU can process in one cycle
- Bus width – is the size of the physical paths down which data and instructions travel as electrical impulses.
- Clock speed – preset speed of the clock that times all chip activities in megahertz and gigahertz.

Q5. What are the four main types of Primary Storage?
Primary storage or main memory stores three types of information for very brief periods of time. It takes place in chips mounted on the computer’s main circuit board, called the motherboard.
- Registers: Is part of the CPU with the least capacity, storing extremely limited amounts of instructions and data only immediately before and after processing.
- Random access memory (RAM): the part of primary storage that hoods a software program and small amounts of data when they are brought from secondary storage
- Cache memory: a type of primary storage where the computer can temporarily store blocks of data used more often.
- Read-only memory: type of primary storage where certain critical instructions are safeguarded; the storage is non-volatile and retains the instructions when the power to the computer is turned off.


Q6. What are the main types of Secondary Storage?
1. Flash memory devices – such as memory cards
2. Optical storage devices – such as compact disk
3. Magnetic Media
a. Magnetic tape (sequential access)
b. Magnetic disks (direct access)

Q7. How does primary storage differ from secondary storage in terms of speed, cost and capacity?
Primary Storage Secondary Storage
Speed Data has to travel a shorter distance, thus information is processed faster Data travels longer distance, thus information is processed slower
Cost More expensive Less Expensive
Capacity Stores small amounts of data and information what the CPU will use immediately. Larger amounts of data and information for extended periods of time

Q8. What are enterprise storage systems?
Enterprise storage systems are an independent, external system, which includes two or more storage devices. These systems provide large amounts of storage, high performance data transfer, a high degree of availability, protection against data loss and sophisticated management tools.
There are three types of enterprise storage:
- Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks (RAID)
- Storage Area Network (SAN)
- Network Attached Storage (NAS)


Q9. Distinguish between human data input devices and source data automation.
Human data-entry consists of devices, including keyboards, mouse, trackball, joystick, touch screen, stylus and voice recognition, which all in turn require a certain amount of human effort; and
Source-data automation is where devices input data with minimal human intervention (e.g. barcode reader).

Q10. What is one new technology that will change how we do things?
I don’t think anyone could ever guess the success and the versatility of the MP3 player when it was first introduced to the public. Sure, it plays music from a play list of up to 20,000 songs, but you can also save movies or even documents! MP3 players change the way we socialise, learn and entertain in a way which is innovative and has not been seen since the release of CD players, or even earlier. For example, some Universities even post “pod casts” on the Internet for students unable to attend lectures, so they can listen to the class in their own time!!


Tech Guide 2

Q1. What are the main differences/distinction between system software and application software?
Systems software is a set of instructions, which mainly serves as an intermediary between application programs and computer hardware. Furthermore, systems software provides self-regulatory functions for computer systems, such as loading itself when the computer is first turned on and providing commonly used sets of instructions for all applications. This differs to application software because the latter provides more specific functionality, such as word processing.

Q2. What are the two main types of system software?
1. System control programs – control use of hardware, software and data resources of a computer system.
2. System support programs – support the operations, management and users if a computer system by providing a variety of support services.

Q3. What is the difference between proprietary and open source software? What considerations should be made when a business selects either software?
Proprietary software concerns a company’s specific or unique business need, which can be developed either in-house by the organisation’s personnel, or it could be commissioned from a software merchant. Open source software provides a code at no cost, which can be used by developers and users. This is copyrighted and distributed with licence terms ensuring that the source code will always be available. A business should consider a number of things when deliberating over either software.
If choosing propriety, businesses should consider the restrictions of this software such as its use, copying and modification; consider the cost and time spent on modifying the software; privacy and copyright advantages of this software. If choosing open source software, a business should consider factors such as the fact it produces high-quality, reliable low cost software, however there may be a lot of time and money spent on training users.

Q4. What are some of the legal issues involved in acquiring and using software in most business/organisations?
The legal issues mainly derive from licensing. Copying software is illegal and if the correct licensees for the use of the software are not purchased correctly it is considered fraud. It is also imperative to ensure that the business is sufficiently watching the software usage amongst the company – because if someone is using illegal software it is still under your name.

Q5. What is meant by SaaS? Name some examples of this software.
SaaS is Software-as-a-service – which is a method of delivering software in which a vendor hosts the applications. Customers do not own the software but pay for using it such as Google.


Chapter 3

Q1.
Ethical issues concerning the IT world are placed into the four following categories.
1. Privacy – involves collecting, storing, and disseminating information about individuals.
2. Accuracy – involves the authenticity, fidelity and accuracy of information that is collected and processed.
3. Property – involves the ownership and value of information
4. Accessibility – revolves around who should have access to information and whether they should have to pay for this access.

Q2.
1. Unintentional acts – e.g. lack of information security awareness
2. Natural disasters – e.g. earthquakes, hurricanes – must engage in proper planning for backup and recovery of information systems and software.
3. Technical failures – e.g. hardware and software. Most common hardware problem – crash of a hard disc drive. Most common software problem – errors or bugs in computer programs.
4. Management failures – involve lack of funding for security efforts – lack of leadership will cause the information secure of the org to suffer
5. Deliberate acts –

Q3.
Software attacks have evolved from the outbreak era where malicious software tried to affect as many computers as possible
For example
1. Trojan horse: software programs that hide in other computer programs and reveal their designed behaviour only when they are activated.
2. Viruses: segment of computer code that performs malicious actions by attaching to another computer program.
3. Worm: segment for computer code that performs malicious actions and will replicate or spread, by itself (without requiring another computer program)

Q4.
Physical controls – prevent unauthorised individuals from gaining access to a company’s facilities. Common physical controls include walls, doors etc.
Access Control – restrict unauthorised individuals from using information resources. These controls involve two major functions: authentications and authorisation.
Communication controls – secure the movement of data across networks. Communications controls consist of firewalls, anti-malware systems, and intrusion detection systems.
Application controls – are security counter measures that protect specific applications. The three major categories of these controls are input, processing and output controls.

Q5.
Information system audtiting ensure that info systems work properly. ISA invovlves installation of controls in the original system and information system auditing – this examines the inputs, outputs and processing. Which can be performed both internally and externally.

Q6.
Authentication determines the identity if the person requiring access whilst authorisation determines which actions, rights or priovledges the person has, based on verifed identity. Both authentication and authorisation are imperative to e-commerce as it aids rogs in knowing who the user is and what the user has done and knows.