IS Strategic Planning Report
In addition, the development of computer and telecommunication technologies becomes interesting journey as it presents other opportunities for application developers to develop multiple applications that suit individuals or corporate needs. One interesting development in the computer and networking technologies is the emerging applications like social networking that grows rapidly amidst the development of mobile technologies, which is predicted that during 2009-2010, there are eight technologies that would grow significantly (Perez, 2009).
This situation highlights collaboration between software and hardware in building the reliable and strong information systems (IS). Concerning the discussion of IS system, this paper will elaborate three technologies that currently become the newsmakers as they will influence the way retail and corporate consumers communicating with others. The three technologies are cloud technologiescloud computing, mobile technologies, and social networking.
Review of Technologies
Cloud Technologies
In corporate use, the increasing number of subscribers, employees, orderstransactions, and partners will lead to the increasing needs of data storage that stores the record of any transaction within an enterprise. This situation can be summarized into several challenges that IT faces as following
Increased capacity as the result of increasing number of applications and also users, which are implemented in an enterprise
Raising capability of a network or shared applications without the needs to invest new infrastructure
Personnel development due to the complexity and variety of problems that IT personnel faces
Licensing new software
Figure 1 shows typical applications of cloud computing that encompassing the subscription-based or pay-per-view service. As the technology is sharing-based by nature, it suggests that cloud computing will be carried out over the internet. The sharing model also implies that cloud computing will consider the services just like public utility where every users will access the same resources with some degrees of separation among each typical users in order to maintain the security issues.
SHAPE MERGEFORMAT
As with other shared applications, the cloud computing also receives many pros and cons. From the pros point of view, the advantages include
The capability of services enabling the dynamic movement, growth, and also the protection of services
Compliance with the disruptive innovation, which refers to the packaged technology that designed to suit the needs of small enterprises and also start ups, who do not afford to establish their own sophisticated networking infrastructure.
However, cloud computing also invites critiques and concerns due to several factors, especially regarding security and applicability as following
Cloud computing suggests that customers data will be always in transit that provide questions whether another user that uses the shared application will be capable of accessing the data
The rising complexity of cloud will demand the provider to establish a ultra secured infrastructure to protect each customers private data, which is now still in the development.
Mobile Technologies
Basics of Mobile Technologies Development
Portability is one feature that becomes key drivers of innovation since late 20th century and continues today as inventions on portable gadgets rise everyday. Those technologies are the result of services providers, gadget manufacturers, and application developer who are racing for finding new things that attract consumers to use them. Wi-Fi enabled handsets, personal digital assistants, GPS (global positioning system) devices, and laptop computers, to name a few, are some examples of well-known innovations in information technology (IT) that are saleable in the markets.
Within the past two decades, one technology that grows fast is wireless technology, especially mobile technology. This technology speeds up as cellular services grow at that time. Moreover, the recent development in mobile devices and wireless technology also leads to mobile computing that leads to a paradigm shift from desktop computers to mobile devices. Recently, it is usual to find consumers using their Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), smart phones, and notebooks that strengthen the facts that business has gone mobile so that the consumers can do all things over wireless gadgets the same with doing by desktop computers (Business Link. 2010).
This trend is also supported by microprocessor manufacturers like Intel that continues developing powerful processor for instances, in mid 2005, Intel delivered the next generation processors that enable cell phones and PDAs to meet multimedia, low power, and security requirements (Intel, 2004).
Mobile Technologies
The attractiveness of mobile devices capability soon raises the number of cellular phones customers. This condition becomes issues for telecommunication companies and content providers to develop new killing applications besides voice communication that will increase the corporate revenue. The new application is data communication that is accessed over various systems. Sarah Perez (2009) reveals eight mobile technologies to watch in 2009-2010 in which they share something in common higher speed of data transmission, compact devices, longer coverage, and embedded with interesting features. Those technologies include
Bluetooth. It is a technology that enable direct connection between mobile devices such as hand phones, PDAs, portable game consoles etc. the recent development is the Bluetooth 3.0. This new version will have the faster data rates up to 480 Mbps (megabits per second)
802.11n Cellular Broadband. This is the wireless connectivity continuing the common standard 802.11 bg. Similar to Bluetooth technology, the new standard will guarantee more speed for users in accessing data.
Location Awareness. At initial development, this location awareness is offered by mobile operators under the LBS (location-based services). The next development of location awareness will integrate several systems GPS, Wi-FiWiMax, and cellular services. The application also increases as it will enable a user to broadcast our location to a network of friends.
The typical configuration of cellular services in the remote areas (for example in Hawaii) is described in Figure in which it deploy the integrated cellular and satellite technologies to reach a remote location.
The figure assumes that a cellular providercarrier wants to expand their cellular coverage into Hawaii. In order to do so, the carrier provides communication links from the nearest mobile switching center (assume in Los Angeles). In the Hawaiian side, in order to provide cellular services, Sprint (or other telecommunication carriers) must set up cellular system including Mobile Switching Center (MSC), Base Station Controller (BSC), BTS (Base Transceiver Station), numbering plan and many others.
MSC as similar function like switching center in PSTN (Public Switch Telephone Network) in which it is responsible for setting up call between customers, releasing it, recording the billing of a call, managing mobile phone access to HLR (home location registry) for authentication and location update. BTS composes of transmitter and receiver that have function to handle telecommunication traffic between mobile phones in a cell. Several BTS is handled by a BSC that handle handover when a mobile phone moves from one cell to another cell.
In other mobile technologies like Bluetooth and Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi), technically the difference with cellular system lies on the capability of hand-over into adjacent transceiver in the cellular system.
Social Networking
In spite of inviting people to gather in a specific location like cafs, malls, or other spots, internet has enabled us to share ideas, meet old friends, send and receive messages. One popular web-based application within the past decade is social networking. The idea of these applications is to enable a user to connect with their friendscolleagues all over the world. They include the popular My Space ( HYPERLINK httpwww.myspace.com www.myspace.com), Friendster ( HYPERLINK httpwww.friendster.com www.friendster.com), and the continually growing Facebook ( HYPERLINK httpwww.facebook.com www.facebook.com) and also Twitter ( HYPERLINK httpwww.twitter.com www.twitter.com). Concerning the social networks websites, this paper will discuss about the phenomena of Facebook, a social network at college. Technically, social-networking websites have several characteristics
Powerful platforms
Social-networking websites like facebook typically has three important components, which are identity platform, community platform and application platform. The identity platform underlines the fact that Facebook have rich metadata and they have massive intelligence on users. Users can even see detailed metadata regarding friends connected to them. Other forums and blogs do not provide such detailed amount of users data. The community platform on the other hand, represents the fact that Facebooks ability to map relationships and affinities and segmenting communities from interests. As an application platform, Facebook uses API platform to gather intelligence from application deployment
Various applications media embedded and event management
Those are some of the most interesting features Facebook has offered to its consumers. These attributes generate significant progress for the company. For instant, in less than one month, the application sections exploded from hundreds to thousands. The application is created by a PHP developer. Within the system, audio, video and live streaming video are available. The richness of media embedded is one of the value creators of Facebooks services. The affinity groups within Facebook can also organize and promote events from Facebook (Delaney, 2006)
Social or business problem
Travel industry still provides great opportunity as it becomes very popular these days. For telecommunication industry, the increasing number of travelers also gives opportunity to raise their revenue from international roaming as telecommunication becomes one main need for them.
Interestingly, when people arrive in a new city, they always need lots of information about buses, trams, place of interests, and hotels, especially for backpackers. No matter how much they prepare or search on line before the trip, there will be some unexpected events which could not be updated on time.
Under such circumstances, there will be another opportunity for business to develop information services that every travelers could have once they are connected to any mobile services in the destination country. This situation underlies my idea to offer the information pack or software, which can be downloaded into pocket devices, such as mobile. It is very useful when we arrive in the airport and having all the information about this strange city in our hands right away.
Typical information of location based services is typically sent over the 3G network or Wi-Fi internet access at the airport and shopping centers where we can access to all the information about this city. When we want to know the fastest and the relatively cheapest way to go to CBD, there is no need to call or ask any one, all the recent posted answers can be found in this information pack. It is like having someone who has lived here for years and knows everything about this town right beside you. No matter what you want to know, there will always be many alternatives.
Proposed Technologies
Based on the identified problems where userscustomers need reliable information that they receive in their handheld, therefore, the proposed technologies is mobile location-based services.
The basic technology that our location-based service will offer to customer is that it integrates several entities that form the LBS products (Figure 5). Typically, it composes of four entities as following
Mobile operators or Wi-Fi carrier. The role of carrier is the road that enables the location information providers - composing of hotels, cafs, restaurant, hospitals, gas stations, schools, retailers etc- to send the promotional items to the customers. The basic technology to be used in this application is SMS (short message services) and web-based advertising. These technologies are used altogether as customers may have different types of mobile devices. However, we would not rely solely on SMS technology solely as the costs of sending SMS to every customer that walk by out store or those who located within the range of a cellular network are quite high even the costs are charged to the advertisers (Schapsis, 2008).
Another technology that would be employed in this service is web-based applications where customers once they arrive in the airport or those who enter a location will download an application that become the interface for any advertisers sent through the mobile carriers or Wi-Fi operators.
Information provider. This entity composes of application developers that develop web-based or SMS-based application and also the advertisers. The idea is every advertiser would provide mobile coupon (M-coupon) that sent through the mobile network so that every customer that receive the M-coupon can redeem this to obtain special offering. If the advertisers are not profit-oriented companies such as public or government agencies that inform the public announcement etc, therefore the information is just general information like public announcement etc.
Customers. This is the targeted entity in any location-based service where they can redeem the coupons that an advertiser sends.
The benefit of location based service is it enables a user to get updated news that could be designed to match their interests. For example, in RIMs BlackBerry Application World, they will update the news of information that divided into several groups such as cafs, games, entertainment etc.
Figure 6 show that users have broad interests in using the location-based services. There are several items that listed on top 10 applications of LBS. however still the most famous is about the weather, store location, and navigation (deGaravilla, 2009). The next growing application of LBS is special offers that can be offered to retailers, stores to advertise their offerings.
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