One of the parts in chapter 12 was a section called greener IT.  This deals with making companies run more efficiently and reduce their carbon footprint.  Scientists believe that these human beings are destroying the ozone because they are off shooting carbon and other greenhouse gases.  This is what is leading to global warming and the rising amount of carbon in the atmosphere. A culprit is large companies that have large carbon footprints.  I found this article that developed by IBM, in order to show businesses how they can reduce carbon and have a greener IT system.  The main goal is to optimize the use of your resources.  Energy use, equipment recycling, and disposal, equipment deployments, and utilization, and other relevant factors are part of their suggestions.  By going green companies can benefit from a wide range of reasons some do it to reduce harmful gases in the environment but operation efficiency and energy efficiency as well.  IBM wants companies to understand that turning your company into a green, eco-friendly company takes serious commitment.  You can’t just say that you will implement it into one part of the business you it needs to work in concert.  This takes cooperation of the entire company from the top to the bottom, everyone should be on the same page.  The reduce cost and higher efficiency are good arguments but they must also show for the expense.  Companies aren’t going to want to spend a ton of money on something only to find that they are appreciated by people.  That could be a costly mistake, this must make sense financially as well.

Welsh, M.(2008) Building a greener IT. Retrieved Nov. 12, 2009, From IBM. http://www.ibm.com/developers/ar-gogreen/index.html

Chapter 11

This article that I found was written back in 2003 dealing with a man loosing his job here in America to overseas outsourcing.  This company simply didn’t just move its work to an off shore county, but brought in people from other countries as well. The man in this article worked in the United States for a large insurance firm in northern New jersey.   He developed software but by mid 2001 started feeling that his job could be in trouble.  His employer brought in Tata Consultancy Services, India’s largest software company, to help with the business.  They employed 120 people from India to work at the company.  Maglione, the man the article is mentioning, was put in charge of a group of five employees but soon the company transferred seventy percent to India and all twenty U.S. members were laid off.  Since then Maglione has worked only in temporary jobs and taken a 30% pay cut.  During the time of hisemployment his annual salary was $ 77,000.  He is worried about his future and how he will be able to provide for his family and two little girls.  He now paints houses where he doesn’t have to think much and didn’t have to go to school to learn the trade.  He wants to use his education, but right now he just has to pay the bills. 

In some cases outsourcing can be beneficial for the company and for the employee.  This company is saving money by sending the jobs overseas, but Americans are suffering.  The company is just trying to survive, in America today with regulations, and employee regulations it is difficult for a company to stay afloat.  Some medium should be reached so that companies don’t have to leave the U.S..

Thottam, J. (2003)Where the Good Jobs Are Going.Retrieved Nov. 11, from Time Magazine. http://www.time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030804-471198,00.html

Many companies are using new technology resources to communicate with others.  In the past meeting have been very expensive from travel time, to hotels, to food, and other accommodations.  Companies were spending huge amounts of money to hold onto those face to face meetings.  With the development of new technologies these companies can cut down on those expenses.  Companies have noticed that they are better able to understand and deal with customers when they talk face to face through video meetings.  When you communicate with people over sixty percent of your message is non-verbal, people notice these things.  Through the invention of the internet and other technologies like web cab rooms meetings can be held on line with people from all over the world participating.  Large companies with departments all over the world would have to spend a ton of money if they wanted to have all the department heads meet in one spot to discuss a problem.  This article shows the importance of a successful business having these technologies.  Companies that don’t take this into consideration can seriously be missing out.  Their competitors can be leaving them in the dirt if they don’t change with the times. According to the article companies that meet face to face in groups benefit far more than those that don’t.  Even if the company meets to discuss problems, they do better.  With everyone letting it out and talking it over problems have a lot better chance at finding out the problem and fixing it as opposed to companies that individually try to solve problems?

McQueen, R.  (2009) Intergrating Groupware Into a Business. Retrieved Nov. 4, 2009, from Emerald.  Website http://www.emeraldinsight.com/insight/view

This article is about recent studies done in the business world. The goal was to find out when CIOs, chief information officers, will be hiring again. With the current economy new jobs are hard to find, and many are wanting to know when everything will get back on track. The recent survey done by Robert Half Technology says that the future will be good. Hiring information technology professionals in the fourth quarter is usually down, but companies are starting to show signs of hiring. According to the article the hiring of information technology professionals will rise four percent in the New England and South Atlantic states in the next three months. The largest part of this increase is expected to be in the business services sector. In the next year CIOs are taking about beefing up staff in technology departments sooner than other divisions. This optimistic future is coupled with another survey done of the firm KPMG in which two thirds of technology executives said that their company will fully recover. This is great news for college students wondering what they are going to do with their degrees. Some students do not want to take business classes because of what is currently going on, but I am optimistic that there will be a job out there for the taking. A month ago my uncle asked me what my major was and i told him finance, his reaction was for me to get out! What would the world be like without business, people are going to need employees in the future, and I plan on being there.

King, R. (2009) When Will CIOs Hire Again? Retrieved Sept. 3, 2009, Business Week http://www.businessweek.com/technology/technology_at_work/archives/2009/09/when_willcios.html

Modern warfare has changed a lot over the years in terms of the technology it uses. The military is often a fore front for new technologies. Today, military engineers are trying to design equipment for the purpose of saving human lives. These new developments are aimed at keeping soldiers out of harm’s way. A new robot is the ACER, it is about the size of a bulldozer, which clears mine fields. This is a lot safer than having troops accidently finding one. Since it is so large it is well suited to carry heavy loads of gear such as weapons and other cargo. This unmanned vehicle has been a great asset on the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of these military robots have sophisticated AI systems, but others just have basic programs. Who knows how far the military will go into the AI department, in the future, but it is certain AI will be implemented more.
Many science fiction movies have painted a scary picture about what would happen if the government started making AI soldiers and sent them into battle. Movies like the Terminator, and I Bot have made many people wonder why we are developing these technologies. However, I believe that if these AI programs can be implemented to be a huge benefit. Nothing will ever surpass what the human brain is capable of on the battlefield in terms of emotion, feeling, and duty. Having these robots taking the place of soldiers in dangerous moments is a great idea, it give a soldier a little piece of mind.
Garbianowski, E. (2009)How Military Robots Work Retrieved Sept. 3,2009 from How Stuff Works Website http://science.howstuffworks.com/military-robot.htm

As we all know General Motors is having a bit of financial trouble. They have many cars that they can’t sell just sitting in their inventory warehouses. In an effort to reach more customers and sell more cars General Motors is teaming up with Ebay to sell cars on the internet. Selling cars by using ebay isn’t new, in fact Ebay motors is a huge contributor to the online market place. However, this will be the first time that consumers will be able to buy a brand new car from a company such as General Motors. More than two hundred and twenty five General Motors dealers will be participating in this new program.
Even though this sounds like a great idea some dealers are concerned that they will be cut out all together. It’s true that this could be beneficial for GM, in terms of reaching millions of customers, but what about the dealers. GM will have to continue to have dealer locations to offer maintenance and test drives. If they cut out their retail dealerships then jobs will be lost so they are in a sticky situation. Who knows how long it will be before there won’t be any dealerships at all? Other companies are certainly paying attention, and seeing if this effort will work. If this effort does work expect other companies such as Ford and Toyota to try and do something similar.
In fifty years we may be able to test drive these car sitting at our computer. Then we wouldn’t need the dealerships at all. There is no way to tell what technology will be available as for now GM is trying to make it work.
Munarriz, R. (2009) Can eBay Save General Motors? Retrieved Sept 9. 2009, from Fool. Website http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2009/08/10/can-ebay-save-general-motors.aspx

A recent study done by Relemail, revealed that ninety-six percent of internet users feel that privacy is important to them. This is a huge population, basically 19 of every 20 people, feel this way. The study believes that it is so large because virtually everyone at sometime has had to deal with spam or some type of virus. With this information you can see that it is important to the internet user to feel safe while navigating your website. If your website gives of the vibe that it isn’t safe people aren’t going to want to give out personal information. Companies can’t make profits over the internet without the customers’ credit card numbers. Another part of the study showed that eighty three percent of viewers were afraid to sign up for email newsletters. They feared that their email addresses would be sold off. Companies can lose a huge amount of internet traffic because of this, they were there, but didn’t trust your company. In addition the survey showed that if people do see evidence of safe certified privacy; they are seventy two percent more likely to join. If your company is working hard in trying to bring traffic to your website and then they don’t like what they see the company is losing money. Another statistic from the survey is that ninety one percent of internet users are more likely to do business with companies that fallow good ethics in terms of safeguarding their clients’ information. Companies that do any type of business over the internet shouldn’t take this information lightly.

Adams, M. (2005) Email Privacy. Retrieved Sept. 15, 2009, from Natural News.Website http://www.naturalnews.com/004748_relemail_emailprivacy_internet.html

In today’s business market nothing is for certain, it is important to store data in multiple places. Companies have to deal with more and more threats in terms of viruses, worms, and even hackers. Even thought technology is making doing business easier, it is also making it easier to be attacked. Companies are storing more and more information in electronic format. Even though this can organize information more efficiently, you need a back up. There are many storage options available today and information technology departments need to take the time and decide what is right for them. Some other filling systems that companies should take a look at are volume size, estimated number of files on the volume, estimated size of fillies on the volume, shared volume requirements, and backup requirements. Volume may be the most important part of the plan. A byte is one character such as a number or letter, jumping up to a megabyte is about the size of an average novel. This is as much what can be saved on a diskette. A gigabyte, 1GB, relates to approximately twenty sets of encyclopedias. A terabyte is a huge amount of information. One terabyte is equal to a small library approximately five thousand books. Companies that do a lot of business may think about having the capacity of a terabyte. Some think that this may be too much space, however according to the article some companies can fill up half of the available space on a terabyte in six months.

Reinert, J.(2009) The Ever Growing Challenges of Data Storage? Retrieved Sept. 22,2009, from About.com Website http://netsecurity.about.com/od/disasterrecovry/a/ontrackdata.htm

New smart phones are the latest craze, a common on is Apple’s iPhone. These devices have many different features. They can make calls, store information, send and receive emails, and much more. IPhone also has the capability of loading different applications; this allows the owner to personalize the iphone. Having the ability to load certain applications is more than having a phone it’s basically a personal computer. With all of these features you wonder what could go wrong. In a recently publish article, the writer was at a seminar where a new iPhone was hacked by a simple text message. Researchers had been worried about this so at the Black hat security conference in Las Vegas they held a demonstration. They were able to make calls, steal saved data, send text messages and do basically every function they wanted because of this simple text message. This attack was enabled by a memory corruption bug in the way that iPhone handles text messages. At that time Apple had been informed of the problem but there wasn’t a patch yet, even after six weeks. Another way that hacker can be harmful is if they take over the phone they can go to certain malicious websites harming the phone. Another capability is once they are in the phone send similar text messages to everyone in that person’s phone book. These attacks can also occur in Android based phones, however it is harder to take over the entire phone, like hackers can with the iPhone.

Mills, E. (2009) iPhone hacked by text message. From Crave.cnet. Retrieved October 7, 2009. Website http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/0,39029453,49303162,00.htm

In today’s business world many companies depend on huge amounts of information. Companies need to be able to access information in order to be successful. All this information doesn’t amount to much unless it is useful. Architecture of the warehouse is very important, without it subject areas don’t fit together. Connections that are supposed to lead somewhere don’t work without this framework. Warehouse architecture is a set of documents, plans, models, drawings, and specifications with separate sections for each key area. Since companies have been developing these data warehouses for fifteen years more and more is becoming known. Companies are starting to develop better ways reading this terminally about data warehouses, since a lot of this information isn’t very precise. The article talks about three main key component areas in developing data bases. The first is centered on the business places, the second is the infrastuctue area. This includes hardware, networking, operatring systems, and desktop machines. The last is in the technical area which encompasses the decision making technologies that will be needed by the users. The article mentions that when you start to develop the technical archieteture model draft the architecture requirements first. The article warns about just doing it and that it is important to develop a plan. Try and find out if there are any exixsting data warehouses that can help. At work we use a system that works pretty well, we can put information in and easily and efficiently. Finding past history on clients is important this makes it easy.
Hadley, L.(2009) Developing a Data Warehouse Architecture. Retrieved Sept. 30, 2009. Users.quest. Website http://www.users.qwest.net/~lauuramh/resume/thorn.htm