Netflix is the a company where you can order movies online. Their goal is simple, you go online and you rent, receive, watch, and exchange and there is also streaming as well. This is competition for Blockboster due to the fact that people do not have to even leave their property to get movies. Netflix’s popularity has soared over the years. They cater to convenience, and that is what sells to the consumers. In this article, Netflix is offering a $1 million dollar prize to a new system that can improve their movie recommendation system by 10 percent. So teams all around the world gathered to compete in engineering a software that is able to increase their movie recommendation by 10 percent. Before September 21, Netflix will decide what team will win the grand prize. The world will anticipate the winner, but how is Netflix deciding upon this? They are going to judge the egines based on methodology. The two top teams, Teams Bellkor (AT&T Research), Big Chaos and Pragmatic Theory combined to form Bellkor’s Pragmatic Chaos. This team was the first team with a 10.05 percent improvement over Netflix’s existing algorithm, qualifying them for the grand prize. Netflix also left a 30 day window for other teams to catch up, as they did. A lower ranked team called, The Ensemble submitted a higher score of 10.10 percent as time ran out, just was just a tad bit better than Bellkor’s Pragmatic Chaos’ final score of 10.09 percent.

I chose this article because in chapter 2 they talk about the business process. A business process takes one a specific task through a set of events. Business processes basically transform a set of inputs into a set of outputs. Through improving their business process the business will be able to develop a more efficient smooth running process. This contest illustrates just that, Netflix is trying to find a new engine to recommend movies on their website. They are letting the public in on this, which is a great way, in my opinion to advertise to the public. They are trying to reegineer their business process right now. This is a part of an everyday business. Information systems is what Netflix relies on due to their web based clientel. This is a great idea on their part seeking improvement and also adding flare to it with a marketing touch.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/09/02/netflix.prize/index.html