Here I want to emphasize that not only IS are also systems with their general properties, but they also make systems out of non-systems (or poorly developed systems with insufficient feedbacks and concerted collaboration among its parts by connecting entities and processes together in a new mutually beneficial way. This is a new power of business growth: not by using more resources, but including more stuff in the orbit of their networks.
The reason why we use quite a few software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools in this course is that many of them are free, easy to use, and are very powerful mechanisms of connecting things, processes, and people over the Internet. They are the modern resources of organizational and individual power. Simple hardware, like smartphones and publically available software services can allow individuals to have full office support on the run (go mobile, like you can do with this course). Mafia understood the benefits of being connected long ago :)
Just because this last sentence about mafia I will remember well this entire post about IS.
ReplyDeleteProf - I was just told about a backup system that is available as a SaaS tool. Do you think this is a good idea - to backup you data and info on the Internet?
ReplyDeleteRobert, this is a big movement and leading companies are already shifting to such services. Reliability and security of externally stored and delivered as a service info is usually higher than can be locally provided. The only exception is information with very high price for loosing it or leaking out. Then with a number of additional (not average) efforts you can secure it better locally.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I would trust less most stores keeping my credit card info on their servers for "local"use.
Another point of security and reliability to consider is that there are many more dangers to the data locally kept on personal or corporate computers in comparison to the cloud computing use per se. For example, allowing employees to use mobile devices to connect to "local" data, as well as your own access to your computer from your smartphone are much more insecure. We will discuss this more next week... Also to note that there are SaaS companies with poor and good security as well as there are local computers poorly or well protected.
ReplyDelete