The Future of Technology Disruption in Business - Assignment Example

Aссоunting Infоrmаtiоn Systеms Your name: Institution name: Question 1: Agent of change: The future of technology disruption in business is a white paper that was sponsored by Ricoh. This white paper was about the effect of technology development on various areas in businesses that included organizational structures, jobs, workplace; business models themselves, and customer interactions (Simkin and Strand, 2011). Indeed, technology has been found to revolutionize all aspect of business. For example, in automotive industry, vehicle telematics have been there for many years, but increased connectivity and reduced cost of technology have made car manufacturer to rethink on their manufacturing processes and to offer new business solutions as a result of these changes, such as in-vehicle entertainment, navigation services and so forth (Barnes, 2002). In technology industry itself, In 2008, Apple did not introduce a new technology but the company was able to develop a more efficient marketing and distribution software that changed the way business do their sales and marketing. From the above example it is clear that many companies especially in the entertainment industry have been affected on the way they do their businesses (Simkin and Strand, 2011). Many analysts in the retail sector expect the collapse of high street retailing and the development of virtual stores. The financial recession has catalyzed this shift to the web, and these have severely affected the retail sector across the globe (Bharadwaj, 2000). For example, technologies such as in-store have proven to be more disruptive and beyond the retail. The shift have been towards the social media and web, and this has alter the way in which marketing team are put together to solve a problem (Barnes, 2002). This has challenged many firms in the service industry to rethink on their business strategies, not least as they seek to compete with multinational virtual firms such as Google.Inc and Yahoo.Inc which are capable of bringing together a team of Information Technology (IT) specialists from around the world to solve a particular problem (Bharadwaj, 2000). In order to help companies to better manage or cope with their customer information, a new kind of services has been put in place especially in the ICT industry (Barnes, 2002). For instance, it is one thing to collect information from customers but it also important for companies to understand what customer information says about their behaviors. Nowadays, firms have been forced to adapt their underlying data architectures and processes with the new kind of data inputs from customers, whether from smart meter readings or from social media feeds such as Facebook and Twitter (Simkin and Strand, 2011). Question 2 Cloud computing can be defined as the use of a remote computing system to deliver services over a network (Bharadwaj, 2000). In other words, a person will entrust his or her data to remote services, on which that person or the user has limited access or the user is limited to influence. Cloud computing has numerous benefits to large organizations. One of the benefits of cloud computing is that companies are not supposed to have IT infrastructure (Simkin and Strand, 2011).In other words, the burden such as high cost of maintaining such an IT infrastructure have been lifted and some other firms are taking care of all that. Thus organizations are able to focus on their core business through outsourcing their information technology infrastructure. Cost efficiency is also another benefit of cloud computing. This is achieved through elimination of the investment in stand-alone servers or software (Barnes, 2002). By outsourcing IT services large organizations can eliminate overhead charges such as licensing fees, management, software updates, data storage etc. The cloud computing is generally available at low cost as compared to traditional approaches and this have been seen to lower companies information technology expenses (Barnes, 2002). Cloud computing will offer convenience and there will be continuous availability. IT services are always available wherever the user is located. This approach will give an end user easy access to data or information at the same time the end user is able to access or view or modify shared documents. Moreover, a lot of cloud computing firms or vendors have been found to use multiple servers to maintain maximum redundancy. In the case of system failure, there are automatics spawned on other servers or machines (Bharadwaj, 2000). Cloud computing tools also offers recovery and backups to its users (Simkin and Strand, 2011). Information or data is stored on “cloud” and not on the physical devices like other storage equipments. Cloud computing service offers flexible and reliable recovery/backup solutions. In some instances, cloud computing services have been used solely as information backup repository of information or data that is found on a local computer (Bharadwaj, 2000). Cloud computing can be accessed remotely by any devices that are internet enabled. These devices may include Smartphone’s, tablets etc. With cloud computing organizations can easily adopt BYOD policy that will permit company’s employees to bring their personally owned internet enabled devices into the workplace. In addition, cloud computing services have no limitation of place and medium. An employee is able to access data or information from anywhere in the world (Barnes, 2002). Although cloud computing has many benefits for large organizations. However, being an information technology machine it has with it some set of problems or inefficiencies. Some of these drawbacks may include: Privacy and security: privacy and security is the biggest drawbacks of cloud computing tool (Barnes, 2002). When a large organization adopts cloud computing it gives away its private information to a third party, information that might be confidential and sensitive to the organization (Simkin and Strand, 2011). As a result, an organization existence might be put in jeopardy to its competitor or rivals. In addition, employees in the organization might feel uncomfortable or insecure in releasing or surrendering their data to a third party outside the organization (Barnes, 2002). Another problem with cloud computing is it dependency on the provider since it is difficult and sometimes impossible for an organization to migrate from one cloud computing firm or provider to another once a company has outsource the services of provider (Barnes, 2002). Therefore it will be seen as cumbersome if an organization wants to switch from one provider to another considering the huge data that may be involved. Since cloud computing services run on a remote platform, the organization is found to have limited control over the function and execution of hardware or software that are used. In addition, since the remote software is being used, it might lack some features that can be identified with the organization or lack features that might run locally (Barnes, 2002). With cloud computing system there is increased vulnerability to the privacy and security of the organization and its employees (Bharadwaj, 2000). End users in the cloud computing are usually exposed on the public internet and are more vulnerable target from hackers or malicious users. Read More