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IT DOESN'T MATTER

      “IT Doesn’t Matter” is an interesting article. What the author is trying to say make a whole lot of sense. Looking twenty, thirty years back from now, IT would definitely give a company an advantage to get ahead towards its sales and profits. With today’s technology, new IT are easy to replicate then distributed among companies as generics. Instead of companies building their own software from the ground up to set apart from each other, these companies would purchase the same already-made operating systems. This action would in fact make IT less likely to help one company to have an advantage over its competitors.

      New IT isn’t as essential as one would think. The article is right that companies shouldn’t invests too much into recent IT thinking it would help them deliver a higher economic returns. Instead, companies should wait until the new IT drops its prices then go for an upgrade. An example of this would be video cards for computers. The most recent video card that was introduced from NVidia is the GTX980 that costs around $520. The card is able to run high end games on 4K monitors smoothly with no delays. $520 is a steep price for just one video card, excluding enthusiasts, this graphic isn’t essential for most gamers. Most casual gamers does not play games on 4K monitors due to 4K monitors being way overpriced. So if an individual who’s looking to build his/her gaming rig to play on a regular 1080p monitor, he/she would be unnecessarily investing too much if he/she were to buy this card when there are way cheaper cards that would run games on ultra-setting at the same performance on your regular monitors. Now if the individual is really interested in getting the card, he/she should wait until the prices of 4K monitors and the price of this card to significantly drop. That is why the author is absolutely on point when he listed that businesses spend way too much purchasing new, better performance PCs to replace the older models. Yet, most of the workers uses these computers just to use simple applications like word processing, spreadsheets, email, and Web browsing. Newer IT doesn’t matter anymore due to the lack of new essential features, high price tags, and glitchy upon released. Companies using older IT would still be able to have their business running while saving money on utilities.

     On the other hand, as what we discussed in BUS 188 class about the essential roles of IT, this article seem a bit against those concepts. We cannot imagine how our life would be without IT while it already turns out so horrible without internet connection for only a few hours. Nowadays, people try to do as many as things online with paperless such as shopping, entertaining, learning etc. Due to big demand from users all over the world, every companies and firms work nonstop on developing and upgrading new technologies. For instances, Apple releases their new iphones every Fall, though some customers already had the previous version, they still want to upgrade to the latest one regardless not big differences. IT in reality plays an indispensable factor in term of competitive advantages among companies around the world.

COSTCO

       Costco is a warehouse giant. It’s a membership warehouse club that offer best possible prices on quality brand-name merchandise to its members. Costco has 550 warehouses today that operates in 40 states and 9 different countries. In recent fiscal years, the company has exceeded $64 billion with its total sales. Costco stocks up many merchandise category which includes sundries, hardlines, softlines, fresh food, and others. Sundries include candy, snack foods, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, and cleaning supplies. Hardlines consist of major appliances, hardware, electronics, and sporting goods. Softlines contains apparel, jewelry, and small appliances. Fresh food sales include meat and baked goods while other items beside these categories are gasoline, pharmacy sales, and Costco’s one-hour photo development. 

          While other retail stores are puzzling over why the economic recovery isn't converting into more sales, Costco seems to be doing just fine. Costco run differently and sells differently compared to its competitors. Walmart, Amazon, and grocery chains can’t mimic Costco’s operations. Unlike Walmart, Costco uses a paid-membership business model. Customers need to become Costco members in order to purchase merchandise at discounted price, paying at least $55 dollars per year for the membership. This allow Costco to collect most of its profits 12 months in advance. About seventy percent of Costco’s operating income is generated in this way. Not only Costco lower prices on certain key products, but the company also try to improve its customer experience by carrying out kind return policies, adding gift prizes, and taking several payment methods. More importantly, Costco is always on the move to change its brands and introduces new products in order to provide customers with an enjoyable “treasure hunt” experience.

          

        Costco has a powerful customer focused and employee satisfaction culture where the company pays fair wages and gives good benefits towards the employee to reflect Costco's importance in contributing to the customer experience. So if an employee is happy, then he or she is likely to produce more which would lead to better customer service.

Collaboration Systems

       According to the Using MIS textbook, collaboration is defined as a group of people working together to achieve a common goal via a process of feedback and iteration. Therefore, a collaboration system can be considered as a multi-users program whereas group member are informed to work on the same tasks, to make decisions, to solve problems and manage projects. Nowadays, due to the development of communication technology, group members stay connected and work effectively regardless distances and times. Personally, I would like to give a quick review about 5 collaboration systems.

    Wikipedia

        

      Wikipedia acts like a book giving the reader information on many subjects or on many aspects of one subject, except it’s a website. It’s a website where anyone around the world can create a page for a subject and everyone come together to create this book of facts. One can find a vast variety of topics within Wikipedia ranging from culture to philosophy, to geography and etc. This is my go-to site whenever I need to know more information about anything. Although it is not recommended to do research for school using this website, I’d still eventually ended up looking on the site many times when there’s a research paper due. The pros of this website would of course be the amount of information that’s available to the world. It is very convenient that infomation on a subject is accessible just a few tap away from the keyboard. The downside of Wikipedia though, is the editing that’s available to everybody. Many information on the site might not be true and could be a post of a 10 years old. Wikipedia is helpful towards group activities especially for my group research in school. Although most of the research won’t come from this site, but it will help to establish a base for the group research.

   Google Drive

   If you're looking for a 15 GB of free online storage whereas you can keep and share all your photos, designs, drawings, recordings, videos etc, Google Drive will be a big help. From any of your electric devices such as smartphone, tablets, or computers, you can get connected right away and easily work on the task anywhere and anytime you wish. As students works on the same project, they no longer need to email each other back and forth and then get things messed up at the end. All they can do now is just easily create a file in document, presentation or spreadsheet and then add their members into the projects by email address and they are free to edit and work on the task at the same time wherever they could be. On the down side, I think, Google Drive is somewhat clumsy for most files. You just can’t click on the files that have .doc and make an edit in MS Word. In order to edit files created in Word or Excel that are stored on Google Drive, you will have to convert these files to Google Docs programs. Also, the spreadsheet in Drive has limited functions and formulas compared to MS Excel.As a student, I usually work on the projects with groupmates on Google Drive when it comes to groupwork. It’s so convenient and easy to use for many people at the same time to compose and edit tasks effectively and remotely regardless distances and time.    

  Massdrop

          

     

    Massdrop is an online community for enthusiasts that provides people across several associations - from electronics and audio to quilting and cooking. It is a place for everyone to connect, discuss their favorite products and activities, and buy those products together. How Massdrop works is a person from the community would suggest an item that he/she thinks have a common interest in buying from the public. He/she would then posts the unit’s picture and descriptions for everyone to have a more insight look on what the item is really about. There will then be a vote with a minimum amount of people that needs to join in order for the “drop” to happen. Once the minimum number of votes is met - enough people that also agrees the item is worth the buy - the person that started the page will then contact the vendor directly on behalf of the group to negotiate on a huge discount as a wholesale since many people will buy the item. Once the negotiation is complete, a price will be posted on the unit’s home page where people then can join in to pay and buy the item. Having a huge discount on the unit itself is considered a pro for Massdrop. Expensive, quality items sometimes would get 50%, even 60% off after negotiation with vendor. But the downside from this website is the waiting time for the item to be shipped after purchase and warranty. Items would takes more than 5 weeks to ship to the buyer and there is a no return policy from the website.The site is quite useful if my group wants to buy quality items in a big package for a cheaper price. I’ve got a group of friends joining the drop two weeks ago to buy a dozen of audiophile headphones with a discounted price for our sound studio work.

   Bittorent

 

   Bittorrent is a software that allows users to post large files and share them to the vast community on the internet. Bittorrent protocol uses standard peer-to-peer sharing over the cyberspace. The peer-to-peer sharing is consists of a main source, seeders, and leechers. The main source is where the file is originated from. Seeders are people who have already downloaded the file and are uploading them for other people to download. Leechers are people who are sharing what they have and are downloading what seeders have. Bittorrent works by having people who have already downloaded the file from the main source to share with other people that are downloading the file and have those people share with others while they’re downloading. The more share equals the faster downloading speed for the downloader. The pros from Bittorrent would of course be the access to a an enormous library of music, video, software, and game files. But the downside to this is the lack of security in the files being posted. Since one can posts what ever he/she likes, the person could have viruses hiding in the files waiting to infect and hack other people’s computer. This is a great software when there is a big file that’s need to be shared within a group. I used this software with my video making group when we were working on a short movie, a person in the group could compress all the sound and video files into one folder and post it on Bittorrent then share it to everyone in the group to work on. It was very convienent.

 LibriVox

        

      Librivox is a community website where anyone can volunteer to post a recording of themselves reading public domain books. It is a place for many people around the world come to help build an enormous library of free audio files on these publications. When reading a book from Shakespeare exhaust you, have no fear, LibriVox is here! You can listen to every chapter of the book instead of reading them. Some of the popular titles that you could find in LibriVox are Hamlet from Shakespeare, Frankenstein from Mary Shelley, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from Mark Twain, and the list goes on. Of course, the pro of LibriVox is that you’re able to download the voice file and listen to the book on your car or anywhere via an mp3 player. For students, you can also read along with the reader as you listen so that you’re focused and won’t lose track of where or what you’re reading. The cons from this website would be the lack of books other than public domain. One won’t be able to find a Harry Potter voiced audio file from this website or any kind of books are not public domain. This site is great for a group reading session on one of Shakespeare’s books. Instead having each person in the group read a paragraph, now everyone can focus on listening and reading along with the audio track. My teacher used this website in high school to have the whole class listened and read along to Hamlet.