MegsGang

Eagle Eye: Movie Reflection

2011-03-01T11:27:00.001-08:00

Honestly, I am not so familiar with this movie. As I watched the previews of this movie, eagle Eye is a video game-like string of action sequences aligned together in the service of a plot that defies explanation. Watching the film requires a need to distract oneself, because if you don't, you will likely wind up with a splitting headache as you try to rationalize the plot.

The plot here is actually pretty complex. A government program selects a man whose Air Force brother has recently died and pairs him with a young mother whose child is at risk to carry out a super-secret government program. As we follow our duo through the course of the movie, we’ll find out steadily more about each, and about the government program they find themselves roped into working for. By the end, the entire government of the United States will be at risk.
Eagle Eye builds suspense in the initial climb and hits its peak at the first drop of action, but soon becomes tedious and monotonous when the mystery of the caller extends its welcome and the narrative twists and turns fall victim to genre clichés.

Pirates of Silicon Valley: Movie Reflection

2011-03-01T11:22:00.001-08:00

The movie is really interesting for it provides the audience the development of the two largest computer companies nowadays but also the dramatic story behind it. This tech-world biopic traces the fortunes of personal-computer companies Apple and Microsoft from their obscure dorm-room and backyard origins to their very public battle for corporate supremacy. Writer/director Martyn Burke follows the parallel lives of Microsoft founder Bill Gates (Anthony Michael Hall) and Apple co-founders Steve Jobs (Noah Wyle) and Steve Wozniak (Joey Slotnick) -- the former a crafty Harvard dropout, the latter a pair of hippies with jobs at Hewlett-Packard and a yen to sell miniature versions of corporate mainframes to small businesses and at-home enthusiasts. Much like the personal-computer industry itself, the action starts with Apple then gradually shifts to Microsoft. The former plot thread recounts how Jobs and Wozniak "borrowed" key concepts from a Xerox computer lab, eked out their success as countercultural businessmen, and finally fell out with one another over the pressure of success. The latter thread focuses on the way Gates learned from, then surpassed, the brains behind Apple and turned his company into the global powerhouse that it is today.

The entire film tries to focus on too many parts of history at once but doesn’t go into anyone of them in enough detail. I have learned a reasonable amount about the history of Apple’s co-founders and Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, although I’d have to know a lot more about Wozniak, Jobs, and Gates before judging them from this film, which is especially hard on Jobs. Wyle portrays him as a selfish and arrogant adolescent, exploiting and manipulating friends and subordinates. Altogether the film is worth watching, but bittersweet and possible slanted.

Wall-e: Movie Reflection

2011-03-01T11:20:00.001-08:00

It is a great story. It’s very touching and makes you think about the future. At times, it’s easy to lose interest but the narrative is strong enough that these moments are fleeting despite the pacing issues. It’s enjoyable for the entire family and everyone else. This is a beautiful, smart, touching, hilarious and damn cute movie.

The most significant piece of the movie is WALL-E and Eve’s relationship. It’s a very touching love story that is told with limited dialogue. WALL-E can only say his own name and on the other hand is barely able to say Eve’s name. Eve’s vocabulary is limited too. However, it’s their actions that tell the story. It’s hard to believe the narrative the two animated robots are able to tell with simple gestures. Elaborate live-action movies generally don’t come close to doing as good a job at exploring relationships as WALL-E does. It’s a testament to the notion that sometimes less is more. Just the whole storyline arc surrounding how WALL-E desperately wants to hold Eve’s hand but is let down at every opportunity is better than the entire story for many romance movies. The whole dynamic of the relationship makes this tale very heartwarming.

In addition, the other major overlying themes of conservationism and humanity’s reliance on technology also do a good job at making the audience think about those issues without being annoying or too flashy. The environmentalism theme doesn’t feel like the moviemakers are scolding humanity for polluting the world. Instead, it feels more like they’re trying to tell a cautious tale about the dangers of overconsumption. The same goes for humanity’s trust on technology. It’s doesn’t feel like it’s a lecture. It’s told in a comical way but still feels like it has substance. The whole concept that humans have become so fat due to their insistence on using technology for even the smallest tasks like getting dressed or even getting out of bed is both funny but also sends a strong message to a younger generation who is used to technology doing so much for them. It’s good for a movie to have strong social and moral overtones without being preachy.

All over the film, Wall-E makes serious observations about us as a society, and all done in such a way that none of it seems unrealistic. Hundred years from now all humans are fat beyond reason, almost without the ability to walk at all. They are so connected into their technology that they become oblivious to simple observations about the world around them in which they live. They engorge themselves in their modern conveniences while destroying themselves at the same time. It’s difficult to go into too much without crossing into spoiler territory, but for now I’ll just leave it at that.

Surrogates: Movie Reflection

2011-03-01T11:19:00.001-08:00

It was a movie that snowed under by too many problems to overcome, a pretty ridiculous plot being first and foremost on the list. I could never wrap my mind around the idea of a world in which people just want to lie there obsessed up to a computer all day long for days on end. And that's all they do. Every single day, it all seemed so pointless.

In addition, Surrogates doesn't even get the action scenes right. Surrogates movie is not bad, but it’s not good either. It’s another movie that tries to sell us that overuse of technology may be the downfall of humanity. That’s fine, but if the movie wants to make that argument, I’d like to point out the amount of CGI poorly used in Surrogates may add to the downfall of movies.

This movie was ruined for me when it was obvious that just about anyone with a gun could break into the mainframe controlling all the surrogates. The other thing that bothered me is the robots. They had HUGE similarities to the recent movie iRobot which was surely a copy of something else but still played out much better in my mind as a whole. This of course is a warning about how the current state of the Internet could evolve, from people able to do many things online they previously had to do in person, to being able to do their daily tasks from the comfort of their computer.

Eagle Eye: Movie Reflection

2011-03-01T11:18:00.000-08:00

Honestly, I am not so familiar with this movie. As I watched the previews of this movie, eagle Eye is a video game-like string of action sequences aligned together in the service of a plot that defies explanation.

The plot here is actually pretty complex. A government program selects a man whose Air Force brother has recently died and pairs him with a young mother whose child is at risk to carry out a super-secret government program. As we follow our duo through the course of the movie, we’ll find out steadily more about each, and about the government program they find themselves roped into working for. By the end, the entire government of the United States will be at risk.

Eagle Eye builds suspense in the initial climb and hits its peak at the first drop of action, but soon becomes tedious and monotonous when the mystery of the caller extends its welcome and the narrative twists and turns fall victim to genre clichés.

I, Robot: Movie Reflection

2011-03-01T11:13:00.000-08:00

When I saw the previews for the movie I, Robot, I expected the worst. The image of robots in rebellion, attacking humans. The plot wasn’t too complicated, but it did have a few interesting twists and a few unexpected turns. Honestly, it was a great film even though I was not able to saw the full movie. It’s quiet interesting. I, Robot’ strikes a fine balance between the amazingly expressive computer generated imagery used to create its legions of robots, and the all too human presence of Will Smith whose typical wise-ass delivery keeps things grounded. The plot makes good sense only so long as you do not think about it too hard, but as a summer crowd-pleaser with edge-of-your-seat pacing and spectacular stunts, ‘I, Robot’ would be hard to beat.

The movie is an excellent example of what great direction, very good acting and a decent plot can do – add in the excellent animations and the blood pumping action scenes and you have a classic sci-fi thriller. Then add to this the way in which the movie makes you think and you have a very compelling and subtly frightening movie that appeals on many different levels. It deals with many difficult subjects such as the essence of a soul, and whether humanity is the only ‘being’ capable of anything other than following a simple program – can a robot move beyond programming into the realms of love and caring? Can a robot be capable of hatred? The movie also deals with injustice in many subtle ways, making a social commentary but not making any judgments.

The movie comments on how ‘directives’ are likely to be very restrictive and often lead to complications not thought of when the rules were created – essentially they leave no room for growth and interpretation. The movie is a thought provoking one at many levels, it comments on insecurity, alienation, racism and injustice. In a way this is a direct commentary on some of the arbitrary rules society has placed on itself now.
The way in which the movie portrays the future as simply a higher tech version of our own is very clever, and makes the settings very familiar and believable. While perhaps not as sinister as AI, the movie still has an atmosphere that is creepy at times, and is creepier because of the believability.
The animations and special effects of the robots, the cars etc are simply stunning. While you expect this these days with blockbuster movies, the way in which they blend into the movie seamlessly and make you really believe that they are real is uncanny – some of the scenes where there are literally hundreds of robots on the screen sends shivers down my spine – this again adds to the believability factor and makes you think what life could be like if we are not careful in the way we progress with technology.

Why do we need to study technology/gies?

2010-12-10T11:48:00.000-08:00

World becomes unique and wonderful because of some useful innovations and developments. We the people in here, turn out to be dependent on various technologies. Evidently, in our day to day activities we cannot even dare to pursue completely our tasks without its presence. In other words majority of successful things or tasks we’ve done that is because of the help of technology.

For more than billion number of people in the world, maybe one of us, half of this number or majority of us tend to be curious the reason why we need to study technology. As a BS Information Technology student, I can say that this is one of our major duties to be oriented with what is technology all about. In reality, we are the consumers as well as producers of this. Therefore we are in need to study technology to know its purposes. It encompasses side by side good and bad impacts towards us.

Technology keeps changing and civilizing. As I said, it comprises both advantages that can help people and disadvantages that can harm or make people worst. Now, it is our duty to be oriented with what is it all about. Knowing it deeply can be a good thing for us to vigilant with are the essential things that we are going to do, have our insight with what is going on and we can stay away from those needless things.

New development is another step towards improvement and success. Bluntly speaking, inventions and advancements makes our day to day works become easier and faster. In connection with this, it is important to study technology to be acquainted with and understand its purposes and we can also foresee the future and manage it easily.

USEP PRF

2010-10-13T21:16:00.000-07:00

The PRF is used during the enrollment, it is where enrollees write the subjects they wanted to enroll in (of course, the class adviser will check if the student is allowed to enroll on all those subjects that the student have written).the data fields in the PRF or Pre Registration Form is not matched with the fields in the Enrollment Interface. There are fields that present in the interface but do not exist to the PRF. The PRF is a form wherein students must fill in with corresponding information needed from them and most especially the chosen subject they want to enroll to.

Keypoints for an effective and efficient network environment ideal for USEP

2010-10-13T21:15:00.000-07:00

In system development, how various parts of the system communicate with each other throughout the university? In what way?
Regarding System Development, the best person to ask is our University Programmers, Mr. Fortich and Dr. Mercado.

What are the components involved in the system(s) in the university? (hardware, software, technology, etc.)
I am not in the right position to discuss the details of the software components used as there are other assigned personnel for such job. However, talking about hardware component and technology used, basically I, assigned as the network administrator, is entrusted to maintain our different servers to run 24/7. Currently, we have our Web Server hosted here in our University in our HP ProLiant ML350 Server. Its an old but stable server set-up here in our Networks Office and has been active since Engr. Val A. Quimno , not yet a dean, was appointed as the Network Administrator. The said server has the following specification:
Intel Xeon 3.0 GHz, 3.2 GHz, or 3.4 GHz processors (dual processor capability) with 1MB level 2 cache standard. Processors include support for Hyper-Threading and Extended Memory 64 Technology (EM64T)
Intel® E7520 chipset
800-MHz Front Side Bus
Integrated Dual Channel Ultra320 SCSI Adapter
Smart Array 641 Controller (standard in Array Models only)
NC7761 PCI Gigabit NIC (embedded)
Up to 1 GB of PC2700 DDR SDRAM with Advanced ECC capabilities (Expandable to 8 GB)
Six expansion slots: one 64-bit/133-MHz PCI-X, two 64-bit/100-MHz PCI-X, one 64-bit/66-MHz PCI-X, one x4 PCI-Express, and one x8 PCI-Express
New HP Power Regulator for ProLiant delivering server level, policy based power management with industry leading energy efficiency and savings on system power and cooling costs
Three USB ports: 1 front, 1 internal, 1 rear
Support for Ultra320 SCSI hard drives (six hot plug or four non-hot plug drives supported standard, model dependent)
Internalstorage capacity of up to 1.8TB; 2.4TB with optional 2-bay hot plug SCSI drive
725W Hot-Plug Power Supply (standard, most models); optional 725W Hot-Pluggable Redundant Power Supply (1 1) available. Non hot plug SCSI models include a 460W non-hot plug power supply.
Tool-free chassis entry and component access
Support for ROM based setup utility (RBSU) and redundant ROM
Systems Insight Manager, SmartStart, and Automatic Server Recovery 2 (ASR-2) included
Protected by HP Services and a worldwide network of resellers and service providers. Three-year Next Business Day, on-site limited global warranty. Certain restrictions and exclusions apply. Pre-Failure Notification on processors, memory, and SCSI hard drives.
Aside from it, our mail server running under Compaq Proliant ML330 Server, our oldest server, is also hosted here in our Networks Office. Together with other Servers, such as Proxy and Enrollment Servers, both proxy and our enrollment servers are running in a microcomputer/personal computers but with higher specifications to act as servers.

How do these communicate with one another? (topology, network connectivity, protocols, etc.) – may include data flow/ UML diagrams to better explain.

 All Servers are connected in a shared medium grouped as one subnetwork. In general, our network follows the extended star topology which is connected to a DUAL WAN Router that serves as the load balancer between our two Internet Service Providers. All other workstations are grouped into different subnetworks as in star topology branching out from our servers subnetwork as in extended star topology. At present, we are making use of class C IP Address for private IP address assignments. Other workstations IP assignments are configured statically (example: laboratories) while others are Dynamic (example: offices). All workstations are connected via our proxy servers that do some basic filtering/firewall to control users access to the internet aside from router filtering/firewall management. So, whenever any workstation has to connect to the internet, it has to pass through software and hardware based firewall.

What are the processes involved in the communication (each system to other systems)?
 As mentioned above, in item 3, all workstations are connected via a proxy server. It means that whenever a workstation is turned on, it requests for an IP address from the proxy server (for dynamically configured IP address) and connect to the network after IP address is acquired. As connection is established, each system can now communicate and share resources within the same subnetwork and to server following the concepts discuss in your Computer Network Class.
How do you go along with the maintenance of the system?
 Basically, our servers are expected to be in good condition since it is required to be up 24/7. Daily, during my vacant period, monitoring on the servers are observed that includes checking logs, checking hardware performance such as CPU health, etc. If problems are observed, remedies are then and then applied. Once in a week, regular overall checkup is observed as preventive maintenance to ensure not to experience longer downtime if possible.

Does the system follow a specific standard? Explain Please.
As I was appointed as the Network Administrator, everything was already in place except for some minor changes. Basically, different networking standards was already observed such as cabling standards, TIA/EIA 568A-B, different IEEE standards as discussed in your Computer Networks Subject, etc.
How is the security of the system? Are there any vulnerabilities? Risks? Corresponding mitigation techniques? Access control?
 As I have mentioned, we have implemented both software and hardware based filtering/firewall. Basically, Risks or vulnerabilities and different mitigation techniques were considered to increase security in our network. Aside from filtering/firewall, constant monitoring on networks activity also increases the security of the system.

Are there any interference? During what (most) times do these occur? Explain their effects especially with regards to the business of the university?
 Major Interferences are normally encountered as an effect of unforeseen and beyond our control events such as black outs, and the like. The said interference would of course affect University’s day-to-day businesses for obviously this will paralyze all our activities that rely on electricity and further this might cause damage on our network devices, etc. that may later be the reason for longer downtime. Problems encountered by our providers such as connection to the National/International Gateway also affect University’s business such as correlating to University’s Business Partners outside and within the country.

USEP Enrollment System Design

2010-10-13T21:12:00.001-07:00

In connection to our first assignment that talks about the processes behind the enrollment system in USEP. Well definitely, knowing the enrollment process in a particular University you are untended to enroll is really important. It is also quiet obvious that the University have provided pictures and diagrams containing the process of enrollment system. However, my question goes in to two categories only. First, are the posted diagrams are consistent? Based on my understanding on the past discussion in some of my subjects, consistency really gives a big impact towards the overall system or shall we say the diagram. It is very important that we should also consider the consistency of its size of the figures, the flow or the process itself and as well as the direction each of each arrows. And because of this, especially for the new students they will find it easy and fast to follow the given process. This is also true to the old students. The second concern of mine is, is it understandable and concise? For the figures and diagrams it is a need to consider its simplicity not in the sense that it is useless. Well, we can’t deny the fact that there are also students who are not acquainted with the different symbols such as the process box and others. So it is also important that we will make it simple and understandable. And concise, meaning is there’s missing information in the diagrams? Because if we missed either one data in the diagram itself, we should also lost the whole information in the posted diagram.

Generally, it is important that we should consider the consistency, concise and understandability of the diagrams because it will serve as a guide of the new and old students.

USEP Enrollment System

2010-10-13T21:10:00.001-07:00

Enrollment system is really a need because it holds an important function in every Schools ad University. In other words enrollment system is the must system in a school. When a student is enrolling for a specific course the school requires all the necessary information of the enrollee. Enrollment system is a way that a particular school enables to trace the information of a student. It is extremely useful in the school in the way of making the processes of enrolling much easy. As for the case of University of Southeastern Philippines, you cannot be called as USEpian unless you can’t enroll in this University. Fortunately, there are lots of diagram pictures containing the Enrollment processes posted in the inside the campus especially during enrollment period which gave a big benefit especially for the new student who is willing to enroll. Well, the posted diagrams are easy to understand. As technology changes and as time goes by, we can’t deny the fact that we should also adopt those automation processes for the betterment of our university. Definitely, this is true that the University has already uses automation process but what I mean is how about those organizations in the campus. Are they already uses automated ways in their transactions? Based on my experiences when I was in Tagum Campus was same also with here in Obrero Campus because I enroll for almost four days which is a very big deal for me since it is time-consuming. The paying of fees especially in every clubs and organizations take long queues which really spend more than an hour. As what I have observed during the time of advising, I have noticed that there just few faculty which comes to my mind that it was quiet unfair for them. And it was a big hassle not only for the part of the faculty and also for the students because you may take time and can create meters of line to wait. For what I have knew there was assigned adviser for a particular year level. The other one is the signing of clearances. Based on my experienced also when I was in Tagum campus, we did it individually. We went to the offices individually together with our clearance. And because of this reason, I found it time consuming also and it is also true with those personnel who are task to sign for the clearances. Yes! It’s a good practice here in Obrero because we just give our clearance to our respective mayor however my concern here is “Why should we will not try it in the automation way?” In a way that we will just give our clearance to the assigned personnel and he/she just signed it by looking in his/her pc. And in the pc there are list of student information and all the sort of account data so that we can minimize our time for signing of clearances.

Systems Professional v/s Department Manager

2010-06-22T00:58:00.001-07:00

Juan: The way to go about the analysis is to first examine the old system, such as reviewing key documents and observing the workers perform their tasks. Then we can determine which aspects are working well and which should be preserved.
Pedro: We have been through these types of projects before and what always ends up happening is that we do not get the new system we are promised; we get a modified version of the old system.
Juan: Well, I can assure you that will not happen this time. We just want a thorough understanding of what is working well and what isn’t.
Pedro: I would feel much more comfortable if we first started with a list of our requirements. We should spend some time up-front determining exactly what we want the system to do for my department. Then you systems people can come in and determine what portions to salvage if you wish. Just don’t constrain us to the old system.
Required:
a. Obviously these two workers have different views on how the systems analysis phase should be conducted. Comment on whose position you sympathize with the most.
B.What method would you propose they take? Why?
(1000 words)

Most of the time especially when we are in the field of business or even though in our real life, when we are going to carry out such things we should always begin in planning and various arguments pertaining to what we want to achieve. The situation that was stated above was just a mirror to what we usually perform every now and then. Actually, the persons behind this situation John Juan, the professional system analyst and Peter Pedro as a manager of the department was had a conversation or argument of what will be the best method to be used for their new targeted information system. I can say that most successful and unsuccessful projects really rely on the performance, cooperation, ideas, understanding and communication in between the person who is responsible to develop and most especially the user. Moreover, if you're going to bring about real change in an organization you have to have a plan. You need a vision, of course, and you have to engage people and get them excited about the vision. But if you don't have a plan then nothing much will come of it. As the old saying goes, failure to plan is planning to fail.

Fortunately, these two persons above (John Juan and Peter Pedro) have brilliant and good ideas for their new information system. I just remember to what my instructress shared to the class that before making or developing a system it is very important to done with proper communication with your client, you should ask first the client of what would be the features of that system or in other words you should analyze the flow and prepare first of what are those necessary requirements needed in the system. This is very important to remember in order to minimize risk and to maximize your time. Definitely, it was very obvious that the manager of the department had experienced failure so I think he was afraid that it will happen again. Before I will conclude of what will be the feasible method for me, I just want to explain first John Juan (a system analyst) and Peter Pedro’s (as the manager) ideas. John Juan seems to look at first the old system. In relation to this, he will be observing workers performance and examine those pertinent data gathered during their studies and assessment conducted. In this way, we can now identify of which part of that system calls development and what are those things suitable to be preserve for future use. In my point of view, he seems a practical system analyst because he is analyzing first those possible expenditures for their new information system. It is more important for John Juan to look at closely and carefully to the old system of what is the best that could still contributes for improvement. Why should we find for another method if there is an existing system that is possible to be applied and serves as our basis for the new IS? He just wants to make use of the existing resources that is near to them and easy to be studied. Obviously, he is analyzing first the feasible solution for their problem. In the side, Peter Pedro as the manager of the department wants to gather first those important requirements needed for their new information system. Requirements are the crucial things that system professionals must acquire because we all know that most clients are more knowledgeable of what are those possible needs of their system. The manger stands like a Boy Scout for me. Why I say so? Because he is preferably ready and prepare since he is asking for the list of requirements for the new IS. He just wants to assure first those necessary things. Take a look when you are printing documents, it is very important that you will prepare first those things needed for printing such as computer unit, printer, flash disks, ink, papers and others. This is what the manager aims because he believes that most successful projects largely depend on the gathered requirements.

Finally, I came to a conclusion based on my understandings and observation; it is easier for me to maximize my time to make use of the available resources. Therefore, John Juan’s idea that was to look at closely and carefully first the old system because it will serve as the basis for new IS.

USEP Life Cycle

2010-06-22T00:57:00.000-07:00

In the previous assignment, we are assigned to give at least three systems development process models together with its corresponding stages or phases. Now, we are task to explain or discuss pertaining to the life cycle of our own University, the University of Southeastern Philippines. Life cycle for me is like stages in life. It maybe explained from the time when we are born until we will depart this life. The same with, the organization or University have been established until the time it will last. And for additional information, based on my research, organizational life cycle is the life cycle of an organization from birth level to the termination. There are five level/stages in any organization. (1. Birth, 2. Growth, 3.Maturity, 4. Decline 5. Death). I think that every organization have their own strategies and processes to cope up with those challenges that they may encounter from every now and then. Looking to our own University, like any other things on earth they have different ways to be developed for the sake of their survival. First and for most, before this University established, they have undergo different planning and studies until it will finished and plan again and again for the next arena. The University has undergone different analysis for the betterment of the organization. This may include of how it can be attractive to other people or customer.

Now, the question is how we can know that the developed life cycle meets our needs as a student in the University. Obviously our University has been working well to attain its dreams. They put hand in hand to help and to suffice the needs of students. As we can notice our University has developed different strategies and procedures to address those intellectual, behavioral as well as spiritual needs of students. One we can be proud of are those number of student passers every year from different courses offered by our very own University. And the passers ranking level throughout other schools in the Philippines. It is very obvious that our University has developed and built proper procedures to become a number one and known University globally. We can also observe that our University produced a world class graduates. Many of them are now working on big companies and have their own company. I am very proud because others would ask me, “Where are you studying?, Well, without any hesitation I answer to the in USEP.” And after which they will reply, Oh! Amazing! You are an intelligent student. And so, it is very big evidence that our University offers a helping hand for our success. As a student, the automation processes in our University contribute a very big help and benefits. Let’s take a look on our USEPAT Online registration process. For me, it is a very helpful and it really meets our needs. Students who are interested to register in our University will no longer find difficulties. This can give attraction to students because you can register without any hesitation and is very time consuming. Some students will not just go to school spending almost the whole day for the sake of registration. I think that the University has been working well and implementing different procedures, making pertinent plans in order to address different problems and adapt changes that may happen and most of all to pursue of what was stated in the Vision, Mission, Goals and Objectives of USEP.

System Development Models

2010-06-22T00:55:00.001-07:00

On the previous assignments, we have already known on the different characteristics of a good system analyst especially in any design modeling process. In this assignment, we are task to identify and discuss at least three systems development models together with its phases. Since it was already discussed on our system engineering and system analysis and design 1 subject, systems development models for me serves as guiding tools in developing a particular systems. These will be very useful especially in designing process. Through these models, clients were no longer find difficulties in understanding of what is the flow of the system. Similarly, systems development models are very significant especially on the part of system analysts because these will be there tools or instrument on showing and explaining the flow of the system to their clients.
Upon identifying systems development models, I used to choose waterfall, spiral and prototyping model.

Waterfall Model
Waterfall model was the most popular systems development model. As I was remember on my previous software engineering subject, waterfall model done with a sequential manner. It was composed of different phases. As we can see on the picture below, there is an arrow that serves as the flow meaning, it will not go to the next stage or phase unless the first phase was not finish. Actually it was based on the article published in 1970 by Winston W. Royce. Here are the different phases of waterfall model:
1. Requirements specification
Requirements specification is a detailed statement of the accurate results or the customer want to get from a project. Most probable requirements needed to develop in the system will be done in this phase. This phase also can be done on a long study where the developers will be conducting an investigation mainly on the different necessities needed on the system. Moreover, the said studies will also cover the system cost, project schedule and etc. Bluntly speaking, the important purpose of this phase is to find the need and to define the problem that needs to be solved. Finally, this phase will serve as a guideline for the next phase.
2. Design
System design is also known as the overall system architecture. It also serves as a guideline in identifying the hardware and system requirements. Based on our experiences especially in making a system, mostly we should think first what we are going to do and what it should look like before the coding process. Finally, the system design will serve as a guideline for the next phase.

3. Construction (AKA implementation or coding)
Coding can be done after the system designing. This phase mainly covers all the writing, testing, debugging/troubleshooting process and maintaining the source code of computer programs. Finally, this phase will serve as a guideline for the next phase.

4. Integration
After the coding process, integration phase will be the next. This phase mainly focus on the process of linking together the different computing systems and software applications on its physical and its functionality.

5. Testing and debugging (AKA Validation)
Of course, after the coding and integration process, you will now proceed to the testing and debugging of the system. This time, different testing techniques will be done in order to determine the bugs and errors that were committed. Actually this will begin after the coding process.

6. Installation
Once it was already tested, the deployment will be the next phase to be done. This will be the act of putting the program onto a computer system so that it can be executed.

7. Maintenance
We all know that once the system is deployed to the client’s area, definitely this will undergo different changes. It is very necessary to have maintenance in order to address different changes that may happen. Maintenance here are said to be very important because not all the problems come in picture directly but they arise time to time and needs to be solved.

Spiral Model

Spiral Model is said to be the new approach towards software development. As we can observed on the waterfall model it was just only followed on a sequential manner however it does not have equal division on its respective phases. Based on the internet, in order to address on this issue there was a new model called "The Spiral Model" or "Boehm’s Model". Actually, if we take a look on its picture there is an equal division of phases and it contributes risk reduction and also it supports iteration and reflects real-world practices. These are the four phases of spiral model
1. Planning

Planning is very important in every project implementation. In this phase, you will be able to document and fix first the different objectives and specifications in order to prepare and know of what are the necessary techniques and tactics that you are going to do during the project implementation.

2. Risk Analysis
This phase is also important in order to resolve all the possible risks in developing a project. In this phase also all available alternatives that can help in developing a project to become more effective are being studied and those strategies are decided to use.

3. Engineering
In this phase, the actual development of the project is carried out. The output of this phase is passed through all the phases iteratively in order to obtain improvements in the same.

4. Evaluation
As what on the internet said, this phase is similar with the testing stage. After the product development, the developed system will be passed on to the clients in order to get their feedbacks and suggestions. These feedbacks and suggestions are very important in order to identify problems and errors and also to find accurate solutions in resolving potential problems. As what on the internet said, this phase is similar with the testing stage.

Prototyping Model

Last but not the least, prototyping model mainly focus on how to develop a prototype of the system. The client then evaluates the working prototype, and suggests improvements and corrections, which all go into developing the real application. The prototyping model is used when the client is unsure about the exact specification but has a genuine need. Then the software engineers can develop a rough prototype to gain an approval of the customer. If the prototype developed is a working model, the developers may use code fragments of the prototype when developing the final application. When using the Prototyping Model, the developer builds a simplified version of the proposed system and presents it to the customer for consideration as part of the development process. The customer in turn provides feedback to the developer, who goes back to refine the system requirements to incorporate the additional information. Often, the prototype code is thrown away and entirely new programs are developed once requirements are identified. It provides a better system to users, as users have natural tendency to change their mind in specifying requirements and this method of developing systems supports this user tendency.
Since in this methodology a working model of the system is provided, the users get a better understanding of the system being developed.

Reference:
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/1-5-2005-63768.asp
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_07.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model
http://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid183_gci755441,00.html

System Analyst as a Project Manager

2010-06-22T00:53:00.001-07:00

As what we did in Assignment 2, we have also interviewed Sir Chris Abella regarding System analyst as a project manager. It was just happened that the question being asked in this assignment was the topic on Chapter 3 which was our report.
System analyst as a project manager is the same with you are a worker at the same time a manager. Your role as a system analyst is to become responsible for the defining, developing, configuring and supporting computer applications. He is also responsible particularly on the flow of the system. He is also a good system designer. A system analyst does not just focus on the interface of the system but the design that makes the clients comfortable in using the system. When time comes, especially during the deployment of the system the client will no longer find difficulties in using with it. System analyst must also a good programmer. It is very necessary that he is oriented with some programming languages. In connection with this, as a system analyst you will be working as a manager in a particular project. His role and function are equally similar to project manager, in which, he will gather systems requirements, make design recommendations, and others. He will also conduct interview, review, research, and collaborate to the various people who will be affected during the project. As a project manager same as a system analyst you are also required to developed some skills. You will develop your communication skills. In this role, he will conduct interview to the managements and end users. He will talk to the developers of how the software should work and operate to match the user experiences.

As a system analyst, you will also undergo some studies like what the project manager did. This time, you will be applying different skills. You will be establishing proper project management. For an instance, in a working place as a system analyst you will also carrying the role of a manager in a project. You will also establish good working relationship towards your employees. You will listen of what your employees’ suggestions comments and reactions. Your company performances will results to the success of your project.

Effective System Analyst

2010-06-22T00:52:00.000-07:00

As for the requirement on our assignment 2 in SAD 1 Summer class, we have visited the Rhine Marketing Corporation. We have interviewed Sir Chris Abella, the MIS head of RMC-CD of the said corporation. During the interview he answered the question clearly and accommodated us well. As for those people who are in doubt, I will give you first the short company profile of Rhine Marketing Corporation. “Rhine Marketing Corporation- Computer Division (RMC-CD) is a leading manufacturer of personal computers, and distributor of a complete line of peripherals and other computer-related services. It was established in February 1992, when Rhine Marketing Corporation's interest has evolved from home appliance business has achieved a good reputation immediately. We not only provide expertise to meet the increasingly sophisticated needs of our clients, but also offer solutions that set new standards for quality performance and value.” Ref. http://www.rhine.com.ph/

In connection with the topic on MIS 2, we asked Sir Abella about what are the skills and characteristics must a system analyst develop in order to be more effective especially in any design modelling process.
To understand better, Sir Abella told us first about what is system analyst. He explained that a system analyst job is responsible for the defining, developing, configuring and supporting computer applications. He is also responsible particularly on the flow of the system. He is also a good system designer. A system analyst does not just focus on the interface of the system but the design that makes the clients comfortable in using the system. When time comes, especially during the deployment of the system the client will no longer find difficulties in using with it. System analyst must also a good programmer. It is very necessary that he is oriented with at least one programming language.
These are the skills and characteristics of a system analyst to become more effective in any design modelling process. A good system analyst must be:

A good system analyst must be responsible. Since he serves as a leader on a particular project, he must be responsible in whatever the clients’ demand. He must be responsible on what are those important things agreed by him and between the client. There are instances that sometimes some system analyst makes a time span on that system which is very crucial especially in the part of the client. So as a system analyst, we should humbly follow of what the client wants.

A good system analyst must be adaptive and observer. It is very important that he is versatile most of the time especially in his working place. He should build good attitude towards his clients and co-workers. We should not deny the fact that every now and then there are a lot of changes that he may encounter either new working place or new co-workers. Furthermore, he must be a keen observer. He will observe of what are those things that he will establish and do especially about hardware on software matter.

A good system analyst must be honest. First and for most, it is very difficult to deal with the system price. As a system analyst, he must be oriented with what are those things that he may consider in dealing with the system cost. He shall not demand excessive price but he should also consider his time and effort. It must be agreed by him as a system analyst and the client.

A good system analyst must also establish good working relationship towards his client and co-workers. It is important that you are good in communication. This will serve as your tool every now and them especially those people behind that project.
A good system analyst must give great effort on his project in order to meet customer’s satisfaction. You should love your job. "Most successful men have not achieved their distinction by having some new talent or opportunity presented to them. They have developed the opportunity that was at hand." –– Bruce Barton

Characteristics of a Good System Analyst

2010-06-22T00:46:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, April 21, 2010 we have discussed about the world of information system analyst. We tackled the whole definition and characteristics of a system analyst. It was discussed first by the group of Dayanan and explained further by the following members and groups. I learned that being an information system analyst is not an easy job. At first, I thought that system analyst job is like a programmer in such way that you will be working with those plenty of codes. System analyst greatly focused on the different programming languages. However as the reporting goes deeper, I used to comprehend that a system analyst was not about programming. It is about on what are the different strategies need to be done or accomplish in order to attain the goals of your company. In connection with this, as a system analyst you will be performing bundles of tasks in order to achieve of what you want in your company in the near future. Based on what I have understood and researched, a good system analyst must posses various skills to effectively carry out the job. Moreover, system analyst is similar with business analyst. As a system analyst you will be doing planning and analyzing critical problems in such a way that you will be planning with an open-minded person, a futuristic one. You will be oriented with what are those processes which involve company’s innovation. You will be upgraded with the new technology. As a system analyst also, you will construct strategic plans on how to adapt the fast approaching changes in technology. Let’s have a short review on the discussion of Amancio (second reporter). During her discussion about the data flow diagram and in connection with this topic, Sir Gamboa told Amancio to draw the data flow diagram of the present Enrollment System in a particular University. As a system analyst we were given a task to do our duty. It was quite obvious that the said Enrollment system of a particular University was done with a long, time-consuming and hassle process. After a moment, we came to a conclusion found a remedy on that issue. We have concluded a short but useful process of Enrollment System. We must always remember that “Time is Gold” so it is more important to maximize our time. My point of view here is that as a system analyst you must be a good problem solver. You can find better solutions in connection with that problem. System analyst is like a scientist. You will be doing relevant step by step process and techniques. You will be using analysis and techniques to address business problems.

A good system analyst must also be knowledgeable in the field of analyzing and designing activity. The output of the project depends on you. A good system analyst is supposed to have in depth knowledge of the system, before taking place to his job assignment. Besides he must also have sound knowledge of technology that will enable him to utilize high technology tools, hardware and software facilities. A good system analyst also must be a good listener and be able to react to what people say. The analyst must be knowledgeable of technology and business. The analyst is not expected to be an expert in business but a decent understanding of the client's world is required. You are not expected to know the details of programming, but a decent general knowledge of concepts and terms is essential. A system analyst can be a perfect doer, perfect system developer, good skills, and better management and there association must be better.

A good system analyst must obtain interpersonal and technical skills in order to deal with deal with those important relationships and the interface with people in an organization. Bear in mind that system analyst must be good in establishing trust, know how to resolve conflict and good in terms of communicating relevant information. You must have an ability to focus on procedures and techniques far operations analysis, systems analysis, and computer science.

System analyst also must be a good project manager. You are not just in an office sitting, looking and letting your members do their assigned area of responsibility but, as a system analyst as the same time a project manager it is your duty to work before your member because you will serve as a project model. If what was the leader did, it was also by the members. Always remember that success of failure of a project depends on skills and performance of a project manager. As a system analyst, you will be building proper project management. It is your responsibility to know how to organize and direct people. It is more important that you will listen to what your members’ opinion. Cooperation and participation of a project leads to success. We all know that a system analyst is said to be a critical job but it is necessary that as a good system analyst you will know how to establish great performance and determination towards your work.

♥♥USEP Three Years From Now♥♥

2010-03-26T06:17:00.001-07:00

Based on my readings, technological change is a change in the set of feasible production possibilities. Technological change (TC) is a term that is used to describe the overall process of invention, innovation and diffusion of technology or processes. Pertaining to the computer history, technology is perishable and moves faster than in any other industry. This rapid-fire pace means continuous increases in productivity and competitiveness for our industry and the myriad of other industries.
I have read a quote from Scott G. McNealy, Chairman, President, & CEO, Sun Microsystems …. "Miss one development cycle and you are seriously hurt. Miss Two and you are mortally wounded." That has come to depend on computer products and services for their vitality. Just as our industry has adapted to meet the demands of the competitive global marketplace, so too has our work force.

In the case of USEP, I’ve observed that these three that I’ve mentioned below would be very helpful for the staffs, faculty, and students and for the whole university.

Wireless fidelity (WI-Fi)
Wi-Fi is wireless technology which enables connection between two or more devices wirelessly for data sharing purposes. It is wireless networking which is based on IEEE 802.11 standards. it is now being used by millions of people using various devices such as personal computers, laptops, pads', printers, camera, games, mp3 players etc, more and more gadgets are coming with built in feature of this amazing wireless technology.In the whole USEP, WI-Fi is very pertinent in order to facilitate convenient access to information, to eliminate the need for wires and cables in order to access data and media, to aid compatibility and connectivity between different systems in the network and most especially to eliminate the need for other paraphernalia like switchboards, adapters and plugs that clutter up the work station.
Online System
• Online system for me would be very significant for the whole USEP in a way that the different procedures and process that the University wants should be done in online approaches. The best example for this is the online registration for the students who are planning to take USEPAT exams in order to shun from hassles and bustles. This process would be very useful for the students to be acquainted with the results for the said examination.

RFID
• As what I have knew it was implemented by the Land Transportation Office (LTO) to easily track the plate numbers the vehicles. RFID (radio frequency identification) is a technology that incorporates the use of electromagnetic or electrostatic coupling in the radio frequency (RF) portion of the electromagnetic spectrum to uniquely identify an object, animal, or person. In USEP, I can say that implementing RFID is very much essential for the University to monitors those students and other people who are entering the university.

References:
wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology
http://www.wifinotes.com/
http://searchmanufacturingerp.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid193_gci805987,00.html

♥♥Strategic Information Systems Planning (SISP♥♥

2010-03-26T06:16:00.000-07:00

Strategic Information Systems Planning (SISP) has been developed to aid in recognizing appropriate portfolio of computer based application and relevant information processing activities to support organizations’ information needs. SISP is not a single solution or method for IS planning but an umbrella term for host of methods and techniques that are more or less based on different paradigms of world, organizations, and humans. Characteristic for available SISP methods is their focus on a single organization.
Two Core Arguments:
First:
At a minimum, a firm’s information systems investments should be aligned with the overall business strategy and in some cases may even become an emerging source of competitive advantage. While no one disagrees with this, operations management researchers are just starting to study how this alignment takes place and what the measurable benefits are. An issue under examination is how a manufacturer’s business strategy, characterized as either “market focused” or “operations focused,” affects its ability to garner efficiency versus customer service benefits from its ERP investments.
Second:
Companies can best achieve IS-based alignment or competitive advantage by following a proactive, formal and comprehensive process that includes the development of broad organizational information requirements. This is in contrast to a “reactive” strategy, in which the IS group sits back and responds to other areas of the business only when a need arises. Such a process is especially relevant to ERP investments, given their costs and long-term impact. Seegars, Grover and Teng have identified six dimensions that define an excellent SISP process.
1. Comprehensiveness .Comprehensiveness is “the extent to which an organization attempts to be exhaustive or inclusive in making and integrating strategic decisions”.
2. Formalization. Formalization is “the existence of structures, techniques, written procedures, and policies that guide the planning process”.
3. Focus. Focus is “the balance between creativity and control orientations inherent within the strategic planning system”.
4. Top-down flow. SISP should be initiated by top managers, with the aid of support staff.
5. Broad participation. Even though the planning flow is top-down, participation must involve multiple functional areas and, as necessary, key stakeholders at lower levels of the organization.
6. High consistency. SISP should be characterized by frequent meetings and reassessments of the overall strategy.
If in case i will be hired and tasked to develop a SISP for a particular company, these are the following questions that I will going to prepare for the said meeting. The following questions that I have mentioned below are significant and helpful in developing a SISP in a company.
1.Why Plan?
We all plan at some time in our lives and when we do, it’s usually for one of two basic reasons. One is we want to accomplish something, some goal, be it practical or idealistic. Or we want to avoid or prevent something, such as hardships. In planning we use whatever facts we have to help us make our best guess about the future and choose the best and most practicable steps to accomplish our goals. In order for a business to be successful, there needs to be a road map for success. A strategic plan helps to provide direction and focus for all employees. It points to specific results that are to be achieved and establishes a course of action for achieving them. A strategic plan also helps the various work units within an organization to align themselves with common goals.
2. What is the company profile?
It is very significant to be oriented with the firm's history, number and quality of its human, financial, and physical resources organizational and management structure, past, current and anticipated performance, and its reputation, and the standing of its goods or services. In other words to know first the different company products and operations that the company have to have easy way in developing SISP.
3. what are the mission, vision, goals and objectives of the company?
It is also pertinent to be familiar with the company’s vision and mission in SISP implementation because it serves you in carrying out leadership role, unifying efforts and building alignment and loyalty among employees. Mission tells you the fundamental purpose of the organization. It defines the customer and the critical processes. It informs you of the desired level of performance. A Vision outlines what the organization wants to be, or how it wants the world in which it operates to be. It concentrates on the future. It is a source of inspiration. It provides clear decision-making criteria. Objectives could cover growth, profitability, technology and some offerings however goals are ultimate time-based measurements to be achieved by implementing strategies in pursuit of the company's objectives
4. Why does a company needs a strategic information systems planning?
Strategic information systems planning is relevant to know with the process of identifying a portfolio of computer-based applications that will assist an organization in executing its business plans and realizing its business goals.
5. what are are the critical success factors of the company?
In SISP implementation we must identify also the Critical Success Factor which is necessary for an organization or project to achieve its mission. It is a critical factor or activity required for ensuring the success of a company. In any organization certain factors will be critical to the success of that organization, in the sense that, if objectives associated with the factors are not achieved, the organization will fail - perhaps catastrophically so.
6. What are the strength and weaknesses in implementing SISP?
trength and weaknesses must also identify to know are the positive or negative aspects of the external and internal environments that are under the direct control of a firm. Listing of a company's strengths and weaknesses are a normal part of any attempt at strategic information systems plan (SISP) for virtually all companies. Strengths are those things that your company does well which help you perform your jobs, deliver value to your customers and/or give you an advantage over your competition. It is important to determine your weaknesses to get them out in the open, with everyone in basic agreement that these are actually weaknesses, so the team can determine what to do about each one, if anything.

References:
http://scm.ncsu.edu/public/facts/facs060329.html
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1238296
http://www.jmis-web.org/articles/v13_n1_p35/index.html
http://www.ebrc.fi/kuvat/Makipaa_paper.pdf

♥♥Google♥♥

2010-03-26T06:14:00.000-07:00

Google is a highly successful Internet business. Recently they have broadened their scope with a multitude of new tools. Research Google’s business model and answer the following questions below. You may add additional information not included in these questions.

Questions:
Explain Google’s business model.
1. Who are their competitors?
2. How have they used information technology to their advantage?
3. How competitive are they in the market?
4. What new services do they offer?
5. What makes them so unique?
6. How competitive are they in the international market?

Google’s Profile:
Google Incorporation is one company that earns its profit mainly from advertising using their very own Google search engine, Gmail e-mail service, Google Maps, Google Apps, Orkut social networking and Youtube video sharing, which are all offered to the public for free. It is a public corporation of the Americans and Googleplex, its headquarter is located at Mountain View, California since 2003. This company continues to grow very well and was being ranked number one by Fortune Magazine's as the "Best Place to Work In" for multiple times. The name "Google" was originated from the word "googol" which means 10 raised to the power of hundred or 1 with a hundred of zeroes, and "googol" was often misspelled as "google". Since this term has been increasingly used in our everyday language, "google" was added into the dictionaries, carrying the meaning of "obtaining information using the Internet through Google Search Engine".
Google is a corporation that is becoming more profitable by the day. This massive internet giant has a continuous growth that has made it one of the richest technology based companies in the world. It currently employs thousands of people has has stretched itself across the four corners of the cyber world. This all begs the question; how are Google achieving this? Google's business model boils down to two primary focuses advertising and innovation. Google's co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have said themselves that the current pre-dominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. Google Ads went from a means to generate the necessary revenue to keep the budding search engine on its feet to a profit machine that became a key focus in Google's business plans. This form of advertising is cheap for businesses to buy, easy for Google to distribute and highly profitable. On top of all this, the ingenuity of it is that it allows other individuals to generate their own money by getting other web users to click on the advertisements when they visit their web site. Within no time businesses and indivduals alike wanted a piece of the Google Ads action. This sudden popularity was used as part of the model and therefore allowed Google to get its own name around the cyber world, quickly gaining the title of biggest search giant. It has been growing ever since. The other side of Google's hugely successful business plan is innovation. The Google brand became one of the internets most well known names within just years of it being in operation. The advertisement system and the quality of Google's search algorithms set the search engine at the top of its game. Realising that their success couldn't just stop there, Google turned to innovation. The company quickly expanded, providing endless services to the individual; Google News, Google Maps, Google Earth, Froogle, Google Scholar, Google Products the list goes on an on. Innovation became a key part of Google's business plan as it allowed them to expand at the rate they do.

In summary, simplistic as they are, these two foundations of the Google business model have been extra-ordinarily successful, and their continuing ingenuity will probably provide growth for this vast company for a long time.

Google’s Competitors:
1. Apple
2. Microsoft
3. Amazon
4. Facebook
5. Twitter
6. Mozilla
7. Yahoo
8. Cisco
9. IBM
10. Nokia

Googles Business strategy and competative advantage
Google's advantage is more of a company philosophy than a technical
advantage. Thus far they have simply remembered what works on the
Internet. I have read an article frm net. It goes like this .When people talk about Google as a corporate entity, they often talk—jealously, at times—about the company’s innovative culture, with its sprawling campus, free meals and endless amenities. One of the people at the forefront of that culture is Google’s CIO. Ben Fried believes that IT plays a pivotal role in building a great culture—and subsequently a great company—and he puts it into practice in a number of ways. One part of that is making technology accessible and open. By giving users what they want—instead of what the company believes is best—Fried believes CIOs can empower employees to do more. “It’s almost insulting to people when they hear, ‘We know better than you how it’s best for you to work,’” he says. And the company benefits not only from the increased productivity and morale, but also when recruiting talented support professionals.

But it also puts a good face on IT. In an era in which business users believe their IT organizations take too long and spend too much for products and services that don’t meet their needs, CIOs and their teams need to make smarter decisions, he says. Fried has gleaned these and other lessons from his time at Google, and from his previous work as an infrastructure architect at Morgan Stanley. Fried spoke recently about his IT leadership philosophy with CIO Insight Editor in Chief Brian P. Watson.

How competitive are they in the market?
I have read news from net and it says “The latest data released from comScore explains global search results for 2009, with some very familiar trends, as well as some very interesting new trends. The most obvious and familiar trend is Google retaining its lead among the search made worldwide, however the most surprising new trend is that Microsoft has increased its market share considerably. Of the top three major search engines Yahoo got the lowest percentage change, year on year, for 2009. Google had 87.8 billion searches in 2009 which is a 58% increase from 2008, a lo0ng way behind came Yahoo with 9.4 billion searches and a 13% increase from 2009. The main surprise of the new data is Microsoft who came in fourth place with 4.1 billion searches – a huge 70% leap from 2008 search market data…”

Using Google Analytics Aggregated data Google can collect statistics regarding other search engines and how they refer you to sites.
In effect what keywords they refer, vs. what keywords others refer. They also can get raw counts in the number of unique visitors and total visitors by referrer This is only possible because Google Analytics is a centralized web application maintained and operated by Google vs. AWStats another common used analytics platform which is installed maintained and operated by the webmaster. Food for thought: What other web applications have shifted paradigms and what effect and potential does all this newly related aggregated data worth.

• Imagine that Google Spreadsheets can be used to aggregate related ideas in effect creating a sort of GoogleSets.
• Imagine that GoogleTalk can be used to aggregate written context in effect creating Artificial Intelligence Chatbots with similar effects of Jabberwacky.com and beyond
• Imagine that Google Writeley can be used to aggregate thought, not just necessarily of what you write but more specifically what you write, when you write it, how you write, and revise including the whole process etc
• Imagine in effect borrowing the collective intelligence from its users.

Google Offers New Services

Here are the lists:

New Storage Service
Google Inc has announced its very own cloud-based online storage service which will allow Google Docs users to upload any type of file of up to 250 MB while they will have access to a total storage capacity of 1GB.
(14 January, 2010, by Desire Athow)

Google Click-to-Call (Billing) in Ads on Mobile Devices
Google sent out notification to its AdWords advertisers that this month “your location-specific business phone number will display alongside your destination url in ads that appear on high-end mobile devices. Users will be able to click-to-call your business just as easily as they click to visit your website. You’ll be charged for clicks to call, same as you are for clicks to visit your website.”
(Jan 5, 2010 at 7:59am ET by Greg Sterling)

Google Goggles
A new service that promises to make searching the internet as easy as taking a photo. The application, which will premier on Android devices, will let a user snap a photo of anything and then Google will deliver search results based on that image.
(December 7th, 2009 by Stefan Constantinescu)

Free DNS Service
Google just released their newest service which is public DNS. DNS is one of the most important services when it comes to using the internet. The main reason to use the service is reliability, speed and increased security. Google has put in other measures to help with overall security.
(December 5th 2009 by serverguy)

Google Phone – Nexus One -
Nexus One is expected to display the latest generation of Linux-based open sourceAndroid operating system. In fact, this is also first phone that will be marketed directly by Google, in turn setting up extremely higher expectations for the product. Engadget has already reviewed the phone before the launch and it beings some interesting set of information you might link to know. The phone is also said to bring tough competition for Apple iPhone.

Google’s Caffeine Search Engine -
Caffeine is the next version of Google’s search-engine infrastructure and will soon be available to the wider audience. Caffeine engine is expected to offer technology to deliver faster and more accurate results. This version was available for test and there is no specific date for launch given yet, but Google is sure to develop it fully in early 2010

Google’s Ebook Store -
Google has always been fond of books and have encouraged it reader to take part often. With that love Google now plans to launch an online store for ebooks, which is expected to come in the first half of 2010. Google Ebook store will have half a million books initially in partner will few publishers. On the launch it is expected to have more than 500,000 books ready to be purchased from online stores such as Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com.

Google Chrome OS -
Google Chrome Brower was a great hit and recently it also moved ahead of Apple Safari. And next in store we have Google Chrome OS – an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted only at netbooks. Google has planned to open-source its code, and will make Google Chrome OS available to users in the second half of 2010

5. Google Drive – GDrive
Users usually have complained of not having enough space for them to store emails, photos, and files. With that in mind, Google came up the idea of Gdrive included in Google pack – online file backup and storage service from Google that integrated with Google services like Gmail, Picasa Web Albums, Google Calendars, and many others. GDrive allows you to access your files from anywhere, anytime, and from any device – be it from your desktop, web browser or cellular phone. Google Drive is highly anticipated and expected to be released in 2010 but it will only be an extended version of Google Docs. Instead of sending attachments, you’ll be able to upload files to Google Drive from Gmail.

What makes google unigue?
Based on my readings from the internet, the things which makes google a unigue one is that Google grows in a natural fashion, unlike any other company I know of. Google develops tools that are internally useful and then releases them to the world. Google does not develop products to sell to the world. Google does not have external contracts, at least in the traditional sense, as far as I can tell. Google is obviously best known for search and for ads associated with search. This is in essence Google’s one true product. It is the one feature Google developed for the outside world. When Google developed search it was no different from a small company. It is what Google has done since then that makes Google different. Google doesn’t answer to any external power. They don’t have anyone they have to deliver a product to. There is no contract with a deadline. Due to not having any external dependencies, Google can continuously iterate over a product until it reaches a state of near perfection. It can stay in internal testing as long as Google wants and no one is going to care. See Gmail, Google Maps, etc. This then allows Google to use the perfect form of the alert process. Continuous iterations and testing and development, continues improvement. Then as Google sees fit, release the products. As they get better and better, more people use them and more money from ads comes in. It’s also unlikely any other company is going to be able to pull this off. Google hit on the formula for ads before anyone else. They now have such a commanding lead in that arena that to compete with them you need deep pockets of money of your own. That makes it difficult to launch a company and follow Google’s lead of avoiding external dependencies and having the near perfect product development process. Google’s contracts are different from most companies’ contracts. Google isn’t developing a product for these companies. All they are doing is giving them an existing product that Google has already completed and released. Development on that product might still be happening, but it happens within Google, not within the kingdom of the contract. Google is still free to develop how ever they want.

References:
http://google.com/
http://www.google-search-engine-optimization.com/2009/01/google-incorporation.html
http://scenariothinking.org/wiki/images/2/2d/GoogleBizModel.png
http://siliconangle.com/blog/2010/02/09/google-launches-competitor-to-twitter-then-facebook-called-google-
http://www.reportlinker.com/p053261/Google-Company-Profile.html
http://www.seoconsult.co.uk/SEO-News/search-engine-marketing/microsoft-increases-market-share-but-google-are-still-top-of-the-search-tree.html
http://mashable.com/2009/08/03/bing-market-share/

♥♥steps for "critical success factors"♥♥

2010-03-26T06:12:00.002-07:00

Critical Success Factor (CSF) is the term for an element that is necessary for an organization or project to achieve its mission. It is a critical factor or activity required for ensuring the success of your business. The term was initially used in the world of data analysis, and business analysis. For example, a CSF for a successful Information Technology (IT) project is user involvement.

A plan should be implemented that considers a platform for growth and profits as well as takes into consideration the following critical success factors:
* Money: positive cash flow, revenue growth, and profit margins.
* Your future: Acquiring new customers and/or distributors.
* Customer satisfaction: How happy they are.
* Quality: How good is your product and service?
* Product or service development: What's new that will increase business with existing customers and attract new ones?
* Intellectual capital: Create assets from the tools you make to run your business.
* Strategic relationships: New sources of business, products and outside revenue.
* Employee attraction and retention: Your ability to find, train, and keep employees and to let go employees that are not a good fit.
* Sustainability: Your personal ability to keep it all going.

Before anything else we should examine first on how to identify CSFs
When a customer gives you business, he does so for many reasons but there are usually a few critical ones. Without those factors, he would not order from you. The rest of the reasons don't make a lot of difference. When you run your business and market it, you give customers many reasons why they should buy from you. You'll say that you give good value, you're reliable, your products are good quality and you have a high level of customer service. Your customers hear the same thing from all their suppliers but they chose you - you need to know exactly why. The reason you need to know this is because you're doing all these different things, many of them quite expensive, and many of them have no effect at all on whether you get that order. You want to concentrate on those activities which your customers find critical and which make them order from you. Your best bet is to periodically discuss your business with your best customers. They will give you feedback and tell you what they would like to see. Is quick delivery important or would they rather see a lower price? Is it important that you keep items in stock? Would they like to see you more often to discuss their orders or is a quick check by telephone enough? What about particular characteristics of your products - should they be lighter, heavier, shinier, different colours etc?
Once you have discussed your business with a number of your best customers you will notice a pattern - groups of customers will value the same things. Now it is time for you to do the selecting and decide which of the things your customer’s value is going to be priorities for you. What you are looking for are things you can do more of and better without increasing your costs and things which you can do better than your competition. If some of your customers value a quick response time and you're the only business of that type in the area, you've got one of your critical success factors. At the same time, this identifies a good target market for you - other businesses similar to those customers in the same area. Now your business strategy is streamlined: for this group of customers you use your proximity to them to give fast service and you tell similar prospects that fast service is one of your strong points. If that is the critical success factor for this group of customers you will be able to concentrate on it and stop doing some of the other things they don't value. You may even be able to charge more.

Critical success factors (CSFs) have been used significantly to present or identify a few key factors that organisations should focus on to be successful. As a definition, critical success factors refer to "the limited number of areas in which satisfactory results will ensure successful competitive performance for the individual, department, or organisation” (Rockart and Bullen, 1981). Identifying CSFs is important as it allows firms to focus their efforts on building their capabilities to meet the CSFs, or even allow firms to decide if they have the capability to build the requirements necessary to meet critical success factors (CSFs). "Critical Success Factors are the areas of your business or project that are absolutely essential to its success. By identifying and communicating these CSFs, you can help ensure your business or project is well-focused and avoid wasting effort and resources on less important areas. By making CSFs explicit, and communicating them with everyone involved, you can help keep the business and project on track towards common aims and goals...

"Identifying your CSFs is a very iterative process. Your mission, strategic goals and CSFs are intrinsically linked and each will be refined as you develop them. Here are the summary steps that, used iteratively, will help you identify the CSFs for your business or project:

First Step: Establish your business's or project's mission and strategic goals...

Second Step: For each strategic goal, ask yourself "what area of business or project activity is essential to achieve this goal?" The answers to the question are your candidate CSFs.

Third Step: Evaluate the list of candidate CSFs to find the absolute essential elements for achieving success - these are your Criticial Success Factors. As you identify and evaluate candidate CSFs, you may uncover some new strategic objectives or more detailed objectives. So you may need to define your mission, objectives and CSFs iteratively.

Fourth Step: Identify how you will monitor and measure each of the CSFs.

Fifth Step: Communicate your CSFs along with the other important elements of your business or project's strategy.

Seventh Step: Keep monitoring and reevaluating your CSFs to ensure you keep moving towards your aims. Indeed, whilst CSFs are sometimes less tangible than measurable goals, it is useful to identify as specifically as possible how you can measure or monitor each one...

To make sure you consider all types of possible CSFs, you can use Rockart's CSF types as a checklist.

Industry - these factors result from specific industry characteristics. These are the things that the organization must do to remain competitive.

Environmental - these factors result from macro-environmental influences on an organization. Things like the business climate, the economy, competitors, and technological advancements are included in this category. These relate to environmental factors that are not in the control of the organisation but which an organisation must consider in developing CSFs. Examples for these are the industry regulation, political development and economic performance of a country, and population trends. For example, Ladbrokes, a UK bookmaker, will be establishing an international business in Italy where it has just acquired a business license, a requirement for foreign sports betting firms prior to establishing a business in the country (Citywire, 2007).

Strategic - these factors result from the specific competitive strategy chosen by the organization. The way in which the company chooses to position themselves, market themselves, whether they are high volume low cost or low volume high cost producers, etc.

Temporal - these factors result from the organization's internal forces. Specific barriers, challenges, directions, and influences will determine these CSFs." Temporal factors are temporary or one-off CSFs resulting from a specific event necessitating their inclusion. Rockart and Bullen (1981) state that typically, a temporal CSF would not exist and they give as an example of a firm which "lost executives as a result of a plane crash requiring a critical success factor of rebuilding the executive group". However, with the evolution and integration of markets globally, one could argue that temporal factors are not temporal anymore as they could exist regularly in organisations. For example, a firm aggressively building its business internationally would have a need for a core group of executives in its new markets. Thus, it would have the CSF of "building the executive group in a specific market" and it could have this every year for different markets.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_success_factor
http://rapidbi.com/created/criticalsuccessfactors.html
http://www.coursework4you.co.uk/essays-and-dissertations/critical-success-factors.php

♥♥Organizational Changes♥♥

2010-03-26T06:12:00.000-07:00

The only thing that is permanent on the face of the earth is change; and this is also applied into different varieties of business. The change is somehow important if it is intended to begin the improvement. Every organization needs change in improving the business environment or managerial aspect. The change depends unto what extent it should reach and what difficulties it will cross. Sometimes, organization takes the changes to align in the economic variations and it is truly hard to pulse the wave of economic climate. Usually organizational change is provoked by some major outside driving force, e.g., substantial cuts in funding, address major new markets/clients, need for dramatic increases in productivity/services, etc.

Typically, organizations must undertake organization-wide change to evolve to a different level in their life cycle, e.g., going from a highly reactive, entreprenueral organization to more stable and planned development. Transition to a new chief executive can provoke organization-wide change when his or her new and unique personality pervades the entire organization. Organizational change is defined as the process by which organizations reach the desired goals. Organizational change occurs when an organization restructures resources to increase the ability to create value and improve effectiveness. A declining company seeks ways to regain customers; a growing organization designs new products. A well-planned organizational change creates value for stakeholders. In a business manner, the organizational change is about a significant change in the organization, such as reorganization or adding a major new product or service. This is in contrast to smaller changes, such as adopting a new computer procedure. Organizational change can seem like such a vague phenomena that it is helpful. Any type of thinking about our world requires some kind of conceptual model, implicit or otherwise, which structures and guides our thinking and renders it meaningful. For studies of Organizational change, conceptual models and practical models are indispensable. Change is a necessary way of life in most organizations. Change is all around us in the dynamic society surrounding today’s organizations; the question of whether change will occur is no longer relevant. Organizational change is the alteration of work environment in organization. Automation plays an increasingly important role in the world economy and in daily experience. Engineers strive to combine automated devices with mathematical and organizational tools to create complex systems for a rapidly expanding range of applications and human activities.

Automation is the use of control systems (such as numerical control, programmable logic control, and other industrial control systems), in concert with other applications of information technology (such as computer-aided technologies [CAD, CAM, CAx]), to control industrial machinery and processes, reducing the need for human intervention. In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step beyond mechanization. Whereas mechanization provided human operators with machinery to assist them with the muscular requirements of work, automation greatly reduces the need for human sensory and mental requirements as well. Processes and systems can also be automated.
Many roles for humans in industrial processes presently lie beyond the scope of automation. Human-level pattern recognition, language recognition, and language production ability are well beyond the capabilities of modern mechanical and computer systems. Tasks requiring subjective assessment or synthesis of complex sensory data, such as scents and sounds, as well as high-level tasks such as strategic planning, currently require human expertise. In many cases, the use of humans is more cost-effective than mechanical approaches even where automation of industrial tasks is possible. Specialised hardened computers, referred to as programmable logic controllers (PLCs), are frequently used to synchronize the flow of inputs from (physical) sensors and events with the flow of outputs to actuators and events. This leads to precisely controlled actions that permit a tight control of almost any industrial process. Human-machine interfaces (HMI) or computer human interfaces (CHI), formerly known as man-machine interfaces, are usually employed to communicate with PLCs and other computers, such as entering and monitoring temperatures or pressures for further automated control or emergency response. Service personnel who monitor and control these interfaces are often referred to as stationary engineers. Currently, for manufacturing companies, the purpose of automation has shifted from increasing productivity and reducing costs, to broader issues, such as increasing quality and flexibility in the manufacturing process. The old focus on using automation simply to increase productivity and reduce costs was seen to be short-sighted, because it is also necessary to provide a skilled workforce who can make repairs and manage the machinery. Moreover, the initial costs of automation were high and often could not be recovered by the time entirely new manufacturing processes replaced the old. (Japan's "robot junkyards" were once world famous in the manufacturing industry.) Automation is now often applied primarily to increase quality in the manufacturing process, where automation can increase quality substantially. For example, automobile and truck pistons used to be installed into engines manually. This is rapidly being transitioned to automated machine installation, because the error rate for manual installment was around 1-1.5%, but has been reduced to 0.00001% with automation. Hazardous operations, such as oil refining, the manufacturing of industrial chemicals, and all forms of metal working, were always early contenders for automation.

Another major shift in automation is the increased emphasis on flexibility and convertibility in the manufacturing process. Manufacturers are increasingly demanding the ability to easily switch from manufacturing Product A to manufacturing Product B without having to completely rebuild the production lines. Flexibility and distributed processes have led to the introduction of Automated Guided Vehicles with Natural Features Navigation.
The main advantage of automation are:

* Replacing human operators in tedious tasks.
* Replacing humans in tasks that should be done in dangerous environments (i.e. fire, space, volcanoes, nuclear facilities, under the water, etc)
* Making tasks that are beyond the human capabilities such as handling too heavy loads, too large objects, too hot or too cold substances or the requirement to make things too fast or too slow.
* Economy improvement. Sometimes and some kinds of automation implies improves in economy of enterprises, society or most of humankind. For example, when an enterprise that has invested in automation technology recovers its investment; when a state or country increases its income due to automation like Germany or Japan in the 20th Century or when the humankind can use the internet which in turn use satellites and other automated engines.
Controversial factors
* Unemployment. It is commonly thought that automation implies unemployment because the work of a human being is replaced in part or completely by a machine. Nevertheless, the unemployment is caused by the economical politics of the administration like dismissing the workers instead of changing their tasks. Since the general economical policies of most of the industrial plants are to dismiss people, nowadays automation implies unemployment. In different scenarios without workers, automation implies more free time instead of unemployment like the case with the automatic washing machine at home. Automation does not imply unemployment when it makes tasks unimaginable without automation such as exploring mars with the Sojourner or when the economy is fully adapted to an automated technology as with the Telephone switchboard.
* Environment. The costs of automation to the environment are different depending on the technology, product or engine automated. There are automated engines that consume more energy resources from the Earth in comparison with previous engines and those that do the opposite too.
* Human being replacement. In the future there is a possibility that the Artificial intelligence could replace and improve a human brain and the robots would become not only fully automated but fully autonomous from the human beings (Technological singularity)

Rationalization is an informal fallacy of reasoning in which one constructs a logical justification for a belief, decision, action or lack thereof that was originally arrived at through a different mental process. It is a defense mechanism in which perceived controversial behaviors or feelings are explained in a rational or logical manner to avoid the true explanation of the behavior or feeling in question. This process can be in a range from fully conscious (e.g. to present an external defense against ridicule from others) to mostly subconscious (e.g. to create a block against internal feelings of guilt).
Rationalization is one of the defense mechanisms proposed by Sigmund Freud, which were later developed further by his daughter Anna Freud.
According to the DSM-IV rationalization occurs "when the individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by concealing the true motivations for his or her own thoughts, actions, or feelings through the elaboration of reassuring or self serving but incorrect explanations."

Re-engineering is the basis for many recent developments in management. The cross-functional team, for example, has become popular because of the desire to re-engineer separate functional tasks into complete cross-functional processes. Also, many recent management information systems developments aim to integrate a wide number of business functions. Enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, knowledge management systems, groupware and collaborative systems, Human Resource Management Systems and customer relationship management systems all owe a debt to re-engineering theory.

Paradigm shift is a change in a fundamental model of events, has since become widely applied to many other realms of human experience as well, even though Kuhn himself restricted the use of the term to the hard sciences. According to Kuhn, "A paradigm is what members of a scientific community, and they alone, share." (The Essential Tension, 1977). Unlike a normal scientist, Kuhn held, "a student in the humanities has constantly before him a number of competing and incommensurable solutions to these problems, solutions that he must ultimately examine for himself." (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Once a paradigm shift is complete, a scientist cannot, for example, posit the possibility that miasma causes disease or that ether carries light. In contrast, a critic in the Humanities can choose to adopt an array of stances (e.g., Marxist criticism, Deconstruction, 19th-century-style literary criticism), which may be more of less fashionable during any given period but which are all regarded as legitimate.
It is a change from one way of thinking to another. It's a revolution, a transformation, a sort of metamorphosis. It just does not happen, but rather it is driven by agents of change.

References:
http://ivythesis.typepad.com/term_paper_topics/2009/08/organizational-change.html
http://www.santarosa.edu/~ssarkar/cs66fl06/ch14notes.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(fallacy)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_reengineering
http://www.taketheleap.com/define.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift

♥♥Steps of Information Systems Planning♥♥

2010-03-26T06:10:00.001-07:00

ISP is the planning of information systems for an organization. Information system planning is assessing the information needs of an organization and defining the systems, databases and technologies that best satisfy those needs.

Information systems planning
Planning terminology
•mission: it is a broad enduring statement giving the organizations “reason for being”.
•objectives-: are desired future positions and destinations the organizations intend to reach in order to fulfill its mission
•Strategies-it’s a general direction in which an objective is to be sought
•Policies-is a general guideline that directs and constraints decision –making within an organization.

ISP essentially involves
•I) Identification of the stage of IS in the org.
•ii) Identification of the applications of organizational ISs,
•iii) Evaluation of each of these applications, based on established evaluation criteria
•iv) Establishing a priority ranking for these application, and
•V) Determining the’optimum’architectutre of IS for serving the top priority applications

THE NOLAN STAGE MODEL
•Stage 1-initiation stage-in this, the technology is placed in the organization's
• Few applications in the organization are computerized

•Stage-2 expansion stage-rapid and uncontrolled growth in the number and variety of IT applications takes place

•Stage-3 formalization or control stage because in this stage organizations gain control over the technology’s resources by implementing formal control processes and standards.

Stage-4
•Nolan has described this growth stage as maturity or integration stage as by this stage organizations gain sufficient experience and maturity in IS/IT applications.
•In this stage, applications are integrated, controls are adjusted.
•Planning is well established and so, we call this stage as the stage of perfection also.

Stage 5-integration stage
•In this the use of new technology increases rapidly, providing new benefits.

•Stage 6-data administration, in this controls are further lowered to encourage development of systems which contribute to strategic advantage of the organization.

•Stage 7-in the enhance growth model this stage is termed as the maturity stage which indicates the application portfolio is complete and matches the objectives of the org.

4 stage model of IS planning
1. Strategic planning
•A) derivation from the organizational plan
•B) Strategic fit with organizational culture
•C) Strategy set transformation

2. Information requirement analysis
•A) Define underlying organizational requirements
•B) Develop sub system matrix
•C) Define and evaluate information requirements for organizational sub-systems

3. Resource allocation
•A) Return on investment
•B) Charge out
•C) Portfolio approach
•D) Steering committees

4. Project planning
•A) milestones
•B) critical path method
•C) Gantt chart

Organization structure of MIS
•Should be located in the overall structure of the organization
•A) as a part of financial department
•B) MIS under direct control of chairman
•C) MIS is a distinct function.

Information Systems (IS) are those systems which employ some form(s) of
information technology in the handling and processing of specific collections of
information (eg student enrolment information).

• Why plan?

– To obtain resources
•Financial
•Facilities – “Capacity planning”
•Staff
–To align I/S with the business
–To identify needed applications
–To establish goals, schedules, and milestones in order to track progress
–To provide an opportunity for communication with top management and user management
•Outcomes vs. process?
•Reactive vs. proactive?
•Planning vs. forecasting?

–Forecasting is predicting the future
–Planning is being prepared for that future

•Establish a mission statement
•Assess the environment
•Set goals and objectives
•Derive strategies and policies
•Develop long-, medium-, and short-range plans
•Implement plans and monitor results

Establish a mission statement
•These are the services that you are responsible for; it is your place in the organization
•It is not what you are supposed to achieve, it is who you are and what you do in the company
Assess the environment(s) . . .
1.The capabilities of the IT department
2.The readiness of the company to use IT
3.The status of our customers, our industry
4.The status of the economy, government regulations, environment, society, etc.
5.Technology

This is similar to a SWOT analysis – Strengths and Weakness – items no. 1 & 2; and Opportunities and Threats – items no. 3, 4, & 5

Goals and Objectives
• Set goals – what do you want to achieve?
• Set objectives – what are your specific, measurable targets?
Derive strategies and policies
• Strategies for
– Technology focus
– Personnel and career development
– Aligning with the company
– Others . . .
• Policies for
– Funding criteria; how much to spend on IT?
– Allocation criteria; priority setting
– Organizational arrangements
– Use of outside IT services, outsourcing
– Selling IT services to outside organizations
– Others . . .
Short-, medium-, and long-range plans
• Short-range – the next year, the next budget period; developing and operating current systems
• Medium-range – committing to development efforts for applications that will take more than one year to complete; meeting management’s current information needs, projected into the future for as many years as needed to complete them. This is what most organizations call “Long-Range Planning.”
• Long-range planning – preparing for management’s future information needs. These are not application specific; they are investments in infrastructure; it is creating an information architecture.

And finally, implement plans and monitor results!

Key Elements of the Strategic Plan
With the above in mind, the following elements constitute this revised IT/IS Strategic Plan. The
key imperatives are identified as:
a. Teaching and Learning. A teaching and learning environment enriched by
imaginative and effective employment of IT
b. Research. Research activity which is facilitated and empowered by enriched IT/IS
capabilities, and an e-Research strategy which enhances international research capabilities.
c. Management. Improvement to the management processes, structures and funding for
IT/IS to allow the University to achieve a consistently high-quality IT/IS environment
in the most cost-effective fashion.
d. Service Quality. Adoption of a “service quality” approach, supported by more
obvious delineation of central/decentralised services, accountabilities and performance
standards.
e. Infrastructure. Realisation of opportunities to achieve scale benefits from a more
consistent and comprehensive IT/IS infrastructure employing appropriate standards.
f. Applications. The integration of core administrative applications providing shared
access to reliable corporate information.

1. Technologies Supporting Teaching and Learning

In this collaborative context the Teaching & Learning Committee will develop an eLearning
policy, and associated educationally sound good practice guidelines for online learning in areas
such as:
_ developing content for online environments
_ providing lecture content on line
_ online assessment
_ provision of lab material online
_ help desk functions for student users

2. Access to IT Facilities & Services

Students will be provided with those IT facilities, services and resources deemed necessary to improve their learning experiences. These facilities may include for example, Internet access, Wireless LAN, dedicated or laboratory computers, printing, basic productivity and specialized application software, electronic learning material, Help Desk support. Access will be free wherever it is considered essential to students’ studies, and will take into account those with special needs. Where quotas for IT facilities or services are necessary, they will be adequate to meet student needs. They will be reviewed annually. Provision will be made to encourage and support students’ ability to access electronic resources across the University campuses, and off-campus as far as this is practicable. Research students will be provided with adequate dedicated access to network-connected computers.

3. Communications
A communications environment will be developed which encourages a rich exchange between staff and students and students with each other, employing a wide variety of media in both synchronous and asynchronous modes.

4. Partnerships
color=green]Recognizing the size of investment which may be necessary to fully exploit the capabilities of learning technology, the University will seek to enter into appropriate strategic partnerships and alliances, nationally and internationally, to enable it to benefit from the combined efforts of a group of similar universities or other organizations.

The University has a reputation for high quality research which it intends to extend, especially in the context of major national and international shifts towards collaborative, IT- and communications-enabled research programmes. It intends to position itself to engage in this global e-research environment, and to attract and retain national and international researchers. This necessitates the provision of high performance computing resources and networks which enable the development and transfer of large, complex databases, access to remote high-performance research equipment, and seamless online collaboration.

5. e-Research Strategy

A strategy will be developed for enabling researchers within the University to engage in national and international e-research; collaborating with researchers elsewhere in the use of major network-accessible high-performance research facilities, such as supercomputers, telescopes, high-energy physics equipment, major data resources, etc.

6. Research Resources
Research staff and research students will be given access to a range of IT-based research resources, including high-performance computing, high volume secure data storage, reliable high-speed campus, national and international networks, access grids (providing semi immersive videoconferencing).

7. Research Infrastructure Support

The University will identify and facilitate the development of generic research resources and requirements which can be shared across the University. In order to realize the full potential of its investment in technology, the University will refresh a range of structures, systems and services. The strategic management of technology will necessitate clearer definition of roles and responsibilities of all stakeholders which involved in planning, implementation and assessment of IT/IS services. It will also introduce management strategies, processes and project management controls that may reduce the total cost of ownership and limit risk to the IT/IS environment. The ultimate aim is to establish a clearly defined governance structure that effectively delivers quality services, eliminates duplication and ensures all stakeholders benefit from the provision of IT/IS services.

8. Governance
Establish a clearly defined IT/IS governance structure with clear terms of reference for IT/IS committees, in which relevant stakeholders are represented and which make decisions which reflect University-wide interests.

9. Strategy
Develop University-wide IT/IS strategy, plans, policies and standards in collaboration with relevant key stakeholders (particularly learning, teaching and research) and review regularly to ensure currency

10. Policy
Build and communicate university-wide IT/IS policies and standards for core services, ensuring that appropriate local innovation is encouraged, that it works to support the overall good of the
University and means are found to institutionalized innovations of general value.

11. IT Organization
Develop an IT/IS organization structure and approval and funding processes which best aligns policy development with implementation capability. Establish coordinated support for University-wide common applications, processes, systems and user servicing, enabling faculties and business units to leverage the core infrastructure without duplication. Implement formal project and process management and ensure major IT initiatives are supported by business cases which are aligned to university objectives. Ensure business cases are adequately evaluated to ensure University-wide benefits will take precedence over benefits to individual business units.
Manage risk to the IT/IS environment by developing and implementing and testing common, co coordinated Disaster Recovery and Continuity Plans for all key items of infrastructure for the whole University. The University intends to provide high quality, responsive services and support to its diverse community operating in multiple locations. The provision of a coordinated, efficient and professional IT services, which offer staff and students the requisite level of support, is one of the main goals of this strategic plan. This model recognizes the need to combine central and devolved support in a seamless fashion. Support activities in all locations will be underpinned by a consistent set of service standards, clearly delineated roles, effective escalation systems, and well coordinated processes. Support staff will be provided with a supportive framework enabling them to be fully competent, professional and efficient in assisting users to become self reliant.

12. Help Desk
Establish a University-wide Help Desk which operates as a “One Stop Shop” for all major IT/IS enquiries, accessible 24x7, supported by Help Desk software which formalizes escalation procedures, coordinates responses (central and local), and integrated seamlessly with any continuing local Help Desks and with local IT/IS support, ensuring responses are to a consistently high quality across the University.
13. Hardware and Software Provisioning
Ensure economies of scale and improved efficiencies are gained by rationalizing procurement arrangements for equipment and software.

Provide online streamlined ordering, approval and status of provisioning cycle. Establish an asset management and equipment replacement program that recognizes the total costs of ownership and addresses lifecycle replacement requirements and achieves a uniform capability of deploying emerging applications and technologies. Establish formal license management standards and processes for distribution, auditing and management of software licenses, so that more effective use is made of centralized software acquisition.

14. Service Level Agreements
Develop service level agreements which define University-wide, consistent standards for service provision and user support, and measure performance against those standards.

15. Staff and Student IT skills
Establish a baseline set of IT literacy skills for staff and students which are the minimum necessary to make optimal use of Universities’ IT infrastructure. Provide comprehensive and appropriate opportunities for staff and students to recognize their skill levels and the benefits of enhanced skills and to improve their IT skills accordingly. The University community will be given an IT/IS infrastructure which enables seamless communication and facilitates mobility, but which is also flexible enough to support specialized computing requirements. In response, a key strategy is to provide university-wide, common software and hardware platform (with a standard software suite of productivity tools), which will support the immediate need for improved information sharing, but also address the increasing requirements for data storage, computing power and total system security. The infrastructure will be appropriately flexible to respond to, and support, users with specialized needs. An increasingly mobile user community requires an enterprise wide network infrastructure which supports multimedia delivery off-campus. This will necessitate the provision of highly functional web and portal systems, integrated voice, data and video services and broadband capabilities.

16. Standardized Core Infrastructure
Establish a University-wide consistent and common infrastructure consisting of a secure, reliable and fast universal network, along with individual personal computers with a common suite of office-productivity software connected to the network, and network-accessible electronic resources and application systems.
Ensure these core services are managed and supported in accordance with common guidelines for development and deployment of specific applications and services.
Deploy a very limited number of Standard Operating Environments with core basic components to all University computers used by staff and students, to enable improved asset lifecycle management, reduced administrative overheads associated with supporting various operating systems, and ready deployment of security and productivity-enhancing software. Ensure appropriate allowance is made for certain specialized requirements for Research or for Teaching and Learning.

17. Web Capabilities
Develop a Web environment which is user friendly, easily managed and maintained, consistent across all web sites, up to date and readily navigable. Recognize the Web as a primary facility to
Support teaching and learning, research, administrative and marketing activities of UWA.
Provide portals for all student and staff applications.
Support, extend and improve the provision of Website content management.
Establish simple, consolidated Web access to all repositories for electronic resources used for teaching and research.

18. Communications
Improve consistency and functionality of primary electronic communications capabilities, including email, address lists, document sharing and calendaring, integrated with each other.

Enable integrated communications, with voice, video and data communications accessible from anywhere within the University, from fixed and mobile locations, utilizing a variety of devices and platforms. Examples could include the provision of common email, Voice over IP, videoconferencing, SMS and instant messaging, where it is cost effective to do so.

19. Computers
Provide local and shared computational resources for teaching and learning and for research (including e-Research) needs. Coordinate the provision of student computer labs recognizing the increasing use of mobile computing platforms to support comprehensive provision of student computing resources.

20. Network
Maintain a high performance network, with local and global high speed links. Provide a wireless infrastructure. Provide a Virtual Private Network (VPN) capability for secure access from off-campus and Wireless locations.

21. Security
Develop university-wide standards, processes and resources for proactive and reactive management of all security threats including hacking, viruses, denial-of-service attacks, spam and inappropriate or illegal use of IT facilities including physical and electronic security.
Enable consistent access to key applications and electronic resources by use of a common account name and password, with appropriate user authentication and authorization where appropriate.

22. Data Storage
Provide shared and local facilities for data storage needs of staff and students, involving (where cost-effective) the deployment of network-attached storage, extended use of portable storage devices, etc.
Formulate and implement policies for data storage including back ups, archives, disaster recovery, data protection and privacy.

23. Disaster Recovery and Contingency
Establish tested disaster recovery and contingency plans for all major IT/IS systems, applications and infrastructure.

The University will ensure that data which is sourced from core systems is reliable, consistent and easy to access. It intends to redress current shortcomings which see duplication of data entry and limitations in reporting compromising the reliability of information extracted from corporate systems. The aim will be to improve support for decision making by providing consistent information, achieved through closer integration of core administrative applications.
The development of innovative applications to support specific administrative, teaching and research needs has been an important element of local technical support for many years. The university will aim to leverage local innovation and deploy widely to common benefit. The development of applications will be supported by formal procedures and standards.

24. Data Integration
Provide central aggregation points for administrative information such as staff and student information. Provide integration of current major administrative applications to enable UWA to continue to acquire and integrate new application technologies, utilizing real-time sharing of data between applications where appropriate. Ensure corporate information systems and data collections are owned, developed, managed and operated for the benefit of the whole University.
25. Electronic Resource Management
Establish appropriate mechanisms to enable proper management of electronic material used for teaching and research purposes, to ensure it is reliable, discoverable, re-usable, and can be integrated into existing or new teaching and research electronic environments, such as learning management systems and e-Research applications; also so that Copyright and other IP requirements are satisfied.

26. Application Development
Establish an effective development capability, adequately resourced and accessible to all sections of the University, which is responsive to local requirements for new application development and which broadly deploys innovative solutions for University-wide benefit.

27. Application Deployment
Establish consistent desktop software configurations and implement software distribution tools to reduce the support tasks of installing, maintaining and updating desktop software environments and to ensure corporate information systems are accessible on the standard desktop environments with a minimum of effort.

Quality ISP

A quality ISP must exhibit five distinct characteristics before it is useful. These five are presented in the table that follows.

1. Timely - An ISP that is created long after it is needed is useless. In almost all cases, it makes no sense to take longer to plan work than to perform the work planned.

2. Useable - It must be so for all the projects as well as for each project. The ISP should exist in sections that once adopted can be parceled out to project managers and immediately started.

3. Maintainable - New business opportunities, new computers, business mergers, etc. all affect the ISP. The ISP must support quick changes to the estimates; technologies employed, and possibly even to the fundamental project sequences. Once these changes are accomplished, the new ISP should be just a few computer program executions away.

4. Quality - While the ISP must be a quality product, no ISP is ever perfect on the first try. As the ISP is executed, the metrics employed to derive the individual project estimates become refined as a consequence of new hardware technologies, code generators, techniques, or faster working staff. As these changes occur, their effects should be installable into the data that supports ISP computation. In short, the ISP is a living document. It should be updated with every technology event, and certainly no less often than quarterly.

5. Reproducible - That is, when its development activities are performed by any other staff, the ISP produced should essentially be the same. The ISP should not significantly vary by staff assigned.

Benefits of Strategic Systems Planning
• The strategic systems planning process provides many benefits to the organization. The process:
• Enables senior management to view the enterprise in terms of key business functions and data.
• Identifies information and systems needed to support the business priorities.
• Establishes a technology platform and a framework for information systems development.
• Anchors system development to business plans.
• Sets priorities and expectations for systems projects.

Reference:
http://www.its.uwa.edu.au/__data/page/130001/IT_Strategic_Plan.pdf
http://viu.eng.rpi.edu/publications/strpaper.pdf
http://www.google.com.ph/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=2&ved=0CA4QFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cis.gsu.edu%2F~emclean%2FIS%2520Strategic%2520Planning.ppt&rct=j&q=what+is+information+system+strategic+planning&ei=uf5ES47sE4K0NuLK5bIB&usg=AFQjCNHN-eCGwVXRbUO6UcjoDFmZlqVq7Q
http://www.scribd.com/doc/9651267/Information-Systems-Planning

♥♥What are the two most frequently experienced causes of frustration of IS professionals and users while working on an IS plan? Note: you are required to interview an IS professional/s for your answer♥♥

2010-03-26T06:08:00.000-07:00

Computer Division (RMC-CD) is a leading manufacturer of personal computer, and distributor of a complete line of peripherals and other computer related services.

It has been our adopted company in our group for MIS2. Mr. Cris, the MIS head of RMC-CD accommodated us well in the said interview. He has told us about the two most frequently experienced causes of frustration of IS professionals and users while working on an IS plan. We have found out that RMC-CD branch in Davao City has adopted an in-house programmer. The Rhine System, (name of their IS) was developed by their self-employed personnel.

In IS planning, According to Sir Cris, the programmer must choose a programming language that will suits to his capability so that he can make the system effectively. He has mentioned that every database administrator must update from the internet latest advancement in programming. A programmer has to update his knowledge because nowadays technology is fast paced and constant to change.

Sir Cris had told us the different frustrations that he encountered in working with the Information System Plan:

1. System flow or manual procedure- see to it that whatever the customer wants, it is pertinent that he/she must prepare the important things or data needed in a particular project. For an instance, customer wishes for a quality and easy system, it is important to consider the following like manual procedure had been set, there is legal contract between you (programmer) and customer and finalize first the data and reports needed.

2. Cost – see to that the system costing would depend on the quality of a project. Making a system is impossible without financial support. From the hardware to software, all of this has a cost. That's the reason why a company must have good financial capacity to cater expense of systems.

3. Limitation (restriction) – it refers to the time allocated for the system to be finished.

4. Mood- it refers to the behavioral condition of a programmer. Moods might influence the quality and performance of programmers while programming. It is evident from literature that positive and negative moods influence divergent thinking, quantity/quality of ideas and creative problem solving. The programmers' performance and the quality of their work could be affected by their moods when they develop or test an application.

References:
http://www.rhine.com.ph/
Wikipedia.com

♥♥Business plan and the IS plan? ♥♥

2010-03-26T06:06:00.000-07:00

Let me define first a business plan, in its simplest form, will usually define where you want your business to be within a certain period of time (usually five years) and how you plan on getting there. A business plan is as important for starting a business as blueprints are for building your house. A business plan is a formal statement of a set of business goals, the reasons why they are believed attainable, and the plan for reaching those goals. It may also contain background information about the organization or team attempting to reach those goals.
When starting a new business, writing a business plan is an important first step to getting started. A business plan will lay out the direction for the future of your company and begin to establish standards for success. A complete business plan should include five-year financial projections. These projections will assist investors with making decisions about your business and help you to know how much funding you will need to get things rolling.
A business plan should define how you would like to operate your business. This includes describing the management team, the marketing strategy, and the methods in which you will interact with customers. A business plan might project a strategy that reflects the management style of the founders of the business. The definition should be clear but flexible.
Business plans are developed for many purposes. One company might be looking for funding from investors. Another company might be looking for a loan from a bank. Your company might just need to plan out the company’s strategy to make sure it is successful. Whatever the case, every business needs a business plan.

Purpose of the Business Plan
It must operate and, ultimately, succeed or fail. For management or entrepreneurs seeking external support, the plan is the most important sales document that they are ever likely to produce as it could be the key to raising finance etc. Preparation of a comprehensive plan will not guarantee success in raising funds or mobilizing support, but lack of a sound plan will, almost certainly, ensure failure.

Importance of the Business Planning Process
Preparing a satisfactory business plan is a painful but essential exercise. The planning process forces managers or entrepreneurs to understand more clearly what they want to achieve, and how and when they can do it. Even if no external support is needed, a business plan can play a vital role in helping to avoid mistakes or recognize hidden opportunities. It is much easier to fold a sheet of paper than a business.
For many, many entrepreneurs and planners, the process of planning (thinking, discussing, researching and analyzing) is just as, or even more, useful than the final plan. So, even if you don't need a formal plan, think carefully about going through the planning process. It could be enormously beneficial to your business.
Anticipate many weeks of hard work and several drafts of the emerging plan to get the job right. A clearly written and attractively packaged business plan will make it easier to interest possible supporters, investors etc. A well-prepared business plan will demonstrate that the managers or entrepreneurs know the business and that they have thought through its development in terms of products, management, finances, and most importantly, markets and competition.

WHAT is ISP?
• ISP = IS + P

Why Planning is Important?
• Systematic approach in dealing with future uncertainties. It focuses efforts and resources on long-term, general objectives and yet provides a foundation for short-term activities. Provides a framework for action. Planning involves thinking ahead and designing future action.

Definition.
• ISP is the planning of information systems for an organization. Information system planning is assessing the information needs of an organization and defining the systems, databases and technologies that best satisfy those needs.

ISP Key Activities
1. Describing current situation: it includes a listing of the manual and automated processes, listing of manual and automated data, technology inventory and human resources inventory.
2. Describing future situation: includes blueprints of manual and automated processes, blueprints of manual and automated data, technology blueprints and human resources blueprints.
3. Describing scheduling of the project: includes scheduling of manual and automated processes, scheduling of manual and automated data, technology of scheduling and human resources scheduling.
ISP Planning Types
• Top-Down Planning: A generic information systems planning methodology that attempts to gain a broad understanding of the information system needs of the entire organization.
• Bottom-up Planning: generic information systems planning methodology that identifies and defines IS development projects based upon solving operational business problems or taking advantages of some business opportunities.
Components of ISP
• The Process of Information Systems Planning
• Strategic Alignment of Business and IT
• Selecting Systems to Invest In
• Project Management Issues

Why ISP?
Why do we need to plan for IS?
 To ensure that IS both complements and assists in the achievement of our business goals.
 To ensure that the use of scarce resources are maximized within a business.
 To maximize the benefits of changing technology.
 To take account of the different viewpoints of business professionals and IT professionals.

Who Perform ISP?
 IS Planners / System Analyst
 Variety of stakeholders (i.e. sponsor, users)
 Top management commitment
successful ISP.

Where & When ISP?
 Any organization that has interest in getting the best out of its IT investments.
 Facing problems
 Grabbing opportunities.
 Information Systems (IS) fail to satisfy huge, diverse and complicated information requirements of their users.

HOW?
 Look at business structure, function, processes, culture
 Look at existing IT
 Look at available technology.
 Carry out interviews.
 Develop policies.
 Develop application portfolio.
 Plan schedules for migration, implementation etc.

Characteristics of a Quality ISP
A quality ISP must exhibit five distinct characteristics before it is useful. These five are presented in the table that follows.

1. Timely - The ISP must be timely. An ISP that is created long after it is needed is useless. In almost all cases, it makes no sense to take longer to plan work than to perform the work planned.
2. Useable - The ISP must be useable. It must be so for all the projects as well as for each project. The ISP should exist in sections that once adopted can be parceled out to project managers and immediately started.
3. Maintainable - The ISP should be maintainable. New business opportunities, new computers, business mergers, etc. all affect the ISP. The ISP must support quick changes to the estimates; technologies employed, and possibly even to the fundamental project sequences. Once these changes are accomplished, the new ISP should be just a few computer program executions away.
4. Quality - While the ISP must be a quality product, no ISP is ever perfect on the first try. As the ISP is executed, the metrics employed to derive the individual project estimates become refined as a consequence of new hardware technologies, code generators, techniques, or faster working staff. As these changes occur, their effects should be installable into the data that supports ISP computation. In short, the ISP is a living document. It should be updated with every technology event, and certainly no less often than quarterly.
5. Reproducible - The ISP must be reproducible. That is, when its development activities are performed by any other staff, the ISP produced should essentially be the same. The ISP should not significantly vary by staff assigned.

Reference:
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~nkm/sisp/CONTENTS.html
http://www.business-plan-success.com/Articles/BusinessPlanDefinition/
http://www.tdan.com/view-articles/5262
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_plan

♥♥Ten Years From Now♥♥

2010-03-26T06:01:00.000-07:00

“He who fails to plan, plans to fail”
As it was discussed, I learned that strategic planning is pertinent in order for us to anticipate the upcoming changes that may happen in terms of technology.

According to wikipedia.org, Strategic Planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people. Strategic Planning is a process by which we can envision the future and develop the necessary procedures and operations to influence and achieve that future...

Planning - there won't be any individual on this planet who doesn't know its importance in getting many things done. It's a proven empirical fact that just by the act of planning people would accomplish many tasks than they would have if they had not planned. Then, why would everyone not indulge in daily planning? I guess the answer is -because for majority, planning is not sustainable and so it is not worth spending time on it. Everytime I started planning my day or week, i could complete many tasks - yet, I drifted as time progressed, lost in daily pressures, inadequate time, catching things up etc, etc Planning definitely takes time, but the time spent is many times less than time saved out of irregular schedule of activities. So...how does one go about committing oneself for 'regular planning'? I guess I am not the authority to answer this question - but, I believe self-discipline and persistence are the two keys that unleash the power of planning in one's life.

In the business world organizations use strategic planning as a way to outline how they plan to strategically progress towards their desired goals. A strategic approach is simply a way of looking at multiple ways of accomplishing a goal or objective and evaluating the pro’s and con’s of each. A strategic approach also encourages you to develop a backup plan so that if your initial plan doesn’t work, you can quickly switch to your plan B with a minimum of loss or down time. This is one of the key benefits to strategic planning. Most companies and people start out by identifying a goal and working towards achieving their goal without doing much (if any) advanced planning. This is an approach that will get you moving and it is better than not having a goal and not doing anything at all but to make real progress you will need to put more effort into it.
When it comes to putting more effort into it that can be done in one of two ways. The first way is that you can just add more physical effort and keep trying harder. The second way is by investing more time into planning before hand so that you can get a better understanding of exactly what has to be done and how it needs to be done. When there’s more than one good way to accomplish the goal that’s when it can be very beneficial to plan strategically. By planning strategically you look at both the pro’s and the con’s of each approach and your able to select the best approach based on your analysis of the two. As a safe guard and to increase your odds of success you’ll want to develop a backup plan so that if a unexpected or unforeseen problem does arise you have a backup plan to implement. And perhaps more importantly, is that you're in a planning and problem solving frame of mind and you keeping your attention and efforts focused on achieving your goals regardless of what problems arise.
So to do personal strategic planning effectively you need to
1.) Identify your goals and
2.) Create a plan to achieve your goals
3.) You also think about alternative ways of achieving your goals
4.) You develop a backup plan and you stay committed to the achievement of your goal.
By developing a personal strategic plan the effectively includes all four of the above elements you will greatly increase the likely hood of you achieving your key or major

Vision
how the community will be changed
(very long term goals)

Mission
broad statement of what you will do
to achieve vision

Goals
broad, general results to be achieved
by end of planning period (3-5 yrs)

Objectives
measurable, time-limited results
leading to achievement of goals (1-3 yrs)

Strategies
general description of actions you will take
to achieve goals

Activities / tactics
programs, services, administration
to implement strategies
and achieve objectives

Values
what you believe is right & important;
guiding principles

As in many other fields, strategic planning professionals often cloak their work in pseudo scientific jargon designed to glorify their work and create client dependence. In reality, strategic planning processes are neither scientific nor complex. With modest, front-end assistance and the occasional services of an outside facilitator, organizations can develop and manage an on-going and effective planning program.

To assist organizations--small businesses and nonprofit organizations in particular--we have developed a planning process based on six simple questions. Realistic answers to these can help to guide the owners and managers of any business or organization toward a successful future.

1. Why are we in business?
2. How do we do business?
3. Where are we now?
4. Where do we want to be?
5. How can we get there?
6. How will we know we've arrived?

1. Why are we in business?
Vision--the future position and value of the organization (present tense, seven words or less).
Mission--the organization and its purpose (one hundred words or less):
* who we are,
* who we serve,
* what products and services we offer, and
* how we make them available.

Driving forces--the conditions which "drive" the organization:
* products/services offered,
* market focus/needs,
* technology,
* production capability/capacity,
* method of sale,
* method of distribution,
* natural resources,
* size and growth, or
* profit/return on investment.

2. How do we do business?
Values--the bases on which we want decisions to be made and actions to be taken.

Culture--traditions, ethics, and other standards which influence the way things are accomplished in the organization.

Climate--the interpersonal and physical environments: is the organization a good place to be and to work?

3. Where are we now?

Environmental assessment--identifying factors which can impact our mission:
* strengths,
* weaknesses,
* opportunities,
* threats,
* competition, and
* constraints.

Strengths and weaknesses ---are internal to the organization: how can we identify them and capitalize on our strengths and minimize or eliminate our weaknesses?

Opportunities and threats ---are external to the organization: again, how can we identify them and take advantage of the opportunities while countering the threats?

Competition and constraints ---can be either internal or external. Competition is any activity or condition which competes for the same resources. Constraints can arise from social, political, legal, educational, industrial, or managerial activities or conditions which prevent or inhibit accomplishing the organization's mission. How can we meet the competition and change or accommodate the constraints?

4. Where do we want to be?
Strategies--where we want to be and what we want to achieve.

Goals and objectives--directly support our mission. Goals should be SMART:
* S-pecific,
* M-easurable,
* A-chievable,
* R-ealistic, and
* T-imely.

Gap analysis--determining the difference between where we are and where we want to be.

5. How can we get there?

Tactics--specific action plans to implement our strategies--the right people doing the right things at right time in the right way for the right reasons.

Resources--there are only five:

* people,
* property,
* time,
* money, and
* technology (or knowledge).

6. How will we know we've arrived?
Management--establishing budgets, controls, and reporting systems and designating a coordinator to monitor each element of the strategic plan.

It is also true that strategic planning may be a tool for effectively plotting the direction of each individual; however, strategic planning itself cannot foretell exactly how we will evolve and what issues will surface in the coming days in order to plan our future strategy. Therefore, strategic innovation and tinkering with the 'strategic plan' have to be a cornerstone strategy for us to survive various obstacles in life.
Planning in organizations and public policy is both the organizational process of creating and maintaining a plan; and the psychological process of thinking about the activities required to create a desired goal on some scale. As such, it is a fundamental property of intelligent behavior. This thought process is essential to the creation and refinement of a plan, or integration of it with other plans, that is, it combines forecasting of developments with the preparation of scenarios of how to react to them.

The term is also used to describe the formal procedures used in such an endeavor, such as the creation of documents diagrams, or meetings to discuss the important issues to be addressed, the objectives to be met, and the strategy to be followed. Beyond this, planning has a different meaning depending on the political or economic context in which it is used.

Two attitudes to planning need to be held in tension: on the one hand we need to be prepared for what may lie ahead, which may mean contingencies and flexible processes. On the other hand, our future is shaped by consequences of our own planning and actions. Planning is a process for accomplishing purpose. It is blue print of business growth and a road map of development. It helps in deciding objectives both in quantitative and qualitative terms. It is setting of goals on the basis of objectives and keeping in view the resources.

What should a plan be?
A plan should be a realistic view of the expectations. Depending upon the activities, a plan can be long range, intermediate range or short range. It is the framework within which it must operate. For management seeking external support, the plan is the most important document and key to growth. Preparation of a comprehensive plan will not guarantee success, but lack of a sound plan will almost certainly ensure failure.

Purpose of Plan
Just as no two organizations are alike, so also their plans. It is therefore important to prepare a plan keeping in view the necessities of the enterprise. A plan is an important aspect of business. It serves the following three critical functions:

* Helps management to clarify, focus, and research their businesses or project's development and prospects.
* Provides a considered and logical framework within which a business can develop and pursue business strategies over the next three to five years.
* Offers a benchmark against which actual performance can be measured and reviewed.

Importance of the planning Process
A plan can play a vital role in helping to avoid mistakes or recognize hidden opportunities. Preparing a satisfactory plan of the organization is essential. The planning process enables management to understand more clearly what they want to achieve, and how and when they can do it.

A well-prepared business plan demonstrates that the managers know the business and that they have thought through its development in terms of products, management, finances, and most importantly, markets and competition.

Planning helps in forecasting the future, makes the future visible to some extent. It bridges between where we are and where we want to go. Planning is looking ahead.
Essentials of planning
Planning is not done off hand. It is prepared after careful and extensive research. For a comprehensive business plan, management has to
1. Clearly define the target / goal in writing.
1. It should be set by a person having authority.
2. The goal should be realistic.
3. It should be specific.
4. Acceptability
5. Easily measurable
2. Identify all the main issues which need to be addressed.
3. Review past performance.
4. Decide budgetary requirement.
5. Focus on matters of strategic importance.
6. What are requirements and how it will be met?
7. What will be the likely length of the plan and its structure?
8. Identify shortcomings in the concept and gaps.
9. Strategies for implementation.
10. Review periodically.

As an IT Consultant someday!!!

An IT consultant works in partnership with clients, advising them how to use information technology in order to meet their business objectives or overcome problems. Consultants work to improve the structure and efficiency and of an organsiation's IT systems.
IT consultants may be involved in a variety of activities, including marketing, project management, client relationship management and systems development.
They may also be responsible for user training and feedback. In many companies, these tasks will be carried out by an IT project team. IT consultants are increasingly involved in sales and business development, as well as technical duties.

Typical work activities
Task typically involve:
• meeting with clients to determine requirements;
• working with clients to define the scope of a project;
• planning timescales and the resources needed;
• clarifying a client's system specifications, understanding their work practices and the nature of their business;
• travelling to customer sites;
• liaising with staff at all levels of a client organisation;
• defining software, hardware and network requirements;
• analysing IT requirements within companies and giving independent and objective advice on the use of IT;
• developing agreed solutions and implementing new systems;
• presenting solutions in written or oral reports;
• helping clients with change-management activities;
• project managing the design and implementation of preferred solutions;
• purchasing systems where appropriate;
• designing, testing, installing and monitoring new systems;
• preparing documentation and presenting progress reports to customers;
• organising training for users and other consultants;
• being involved in sales and support and, where appropriate, maintaining contact with client organisations;
• identifying potential clients and building and maintaining contacts.
Key skills for IT consultants

• analytical approach to work
• excellent problem-solving skills
• interpersonal skills
• communication skills
• ability to absorb complex technical information and pass this on clearly
• stamina to meet deadlines
• ability to work under pressure
• project-management skills
• detailed technical knowledge
• motivation.

Training to be an IT consultant

Training is usually on the job, and may include training in programming languages, systems analysis and testing, or in business skills. Practical project experience under supervision is also given.
Information technology consulting (IT consulting, Computer consultancy, Computing consultancy, technology consulting or business and technology services) is a field that focuses on advising businesses on how best to use information technology to meet their business objectives. In addition to providing advice, IT consultancies often implement, deploy, and administer IT systems on businesses' behalf.

Despite what people might tell you, strategic planning is an art. As with other arts, you can do better with good training and tools, but at the end of the day, there is no replacement for skill and experience.
In times of economic turmoil - or even just turmoil in a specific industry - many companies turn away from their strategic planning to focus on short-term issues. In many cases this is warranted - your course may not be as important if the ship is sinking - but in far more cases, this departure can lead to bad strategy and failure.

PostSubject: Re: Assignment 1 (Due: before November 14, 2009, 13:00hrs) Wed Jan 06, 2010 6:19 pm Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post
Think about yourself worthy to be called as IT professional, how do you see yourself 10 years from now, what are your strategies to get there? (At least 3000 words)

“He who fails to plan, plans to fail”

As it was discussed, I learned that strategic planning is pertinent in order for us to anticipate the upcoming changes that may happen in terms of technology.

According to wikipedia.org, Strategic Planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people. Strategic Planning is a process by which we can envision the future and develop the necessary procedures and operations to influence and achieve that future...

Planning - there won't be any individual on this planet who doesn't know its importance in getting many things done. It's a proven empirical fact that just by the act of planning people would accomplish many tasks than they would have if they had not planned. Then, why would everyone not indulge in daily planning? I guess the answer is -because for majority, planning is not sustainable and so it is not worth spending time on it. Everytime I started planning my day or week, i could complete many tasks - yet, I drifted as time progressed, lost in daily pressures, inadequate time, catching things up etc, etc Planning definitely takes time, but the time spent is many times less than time saved out of irregular schedule of activities. So...how does one go about committing oneself for 'regular planning'? I guess I am not the authority to answer this question - but, I believe self-discipline and persistence are the two keys that unleash the power of planning in one's life.

In the business world organizations use strategic planning as a way to outline how they plan to strategically progress towards their desired goals. A strategic approach is simply a way of looking at multiple ways of accomplishing a goal or objective and evaluating the pro’s and con’s of each. A strategic approach also encourages you to develop a backup plan so that if your initial plan doesn’t work, you can quickly switch to your plan B with a minimum of loss or down time. This is one of the key benefits to strategic planning. Most companies and people start out by identifying a goal and working towards achieving their goal without doing much (if any) advanced planning. This is an approach that will get you moving and it is better than not having a goal and not doing anything at all but to make real progress you will need to put more effort into it.
When it comes to putting more effort into it that can be done in one of two ways. The first way is that you can just add more physical effort and keep trying harder. The second way is by investing more time into planning before hand so that you can get a better understanding of exactly what has to be done and how it needs to be done. When there’s more than one good way to accomplish the goal that’s when it can be very beneficial to plan strategically. By planning strategically you look at both the pro’s and the con’s of each approach and your able to select the best approach based on your analysis of the two. As a safe guard and to increase your odds of success you’ll want to develop a backup plan so that if a unexpected or unforeseen problem does arise you have a backup plan to implement. And perhaps more importantly, is that you're in a planning and problem solving frame of mind and you keeping your attention and efforts focused on achieving your goals regardless of what problems arise.
So to do personal strategic planning effectively you need to
1.) Identify your goals and
2.) Create a plan to achieve your goals
3.) You also think about alternative ways of achieving your goals
4.) You develop a backup plan and you stay committed to the achievement of your goal.
By developing a personal strategic plan the effectively includes all four of the above elements you will greatly increase the likely hood of you achieving your key or major goals in life.

Vision
how the community will be changed
(very long term goals)

Mission
broad statement of what you will do
to achieve vision

Goals
broad, general results to be achieved
by end of planning period (3-5 yrs)

Objectives
measurable, time-limited results
leading to achievement of goals (1-3 yrs)

Strategies
general description of actions you will take
to achieve goals

Activities / tactics
programs, services, administration
to implement strategies
and achieve objectives

Values
what you believe is right & important;
guiding principles

As in many other fields, strategic planning professionals often cloak their work in pseudo scientific jargon designed to glorify their work and create client dependence. In reality, strategic planning processes are neither scientific nor complex. With modest, front-end assistance and the occasional services of an outside facilitator, organizations can develop and manage an on-going and effective planning program.

To assist organizations--small businesses and nonprofit organizations in particular--we have developed a planning process based on six simple questions. Realistic answers to these can help to guide the owners and managers of any business or organization toward a successful future.

1. Why are we in business?
2. How do we do business?
3. Where are we now?
4. Where do we want to be?
5. How can we get there?
6. How will we know we've arrived?

1. Why are we in business?
Vision--the future position and value of the organization (present tense, seven words or less).
Mission--the organization and its purpose (one hundred words or less):
* who we are,
* who we serve,
* what products and services we offer, and
* how we make them available.

Driving forces--the conditions which "drive" the organization:
* products/services offered,
* market focus/needs,
* technology,
* production capability/capacity,
* method of sale,
* method of distribution,
* natural resources,
* size and growth, or
* profit/return on investment.

2. How do we do business?
Values--the bases on which we want decisions to be made and actions to be taken.

Culture--traditions, ethics, and other standards which influence the way things are accomplished in the organization.

Climate--the interpersonal and physical environments: is the organization a good place to be and to work?

3. Where are we now?

Environmental assessment--identifying factors which can impact our mission:
* strengths,
* weaknesses,
* opportunities,
* threats,
* competition, and
* constraints.

Strengths and weaknesses ---are internal to the organization: how can we identify them and capitalize on our strengths and minimize or eliminate our weaknesses?

Opportunities and threats ---are external to the organization: again, how can we identify them and take advantage of the opportunities while countering the threats?

Competition and constraints ---can be either internal or external. Competition is any activity or condition which competes for the same resources. Constraints can arise from social, political, legal, educational, industrial, or managerial activities or conditions which prevent or inhibit accomplishing the organization's mission. How can we meet the competition and change or accommodate the constraints?

4. Where do we want to be?
Strategies--where we want to be and what we want to achieve.

Goals and objectives--directly support our mission. Goals should be SMART:
* S-pecific,
* M-easurable,
* A-chievable,
* R-ealistic, and
* T-imely.

Gap analysis--determining the difference between where we are and where we want to be.

5. How can we get there?

Tactics--specific action plans to implement our strategies--the right people doing the right things at right time in the right way for the right reasons.

Resources--there are only five:

* people,
* property,
* time,
* money, and
* technology (or knowledge).

6. How will we know we've arrived?
Management--establishing budgets, controls, and reporting systems and designating a coordinator to monitor each element of the strategic plan.

It is also true that strategic planning may be a tool for effectively plotting the direction of each individual; however, strategic planning itself cannot foretell exactly how we will evolve and what issues will surface in the coming days in order to plan our future strategy. Therefore, strategic innovation and tinkering with the 'strategic plan' have to be a cornerstone strategy for us to survive various obstacles in life.
Planning in organizations and public policy is both the organizational process of creating and maintaining a plan; and the psychological process of thinking about the activities required to create a desired goal on some scale. As such, it is a fundamental property of intelligent behavior. This thought process is essential to the creation and refinement of a plan, or integration of it with other plans, that is, it combines forecasting of developments with the preparation of scenarios of how to react to them.

The term is also used to describe the formal procedures used in such an endeavor, such as the creation of documents diagrams, or meetings to discuss the important issues to be addressed, the objectives to be met, and the strategy to be followed. Beyond this, planning has a different meaning depending on the political or economic context in which it is used.

Two attitudes to planning need to be held in tension: on the one hand we need to be prepared for what may lie ahead, which may mean contingencies and flexible processes. On the other hand, our future is shaped by consequences of our own planning and actions. Planning is a process for accomplishing purpose. It is blue print of business growth and a road map of development. It helps in deciding objectives both in quantitative and qualitative terms. It is setting of goals on the basis of objectives and keeping in view the resources.

What should a plan be?
A plan should be a realistic view of the expectations. Depending upon the activities, a plan can be long range, intermediate range or short range. It is the framework within which it must operate. For management seeking external support, the plan is the most important document and key to growth. Preparation of a comprehensive plan will not guarantee success, but lack of a sound plan will almost certainly ensure failure.

Purpose of Plan
Just as no two organizations are alike, so also their plans. It is therefore important to prepare a plan keeping in view the necessities of the enterprise. A plan is an important aspect of business. It serves the following three critical functions:

* Helps management to clarify, focus, and research their businesses or project's development and prospects.
* Provides a considered and logical framework within which a business can develop and pursue business strategies over the next three to five years.
* Offers a benchmark against which actual performance can be measured and reviewed.

Importance of the planning Process
A plan can play a vital role in helping to avoid mistakes or recognize hidden opportunities. Preparing a satisfactory plan of the organization is essential. The planning process enables management to understand more clearly what they want to achieve, and how and when they can do it.

A well-prepared business plan demonstrates that the managers know the business and that they have thought through its development in terms of products, management, finances, and most importantly, markets and competition.

Planning helps in forecasting the future, makes the future visible to some extent. It bridges between where we are and where we want to go. Planning is looking ahead.
Essentials of planning
Planning is not done off hand. It is prepared after careful and extensive research. For a comprehensive business plan, management has to
1. Clearly define the target / goal in writing.
1. It should be set by a person having authority.
2. The goal should be realistic.
3. It should be specific.
4. Acceptability
5. Easily measurable
2. Identify all the main issues which need to be addressed.
3. Review past performance.
4. Decide budgetary requirement.
5. Focus on matters of strategic importance.
6. What are requirements and how it will be met?
7. What will be the likely length of the plan and its structure?
8. Identify shortcomings in the concept and gaps.
9. Strategies for implementation.
10. Review periodically.

As an IT Consultant someday!!!

An IT consultant works in partnership with clients, advising them how to use information technology in order to meet their business objectives or overcome problems. Consultants work to improve the structure and efficiency and of an organsiation's IT systems.
IT consultants may be involved in a variety of activities, including marketing, project management, client relationship management and systems development.
They may also be responsible for user training and feedback. In many companies, these tasks will be carried out by an IT project team. IT consultants are increasingly involved in sales and business development, as well as technical duties.

Typical work activities
Task typically involve:
• meeting with clients to determine requirements;
• working with clients to define the scope of a project;
• planning timescales and the resources needed;
• clarifying a client's system specifications, understanding their work practices and the nature of their business;
• travelling to customer sites;
• liaising with staff at all levels of a client organisation;
• defining software, hardware and network requirements;
• analysing IT requirements within companies and giving independent and objective advice on the use of IT;
• developing agreed solutions and implementing new systems;
• presenting solutions in written or oral reports;
• helping clients with change-management activities;
• project managing the design and implementation of preferred solutions;
• purchasing systems where appropriate;
• designing, testing, installing and monitoring new systems;
• preparing documentation and presenting progress reports to customers;
• organising training for users and other consultants;
• being involved in sales and support and, where appropriate, maintaining contact with client organisations;
• identifying potential clients and building and maintaining contacts.
Key skills for IT consultants

• analytical approach to work
• excellent problem-solving skills
• interpersonal skills
• communication skills
• ability to absorb complex technical information and pass this on clearly
• stamina to meet deadlines
• ability to work under pressure
• project-management skills
• detailed technical knowledge
• motivation.

Training to be an IT consultant

Training is usually on the job, and may include training in programming languages, systems analysis and testing, or in business skills. Practical project experience under supervision is also given.
Information technology consulting (IT consulting, Computer consultancy, Computing consultancy, technology consulting or business and technology services) is a field that focuses on advising businesses on how best to use information technology to meet their business objectives. In addition to providing advice, IT consultancies often implement, deploy, and administer IT systems on businesses' behalf.

Despite what people might tell you, strategic planning is an art. As with other arts, you can do better with good training and tools, but at the end of the day, there is no replacement for skill and experience.
In times of economic turmoil - or even just turmoil in a specific industry - many companies turn away from their strategic planning to focus on short-term issues. In many cases this is warranted - your course may not be as important if the ship is sinking - but in far more cases, this departure can lead to bad strategy and failure.

References:
http://managementhelp.org/plan_dec/str_plan/str_plan.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning
http://www.prospects.ac.uk/p/types_of_job/it_consultant_job_description.jsp
http://www.woodwarddavis.com/plandef.html

♥♥Definition of Personnel Management and Human Resource Management♥♥

2009-10-17T02:17:00.000-07:00

Personnel management

 Defined as the function of management concerned with promoting and enhancing the development of work effectiveness and advancement of human resources in the organization through proper planning, organizing, directing, coordinating, and controlling of activities related to procurement, development, motivation and compensation of employees to achieve goals of the enterprise. (Sison,1990:30)

Critique:
From the above definition, it is a significant part of management concerned with employees at work and with their relationship within the organization. It is very important to augment the different skills and working abilities of some workers because they are the ones liable for the growth of their respective company.

 A code of the ways of organization and treating individual at work so that they well each get the greatest possible realization of their intrinsic abilities, thus attaining maximum efficiency for themselves and their group, and thereby giving to the enterprise of which they a part its determining competitive advantage and its optimum result. (Spates,1944:9)

Critique:
To all workers of a particular organization, they should be treated well for them to perform their assigned task in accordance with their working expertise. Through with this, they can feel the best atmosphere provided by their company.

 The phase of management concerned with the engagement and effective utilization of manpower to obtain optimum efficiency of human resource. (Webster,1687)

Critique:
This is the integration and maintainance of people for the purpose of contributing to organizational, individual and societal goals. Skills in communicating effectively, developing teams, managing diversity, managing conflict, delegating responsibility, coaching and training, giving and receiving constructive feedback, and motivating and guiding either indivdiuals or groups to achieve specific goals.

Human resource management (HRM)

is the strategic and coherent approach to the management of an organization's most valued assets - the people working there who individually and collectively contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the business.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_resource_management

Critique:

In other words, HRM means utilizing people, mounting their wealth, make the most of that resources, preserveing and compensating their services in tune with the work and organizational obligation. We all know that human being (..I am refering to human resource) is the very significant tool for having a a successful ang progressive organization towards their unnecessary skills and working ablities.

 “The people that staff and operate an organization … as contrasted with the financial and material resources of an organization. The organizational function that deals with the people ...” (William R. Tracey)

Critique:

It is responsible for how people are treated in organizations. It is responsible for bringing people into the organization, helping them perform their work, compensating them for their labors, and solving problems that arise. It relegates humans to the same category as financial and material resources, human resources will be replaced by more customer-friendly terms in the future. In an organization , an employee plays an important role in shaping and improving a particular company.

♥♥Nature, Scope and Role of HRM♥♥

2009-10-17T02:13:00.000-07:00

I have decided to interview Mr. Carlito S. Llano, the Human Resource Manager of my adopted company which is the LYR Marketing since I certainly know that he could share to me a lot of informations and his knowledge regarding human resource management. He is in the business for many years and has been a professor that's why I know that he can share to me according to what he learned and experienced.

Summing up all of the things he shared to me from the time I first interviewed him up to the time I asked him things merely on what are the human resource management role, scope and nature. I may say that human resource management includes the processes and practical techniques involved in managing people(workforce) in an organization. These normally refer to the relationship between management and workers and the behavior of workers in companies.

According to what I understood from the things Mr. Llano had shared to us, human resource management has two main goals. First of which is to effectively make use of the talents and abilities of employees which are related to the implementation of strategies directed towards creating and sustaining competitive advantage. And second is to enable employees to agree about the objectives and nature of their working environment and ensure them with their compensation and benefits he or she would receive for them to successfully accomplish their assignments.

Among the roles of a HR manager comprises planning and organizing for work and people, people acquisition and development, and administration of policies, programs and practices. Disciplinary procedures as well as procedures for recognizing employee for exemplary work also fall under the responsibilities of a human resource manager.

His concept is similar to that of his organization in which they give great value and importance to their greatest asset- their employees. They are willing to give and are bound to give more for their employees for they are the ones who had shared their talents and knowledge for the company. I agree with these concepts in that the main concerns are for the people who individually and collectively contribute to the achievement of the objectives of an organization. The benefits and compensations they acquire from being a member of the workforce gives them a greate usefulness, self-confidence, and respect from their fellow citizens as well s workers.

♥♥SONA 2009 Related HRM♥♥

2009-10-17T02:10:00.000-07:00

On the assumption that you heard/read the SONA of the President last month (July 2009), identify at least 3 areas related to Human Resource Mangement and explain how these areas can improve our quality of life. (2000words)

1. EduCaTioN and TraiNinG
Generally, at the start of a very young age, children learn to develop and use their mental, moral and physical powers, which they acquire through various types of education. Education is commonly referred to as the process of learning and obtaining knowledge at school, in a form of formal education. However, the process of education does not only start when a child first attend school. Education begins at home. One does not only acquire knowledge from a teacher, one can learn and receive knowledge from a parent, family member and even an acquaintance. In almost all societies, attending school and receiving an education is extremely vital and necessary if one wants to achieve success.
However, unfortunately we have places in the world, where not everyone has an opportunity to receive this formal type of education. The opportunities that are offered are greatly limited. Sometimes there are not enough resources to provide schooling. Furthermore because parents need their children to help them work in factories, have odd jobs, or just do farm work.
Since it is not traditional, in some places to receive a formal education, the one who receive a formal education, the one who receive an education is usually envied, praised and even admired by members of the community.
Learning subject in school is not enough. One can learn history, math, science in school, and be “book-smart”. In addition, one can learn how to live life by knowing what to say when, acting a certain way in a certain situations and be “street-smart”. These two types of education are extremely essential to be successful in life.
Education is the key that allows people to move up in the world, seek better jobs, and ultimately succeed fully in life. Education is very important, and no one should be deprived of it.
The President affirmed that one of the most difficult Millennium Development Goals (MDG) target is the "Education for All," or universal primary education by 2015.
Although most countries will not be able to achieve it, the President said, her administration is trying its best to improve its own education system.
She said her administration have cut the cost of going to school by building more classrooms in 1,000 barangays, stopping the collection of miscellaneous fees for primary school, and declaring school uniforms optional.
She added that 47 percent of students in private high schools have likewise been provided government assistance including the funding for technical education and skills training which is three times larger than the budget allocated to such training by previous administrations.
At the same time, the President noted that her government has also provided 600,000 college and post-graduate scholarships.
In this connection, she recognized and introduced one of the beneficiaries of the program, Mylene Amerol-Macumbal, the first Muslim woman bar top notcher who finished accounting in MSU-IIT, went to law school and placed second in the last bar exams.
The President mentioned the accomplishments of the Presidential Task Force on Education headed by Jesuit educator Father Bienvenido Nebres that came out with the Philippine Main Education Highway Towards Knowledge-based Economy.
"Our educational system should make the Filipino fit not just for whatever jobs that happen to be on offer today, but also for whatever economic challenge life will throw them," she said. (PND)

2. HeALTh
“Mula pa noong 2001, nanawagan na tayo ng mas murang gamot. Nagbebenta tayo ng gamot na kalahating presyo sa libu-libong Botika ng Bayan at Botika ng Barangay sa maraming dako ng bansa. Our efforts prodded the pharmaceutical companies to come up with low-cost generics and brands like RiteMed. I supported the tough version of the House of the Cheaper Medicine law. I supported it over the weak..”

This is very essential to us as Filipino people to take good care of our heath. It is more advantageous on our part if the government will give us cheapest cost but high quality medicine in order for us to function and manage well especially in performing our daily routine. It gives huge help most especially for us Filipino to become active and aware in the different activities on our community.
Health is one of those things that people tend to take for granted. Until you are facing disease or injury, your good health, like a clean house, greatly goes unnoticed. When all your body parts are working properly, there is no pain to grab your attention, no chronic illness to debilitate your daily life. Health is a state of mental and physical well-being in which everything is functioning properly and you experience a general feeling of vitality. Good health allows you to perform the tasks necessary and desirable to your daily life. Work, family, home and pastimes can be enjoyed and conducted without pain or interruption.
Good health is important because it allows people to focus on their interests and obligations. Poor health, in the form of injuries, disabilities, chronic pain, mental illness or disease, prevents millions of people from supporting, caring for or expressing themselves effectively. Anyone who has lived with chronic pain can tell you how the condition clouds every aspect of your life, making even the most mundane tasks into ordeals of suffering and despair.

3. OFW's

“Our vigorous international engagement has helped bring in foreign investment. Net foreign direct investments multiplied 15 times during our administration. Together with our OFWs, they more than doubled our foreign exchange reserves. Pinalakas ang ating piso at naiwasan ang lubhang pagtaas ng presyo. They upgraded our credit because while the reserves of our peers have shrunk this past year, ours reserves grew by $3 billion.”

An Overseas Filipino is a person of Philippine origin who lives outside of the Philippines. This term applies both to people of Filipino ancestry who now live and reside as citizens of a different country, and those who continue to be Filipino citizens and those supporting their families back in the Philippines. It may also extend to Filipinos having extended holidays abroad, however, common usage does not usually include this group.
The term Global Filipino is now also being used to refer to a Filipino citizen who lives and works abroad. The performance of the Philippine economy over recent decades, combined with a widespread knowledge of English, a legacy of the Philippines' position as a former United States colony, have made Filipinos one of the most internationally mobile nationalities. Filipino workers greatly contribute to this, as they need to support their families back at home. As a result, many countries around the world have a substantial Filipino community.
Overseas Filipino Workers contribute huge help especially to our country as well as to their respective family. We can’t deny the fact that there are maximum numbers of workers here in the Philippines but are opting to work in a foreign country. Obviously, maybe we had already the hint, why is that so. Fortunately for our OFW’s they just receive large amount of salaries and because of them also this primarily reason why they more than doubled our foreign exchange rates. The value of peso increases and the cost of daily necessity decreases.

4.MiCroFinAnCe
“Nakinabang ang pitong milyong entrepreneurs sa P165 billion na microfinance. Nakinabang ang 1,000 sa economic resiliency plan. Kasama natin ngayon ang isa sa kanila, si Gigi Gabiola. Dating household service worker sa Dubai, ngayon siya ay nagtatrabaho sa DOLE.”
Microfinance refers to the provision of financial services to low-income clients, including consumers and the self-employed.
More broadly, it refers to a movement that envisions “a world in which as many poor and near-poor households as possible have permanent access to an appropriate range of high quality financial services, including not just credit but also savings, insurance, and fund transfers. Those who promote microfinance generally believe that such access will help poor people out of poverty.
1.Poor people need not just loans but also savings, insurance and money transfer services.
2. Microfinance must be useful to poor households: helping them raise income, build up assets and/or cushion themselves against external shocks.
3. “Microfinance can pay for itself.” Subsidies from donors and government are scarce and uncertain, and so to reach large numbers of poor people, microfinance must pay for itself.
4. Microfinance means building permanent local institutions
5. Microfinance also means integrating the financial needs of poor people into a country’s mainstream financial system.
6. “The job of government is to enable financial services, not to provide them.”
7. “Donor funds should complement private capital, not compete with it.”
8. “The key bottleneck is the shortage of strong institutions and managers.” Donors should focus on capacity building.
9. Interest rate ceilings hurt poor people by preventing microfinance institutions from covering their costs, which chokes off the supply of credit.
10. Microfinance institutions should measure and disclose their performance – both financially and socially.
This one also is very much helpful to those Filipino people who are scarcity in terms of food medicine, shelter and other primarily needs. In this way, they can quickly face against economic crisis. This may serve as their tool in moving forward especially o the victims of different calamities like typhoon, flood, earthquake and many more

References:
http://www.op.gov.ph/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25755&Itemid=2
http://jlp-law.com/blog/state-of-the-nation-address-sona-2009/
http://www.helium.com/items/1373827-importance-of-good-health

♥♥"Human beings are the most important, potent and critical, resource of any organization, and yet the least understood and the worst managed...♥♥

2009-10-17T02:08:00.000-07:00

In every organization, there are three major resources to be managed if the organization wants to achieve its objectives and goals. These resources are Humans, materials and financial resources. And out of these three, human resource management is the most important and difficult to manage. The reason being that every human being is born unique and therefore is bound to have different characteristics-- that is, the ways they think feel reason and act. Secondly, human beings control and coordinate the other resources. They constitute the workforce of an organization and are referred to as personnel. Since human nature plays a very major part in the overall success of an organization, it is therefore important to have an effective working relationship between the employee and the manager as this is essential for the success of the organization.
Human Resource Management, which involves the efficient and effective management within an organization, is one of the vital functions of Educational Administrators. This is because every administrator has a function to perform through his staff and his own abilities. Every university like other formal organizations needs human beings to execute its programmes and achieve educational goals and objectives. To be able to achieve this, the Registrar who is the ‘chief of administration’ has to ensure that personnel with whom he works knows what to do, when to do it and how to do it. Another name for human resource management is personnel management. No matter the name we chose to call it, its basic function is to deal with people who make up an organization. And these people have diverse interest, goals and values.

Personnel management is the proper utilization of the people in an organization towards achieving their needs and organizational goals. To this extent, it involves understanding the nature of people in an organization, their needs and aspiration and evolving the necessary strategies to accomplish these needs and aspirations. It also involves identifying the objectives of the organization and creating a conducive atmosphere towards leading staff to achieving the goals of the organization. Personnel management as the process of obtaining, organizing and motivating the human resources needed in by an organization. He advocated for the creation of a very conducive and cordial environment in order to satisfy the needs of the workers and achieve organizational goals.

FUNCTIONS OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

The primary responsibility of a human resource manager is to ensure that human resources are utilized and managed as efficiently and effectively as possible. To this end, the university chief administrator is required meet the following objectives:
1. Recruitment and selection
2. Helping in creating a working environment
3. Ensuring that the abilities and skills of the workforce
4. Ensuring a fair balance
Other human resource management functions include:
1. Recruitment and Selection
2. Training and Education
3. Wages and salary Administration
4. Staff Appraisals
5. Welfare
6. Trade Union Relations

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR

All organizations including educational institutions are made up of people who chose to work in it primarily because it enables them to satisfy at least some of their personal needs. Virtually everybody works, plays or is educated in an organization. Attempt must be made to define what an organization is. Organization is a system of consciously coordinated activities which are deliberately structured for the purpose of realizing specific goals. “Whenever several people are working together for a common end, there must be some form of organization: that is the task must be divided among them and the work of the group must be coordinated. Dividing the work and arranging for coordination make up the process of organization and once that is completed, the group may be described as an organization.”
The more complex an organization is, the more difficult it is to coordinate activities, predict events or phenomena and attain set objectives maximally. We can therefore view organizational behavior as the systematic study of the nature of organizations; how they begin, how they develop and their effects on individual members. It is also a systematic attempt to understand the behavior of people in an organization; not just human behavior but structural behavior, elements behavior, systems behavior and even policy behavior. Thus for staff in the registry department of the university to function efficiently and effectively, the Registrar must understand the nature of people he is working with and be able to interpret their behaviors. Organizational behavior follows the principle of human behavior: People in an organization are governed by the same psychological mechanisms both on the job and outside the job. Organizational behavior is human behavior in a particular setting. The behavior of an individual in an organization is determined to some extent by internal and external factors. These include learning ability, motivation, perception, attitude, emotions, frustration etc. while the external factors include stress, reward system, degree of trust, group cohesiveness, social factors, office policies etc. Organizational behavior can also be situational.
. An individual’s behavior cannot be disassociated from the situation he finds himself. For example, a normally calm individual is forced into constant close physical aggressiveness with some other people. The behavior of that individual is therefore a function of interaction between his characteristics and other environmental variables. Organizations are seen as complex systems consisting of interrelated subsistence. Changes or alteration in any part of the system have consequences on other part of the system. Modification in the system leads to desired positive changes called functions. Negative consequences in response to alteration or change in the system are called dysfunction. Therefore the behavior of an individual is borne out of the decisions that have been taken in an organization.
Organizations represent constant interaction between structure and process. To get an assignment accomplished in an organization, we need to define who does what. Structures refer to organizational shapes, definitions and rules. It is what binds an organization together. Process is the sequence of activity in the system. Decision Making, Communication, Leadership and Conflict are few examples of the many processes that take place within an organization.

HUMAN RELATIONS APPROACH TO MANAGEMENT

Good human relations in an organization, for it to function effectively and efficiently cannot be over-emphasized. It provides knowledge on how people interact and respond in different organizational situations in an effort to satisfy their needs and in the process meet organizational goals. The chief administrator’s ability to understand his staff and their problems, and his belief in and the practice of democratic leadership will go a long way to make him succeed in his supervisory and administrative task. The effective operation of any organization depends on the Human Resources in that organization. Educational Administration is concerned with the mobilization of the efforts of people for the achievement of educational objectives. It is therefore imperative that the Registrar cultivates the habits of Human Relations in his odious administrative task. The difference between the ideas of the Efficiency movement and those of the Human Relations movement was that of the former emphasizing getting most out of the worker, even to the extent of requiring him to subordinate his interest and needs of those in the organization, while the latter emphasized the humanitarian aspects which sought to satisfy the needs of the worker, minimize his frustrations and increase the level of job satisfaction.
The real service for business men is no t just the production and distribution of manufactured articles, but to give an opportunity for individual development and self-actualization through better organization of human relationships. The process of production is as important for the welfare of society as the product of production. Administration as a shared responsibility, asserting that organizational structures should permit a free interplay of ideas in order to minimize the rigidity of hierarchical structures; but warned that shared responsibility should not be construed as being synonymous with laissez-faire and absence of focal points of reference.

MOTIVATION AND ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR

Without human resource, there can be no organization. These human resources are in two categories: Management and Subordinates.
Workers and their needs should be uppermost in the minds of the leadership of any organization. In other words, poor management of human resources in an organization will lead to ineffectiveness or collapse of the organization. The Barnard-Simon theory of motivation recognizes the relationship between the satisfaction by organizations of the needs of workers and the workers productivity. The theory assumes that workers will perform satisfactorily well if their needs are met. The more the needs of workers are satisfied within the organization, the more they are motivated to work and thus satisfy the needs of the organization. To motivate a worker therefore is to propel, impel and energize him into action that will lead eventually to the achievement of organizational goals.
Human resources are the most important assets a modern organization has because only human beings can make, transfer and exercise knowledge. And also only human being s can create the holistic values by planning all the other resources as a whole. So, human beings are the key roles organization, organization should pay more efforts on HRD. Moreover, organizations should conform to the new environment of the strategic plans. And the strategic plans of HRD must relate with the organization's mission and objectives. All in all, people are an organization's most precious resource, so, organization must attach importance to HRD.

References:
http://www.cheathouse.com/essay/essay_view.php?p_essay_id=78887
http://www.blurtit.com/q377061.html
http://en.oboulo.com/the+important+departments+in+an+organization_10\
http://www.articlesbase.com/college-and-university-articles/human-resource-management-and-organizational-behaviour-in-the-university-system-the-registry-experience-236599.html

♥♥21st Century Corporation♥♥

2009-10-17T02:05:00.000-07:00

I believe

“In every society some men are born to rule,
And some to advise…

A new environment of business has been emerging over the last decade of the 20th century and it has been accelerating in the 21st century, stimulated by a new economy, new technologies and new understanding about business processes. In today’s interconnected, technology driven world, selling typically takes place in physical, virtual and remote places. It’s now more important than ever that selling environments make the paradigm shift towards 21st century successful business.
There’s low-tech. And there’s high-tech. And then there’s real-tech - businesses that earn a crust by taking ideas from labs and turning them into incredible, world-beating products and services.

“There is one key ingredient that separates the great salespeople from the good ones: the ability to build relationships.

By Jason Karem, sales manager

We know that it costs, on average, six to ten times more to get a new customer than to keep an old customer. Yet most fortune 500 companies lose 50 percent of their customers in five years. Furthermore, the average company communicates only four times per year with current customers and six times per year with prospects. Most people think this the common sense, and it really is, but the problem is that managers get caught between two places: they are so either desperate for business that they become manipulate and pushy, or they are doing so well that they become complacent. Both are dangerous state of mind. When they fail you tend to blame external factors. It must be the competition, the economy, or the weather; people rarely look inward for faults. Then the simple solution seems to be to pour more and info selling and advertising. The reverse is true for managers who are succeeding. No matter which situation you are in, the same arguments exists. To make money you have to have sales that outweigh your expenditures. To have success in the long term, you have to continue either bring in new customers or keep your old customers, or preferably both.
The quality movement has taken business, industry, government and education to new levels of performance and awareness. Once they were accepted as tools that could improve profitability, quality teachings and practices have shown us that believing in separation can be a dangerous thing. Separation from the customer and the awareness of customer needs is disastrous. Believing that the marketing department is separate from new product design and engineering has driven companies out of business. When labor and management see themselves on different sides of the fence with antagonistic interests, both sides inevitably lose. With the quality movement emphasizing cooperation with suppliers, consultation with customers, breaking down barriers between departments, and participative management by employees, it has ushered in a new awareness and a new style which has forever changed the way we know that business must be done.
Quality thinking has paved the way to systems thinking. Concurrent engineering, customer focus groups that included designers before the design have all been major quality contributions. Seeing this kind of interconnectivity and interdependence has turned many business around in the last decade of the 20th century. But for success in the 21st century, for organizations to actually thrive in the new millennium, it will be up to the quality movement to provide leadership once again for making the next crucial steps.
Leaving the rigid metaphor of the machine behind, what can we learn from this new metaphor from the natural world? Organizations which will survive and thrive in the 21st century will have many of the same characteristics as organisms which survive and thrive. What are these, and what will they look like in organizations?
We can do this in a number of ways. We must align the policies and practices of our organization so that people and processes operate for the survival and benefit of the whole organization. Viewing departments as "cost centers" or "profit centers" ignores the actual role the department ought to play in the success of the whole organization, just as requiring the liver to have as much muscle as the stomach. Common practices and policies which seem sensible and effective can also backfire. For instance, the practice of rewarding salespeople on a commission basis can lead in many directions. It might cause salespeople to sell customers more expensive equipment than they need--in the short term--and ruin a company's mid-range product development, as it has for at least one prominent computer corporation. On the other hand, at a prominent copier manufacturer, the policy led salespeople to supply equipment which was less than the customer needed, but seemed to meet competitors prices. Either of these situations lead to customer dissatisfaction and net losses for the company.

"measure what should be measured, not just what can be measured"--and we would like to add "or what HAS BEEN measured in the past." Measuring the wrong thing is often worse than no measurement at all. It shown us how misleading "productivity" measures can be, especially when workers are building up excess inventory just to keep busy.
Organizations must nurture adaptivity not "adaptedness". Past success is a poor predictor of future performance in a changing world. Most Fortune 500 companies are out of business in five to ten years. Using our organism metaphor, we could say that "knowledge and memory" is usually found in the experience of individuals and teams in the organization. "Thinking" corresponds to coordinating memories and experiences among different parts of the organization -- usually known as team problem-solving and simultaneous engineering or concurrent design.
Currently, the most common forms of this sort of activity include profit-sharing, stock options, employee owned corporations, ESOPs, employee benefits packages and voluntary service to local communities. Many areas have cooperative programs with schools and community colleges. We will be called to go much further. The economy is rapidly becoming truly global. The ability to share wealth and improve the standard of living around the world, and benefit as an international community will be a great challenge. Our stability and survival depends on it.

The lesson of the current era is that "Everything is connected to everything else." To survive in this environment with these realizations we need to see HOW things are connected and incorporate the values which support our survival. Success in the 21st Century is truly dependent upon implementation of a very old adage "what goes around, comes around." If we value that understanding, it will change the way we perform in society. So what does this mean for us and our performance in our organizations?
Those who have stirred the quality pot must keep stirring. Quality has served as our springboard into the new age but a great deal more thinking and effort will be required for 21st century success. The quality movement is in the position of being able to lead the charge, and is in a unique position of having the experience to perceive the nature of the changes which must happen. We cannot stop at "quality." We must enter the millennium ready for an even more complete transformation. And quality professionals must be ready to lead the way.

a. 21st Century HRM
B. 21st Century Leadership
c. Change Management
d. Competencies for Competitive Advantage
e. Competitive Advantage
f. Corporate Governance
g. Efficiency and Values
h. Targeting the Gap
I. Globalized Production
j. Information and Knowledge Entrepreneurs
k. Information and Knowledge Entrepreneurs
l. Power Principle
m. Reinventing the Corporation
o. Redesigning the Organization
p. Rethinking Processes

♥♥Company Undergone HR Downsizing♥♥

2009-10-17T02:03:00.000-07:00

Downsizing ----In a business enterprise, downsizing is reducing the number of employees on the operating payroll. Some users distinguish downsizing from a layoff , with downsizing intended to be a permanent downscaling and a layoff intended to be a temporary downscaling in which employees may later be rehired. Businesses use several techniques in downsizing, including providing incentives to take early retirement and transfer to subsidiary companies, but the most common technique is to simply terminate the employment of a certain number of people.

Righting downsizing in Asia

Although the global economic meltdown has roots in the United States, virtually every developed or developing economy across the globe is now caught up in this unprecedented crisis. While nauseated watchers of the NASDAQ, Hang Seng, BSE and other indexes experience the highs and lows of the daily tumult, the stakes are higher and more painful for employees who have been laid off or fear for their future prospects. For the Asian economies which have enjoyed rapid growth in recent years, particularly China and India, the crisis has been hard-felt. Today, nearly every industry has been affected in some way. Although specific details can be hard to come by, reasonable estimates indicate that literally thousands of Chinese factories have been closed, scattering displaced workers throughout the country. For many of those that remain open, layoffs are inevitable. In India, the fear of a global slowdown affecting India is worrying. People have not been exposed to an environment of global repercussions.

What does this mean to the employees that remain behind? If engaged workers are the key to a variety of important business outcomes, what sort of a toll do downsizings have on the morale of its survivors? We will take a look at layoff survivors in Asia to see how they view the workplace. What can organizations do to re-engage the survivors of layoffs, strengthening their workforce for the eventual but inevitable economic revival?

The walking wounded

Whether we use the term layoff, downsizing, or right-sizing, the outcome and the pain for workers is the same. Although still employed, employees who have survived layoffs could be described as the walking wounded. Survivors can carry a heavy burden, having to cover for lost friends and colleagues while wondering about their own security and possibly a loss of trust in senior leaders. Amidst this bleak scenario, managers must rally the remaining troops while dealing with similar issues.

To discover the effects of layoffs on employee engagement and turnover intent, and to identify the work characteristics most important to layoff survivors’ engagement with work, and to the organization—the most effective way to emerge from downsizing unscathed, the Kenexa Research Institute (KRI) utilized the WorkTrends™ data to explore employee opinions and engagement drivers in Asia, specifically Australia, China (including Hong Kong), and India. For the sake of data robustness, we combined the data for the countries, though we acknowledge that there are differences between countries in terms of the drivers of engagement and absolute magnitude of favorability scores.

The negative impact of downsizing

As the graph clearly shows, members of organizations that have undergone layoffs in the past 12 months are less positive on every WorkTrends dimension, most notably with regard to confidence and security (i.e. confidence in the organization’s future) by a difference of 16 percentage points. Perhaps this explains Trevor and Nyberg’s (2008) finding that voluntary turnover rates increase within the calendar year of, and 24 months following the downsizing event.

Maintaining engagement

Conventional wisdom maintains that initial layoffs target poor performers and redundant positions while subsequent events more often result in regrettable losses. Regardless of whether your organization is into the first or second round, WorkTrends can provide some insight into the key factors that promote engagement among layoff survivors. By focusing on these areas, organizations should be better positioned to rebound with the economy but perhaps more importantly, retain those key employees who will be so critical to your organization’s future.

A key driver analysis conducted on layoff survivors reveals the following as the key drivers of employee engagement:

* Confidence in the future of my company
* A promising future for me at my company
* All employees have equal opportunities for advancement, regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and culture
* Satisfaction with recognition for the work I do
* Excitement about my work

Taken together, these five items explain roughly 40% of the reasons for layoff survivors’ engagement, and therefore leaders can start here in their efforts to improve employee engagement and retain key personnel. While these are also drivers of engagement in organizations that have not downsized, they take on greater importance in the aftermath of layoffs. Scores on all of these items are significantly lower for layoff survivors than employees whose organization has not downsized, suggesting that the need to respond is much greater. In addition, the order of importance of the drivers is different for layoff survivors. For example, feeling that there is a promising future is much more important to layoff survivors suggesting that organizational efforts to improve confidence and the sense of security would be time well spent in a post-layoff environment; a finding which is substantiated by the 15-point difference on the confidence and security dimension between the groups.

Finally, the top drivers for layoff survivors show a greater preponderance of layoff survivors on employee-centric questions. In other words, items that have to do with “my experience” and “how I feel” move up in rank compared with employees in non-layoff organizations. Drivers of engagement in non-layoff organizations include items that ask about innovation, ethics, social responsibility. For layoff survivors, these issues are further down the list of engagement drivers and take a back-seat to the more personal matters.

Turning survive into thrive

If your organization has undergone trauma in the form of layoffs as a result of economic conditions or other reasons (e.g. M&A-induced redundancies), what should HR practitioners and organizational managers and leaders do? The WorkTrends results suggest a number of important steps that can be taken to enhance future levels of engagement and mitigate the potential of regrettable turnover.
---Confidence is key
---Recognition and opportunity
---Turn ‘me’ into ‘we’
---Prepare for the rebound

♥♥My Future♥♥

2009-10-17T02:00:00.000-07:00

Education is central to development and a key to attaining Millennium Development Goals.

People decide to go to college or university for many reasons. For some people, a certificate, diploma or degree is a stepping stone to a job or career. That is what I directly chose USEP as my home in my college life. I consider an education as an important part of my personal growth. Going to college or university is a chance to learn new things, meet new people, and challenge myself with new experiences and ideas. How can the University help what you want in the future? Bluntly speaking this was the query I considered and the reason why I chose to enroll here in USEP. We do have a lot of expectations in life. University teaches me some values as a student to endeavor especially in achieving my dreams. It gives me lot of knowledge to become hard working. My school plays a very important role in shaping up myself to be successful and efficient in my dream career. A lot of factors to consider on how USeP can help me to cope with necessary requirements with the job I preferred and maybe one of these factors is having a competent and qualified teachers. They teach me to become conscientious in studying my lesson which I believed through with this, I can reach my dreams.

USEP(University of Southeastern Philippines)is a globally competitive that can provide best and standard education to me as an IT student. USEP is a public school. Therefore there should be deficiency in terms of school facilities and equipment. Well, although there is an insufficient in equipments still the university produce competitive graduates. It also educates and cultivates my persona, mentally and even in social aspect. The obvious reason why demand remain high is the known quality education the University provides at affordable cost. Quality education in as a tool in molding and developing knowledge and skills of students is and should be the basic foundation of an academic institution’s existence. As what I observed the University of Southeastern Philippines’ Administration is firm with its contention that the state university has never ignored this function. USEP is very much committed to maintain a high level of quality standards given the institution’s record of performance.

Well, I believed that modern graduate is expected to be equipped with relevant skills, abilities and personal qualities, in addition to good academic qualifications when entering the workplace. I knew that USEP can provide me these qualities. At USEP I can take advantage of the opportunities that the University provides to help gain the type of skills that employers look for in especially graduates– employability skills that include effective communication and analytical skills and IT competence.

♥♥Five Different Online Jobs♥♥

2009-10-17T01:58:00.000-07:00

This is my selected jobs that I want when I'm blessed to graduate in this course. I’ve met a lot of obstacles and I know it’s just a part of being a successful one someday. I know God is always there.

1. IT Consultant

An IT consultant works in partnership with clients, advising them how to use information technology in order to meet their business objectives or overcome problems. Consultants work to improve the structure and efficiency and of an organization’s IT systems.
IT consultants may be involved in a variety of activities, including marketing, project management, client relationship management and systems development.
They may also be responsible for user training and feedback. In many companies, these tasks will be carried out by an IT project team. IT consultants are increasingly involved in sales and business development, as well as technical duties.

Typical work activities
Tasks typically involve:

• meeting with clients to determine requirements;
• working with clients to define the scope of a project;
• planning timescales and the resources needed;
• clarifying a client's system specifications, understanding their work practices and the nature of their business;
• traveling to customer sites;
• liaising with staff at all levels of a client organization;
• defining software, hardware and network requirements;
• analyzing IT requirements within companies and giving independent and objective advice on the use of IT;
• developing agreed solutions and implementing new systems;
• presenting solutions in written or oral reports;
• helping clients with change-management activities;
• project managing the design and implementation of preferred solutions;
• purchasing systems where appropriate;
• designing, testing, installing and monitoring new systems;
• preparing documentation and presenting progress reports to customers;
• organizing training for users and other consultants;
• being involved in sales and support and, where appropriate, maintaining contact with client organizations;
• Identifying potential clients and building and maintaining contacts.

2. Information Systems Manager

Though the exact daily duties may differ from employer to employer, information systems managers determine the overall technology strategies for major companies. By combining information technology training with business savvy, these managers make decisions about servers, bandwidth, and desktop tools for their companies.
Although many enterprise companies prefer to hire managers with advanced technology degrees, a shortage of qualified executives has opened the doors for job candidates with hands-on experience. Therefore, your current job and an enrollment in an online IT program can put you in the running for a senior position that usually pays, on average, over $92,000 per year

3. Database Administrator

Database administrators guarantee the security and the accessibility of information for employees and customers. Hiring officers often comment that computer training programs cannot produce skilled administrators quickly enough to meet their demands.
While many online information technology programs build basic database skills, administrators require ongoing technical training to stay up to date with the latest products. A bachelor's degree and an independent certification can qualify you for jobs at well-known companies where you can earn $85,000 or more per year.

4. Operating System Developer

While you might think that only a few major companies in America would employ operating system developers, "operating systems" have actually popped up in more devices than just computers. Manufacturers of mobile phones, cars, refrigerators, and other devices rely on highly skilled graduates of technology degree programs to develop custom software platforms.
Online technology courses in programming and software development can help you secure a job in this growing field. Many operating system developers earn over $80,000 a year by complementing their understanding of source code with their intuition into human interaction. The next time you drop a quarter into a fancy soda machine; remember that machines as simple as this need operating systems, too.
Many application developers working for larger companies earn over $70,000 per year. In some cases, compensation packages for developers can include tuition reimbursement programs for online technology courses. Other developers earn smaller salaries but own all or part of the companies at which they work, offering the chance to participate in technology startups.

5. Senior IT Auditor

Establish procedures for audit review of computer systems; develop and apply testing and evaluation plans for IT systems and ensure compliance with industry standards of efficiency, accuracy and security.

References:
http://www.neowin.net/news/main/08/03/10/top-10-jobs-in-information-technology
http://www.prospects.ac.uk/p/types_of_job/it_consultant_job_description.jsp

♥♥COMDDAP Reflections♥♥

2009-10-17T01:53:00.000-07:00

Thursday afternoon, July 02, 2009, it’s already 1:30 in the afternoon when I arrived at the Apo View Hotel.
I was not able to read the information about COMDDAP Expo in the forum or since I came to college so I don’t have any idea regarding to this event.

Fortunately, I was able to witness the latest in information technology’s fast-phase development. I am very much thankful because I’m one of the chosen few and given a chance to witness this kind or become part of this activity. Honestly, I found COMDDAP Expo as a very useful and helpful activity, since it serves as a paradigm. When I was attended that activity, I thought I am a professional one. As an IT student, the said program gives me lots of knowledge especially to the technology which is not really known to me. Not just imagining but in actual way I observe and I’ve seen the different high tech gadgets and technologies. It also gave me some general views and updates in some sectors especially personal and administration, and highly regarded individuals to further strengthen the self-esteem and knowledge of its society. COMDDAP Expo also serves as a stepping stone to each individual towards a brighter future. Why I say so because it provides to us or as a literate one to become fully aware to the different trends of technology. It is very much important to us as an IT student to have full of knowledge and wisdom as regards the use of technology and elevate its principles in the community. Most especially, the different booths advertising their product that helps to supply the market with quality products at reasonable prices. It gave huge help for us when we are going to purchase product, we are become responsive of which is the best one to choose. Indeed, COMDDAP Expo promotes and cultivates harmony and amity so that we can work together as one for the benefit of the industry.

COMDDAP is an association of the country's top information technology businesses.

Objective:
To promote the sustainable development of the of the country's information technology industry through voluntary collaboration of its member companies.

Goal:
To be able to provide its members general views and updates from different sectors - private and government, and highly regarded individuals to further uplift the morale and knowledge of its organization.

Vision:
Promoting and elevating the standards of Information technology (IT) in the Philippines fueled a group of prominent computer companies to form the Computer Distributors and Dealers Association of the Philippines or COMDDAP.

Since then, COMDDAP has been maintained and financed by its members through dues, fees, contributions or donations, and bannered by these specific objectives:

• Promote the use of information technology and elevate its standards in the Philippines;
• Make computers affordable and available to the masses;
• Provide and create opportunities for users to develop themselves to their fullest potentials;
• Supply the market with quality products at reasonable prices with good after-sales support;
• To work closely with the government, the private sector and international entities in promoting the use of information technology;
• Provide a forum of discussion on matters relating to the compute industry; and
• Foster and cultivate harmony, cordiality and camaraderie among the members so that they can work together as one for the benefit of the industry.

The first speaker talked about the ERIC [Enterprise Resource Information and Control] Dealer Management System (DMS). It is an end-to-end software solution for automotive dealer operation. ERIC DMS' range of solutions covers Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Vehicle Sales and Administration (VSA), and Service Management (SVM).

• Schedule prospects for test drives and follow up on appointments
• Monitor and increase sales
• Delight customers with gentle reminders for appointments
• Manage vehicle inventory
• Deliver impeccable service
• Control parts & consumables cost
• Monitor and correctly implement warranty for parts & service

The second speaker talked about Thin Client which is computing devices that function as an access device on a network. These solid-state devices connect over a network to a server where the bulk of the processing takes place. Thin clients have no hard drive, allowing for more secure storage of data and applications on the server. In fact, keystrokes, mouse events and screen images are all that is sent between the client and server. This makes the device much more secure than a standard desktop or notebook computer.

Here are some advantages:

----Enhanced security
----Easier manageability
----High reliability
----Increased energy efficiency
----Lower total cost of ownership

The increased security, reliability and ease of management contribute to a lower total cost of ownership for your client computing devices. With a longer useful lifespan, thin clients contribute to cost savings. According to a study by Gartner (TCO Comparison of PCs with Server-Based Computing, June 2006) thin client TCO annual savings have been measured as high as:

79% less downtime cost per user
16% capital cost savings
34% less in maintenance
19% less to operate
48% overall lower total cost

Reference:
http://www.comddap.org/events.htm
http://www.jupitersystems.com.ph/product.aspx?prod_id=1
http://www.hp.com/sbso/solutions/pc_expertise/article/thinclients_consider.html

♥♥My Future Job♥♥

2009-10-17T01:52:00.000-07:00

IT Consultant is my aim when I am blessed to graduate in this course. I’ve met a lot of obstacles and I know it’s just a part of being a successful one someday. I know God is always there.

Job description
An IT consultant works in partnership with clients, advising them how to use information technology in order to meet their business objectives or overcome problems. Consultants work to improve the structure and efficiency and of an organization’s IT systems.
IT consultants may be involved in a variety of activities, including marketing, project management, client relationship management and systems development.
They may also be responsible for user training and feedback. In many companies, these tasks will be carried out by an IT project team. IT consultants are increasingly involved in sales and business development, as well as technical duties.

Typical work activities
Tasks typically involve:
• meeting with clients to determine requirements;
• working with clients to define the scope of a project;
• planning timescales and the resources needed;
• clarifying a client's system specifications, understanding their work practices and the nature of their business;
• traveling to customer sites;
• liaising with staff at all levels of a client organization;
• defining software, hardware and network requirements;
• analyzing IT requirements within companies and giving independent and objective advice on the use of IT;
• developing agreed solutions and implementing new systems;
• presenting solutions in written or oral reports;
• helping clients with change-management activities;
• project managing the design and implementation of preferred solutions;
• purchasing systems where appropriate;
• designing, testing, installing and monitoring new systems;
• preparing documentation and presenting progress reports to customers;
• organizing training for users and other consultants;
• being involved in sales and support and, where appropriate, maintaining contact with client organizations;
• Identifying potential clients and building and maintaining contacts.

Honestly, when I came to the point thinking about the job related to my course, or what is “mie” after how many years, I feel so ambivalent. Know what? for the reason that I find it difficult. Perhaps, I know God is the reason behind it.

http://www.prospects.ac.uk/p/types_of_job/it_consultant_job_description.jsp

♥♥Company HR Best Practices♥♥

2009-10-17T01:45:00.000-07:00

Company Profile

"NCCC is all about people: Their associates, customers, business partners and community. Since starting out as a textile store in 1952 they continue to grow, expanding to different retail businesses and locations to serve more people. They strive to offer Service from the Heart first of all to their associates. They also maintain solid relationships with their business partners to provide a wide assortment of basic and unique merchandise. They are proud of journey and we continue to pay tribute to o founders and history by living up to core values of humility, caring, hard work, excellence and fun. They live for their vision to be A Leader Who Cares. "

Human resource management (HRM) is the strategic and coherent approach to the management of an organization's most valued assets - the people working there who individually and collectively contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the business. The terms "human resource management" and "human resources" (HR) have largely replaced the term "personnel management" as a description of the processes involved in managing people in organizations. In simple sense, HRM means employing people, developing their resources, utilizing, maintaining and compensating their services in tune with the job and organizational requirement.

Human Resource Management (HRM) is the function within an organization that focuses on recruitment of, management of, and providing direction for the people who work in the organization. Human Resource Management can also be performed by line managers.

Human Resource Management is the organizational function that deals with issues related to people such as compensation, hiring, performance management, organization development, safety, wellness, benefits, employee motivation, communication, administration, and training.

Business practice

• Workforce planning
• Recruitment (sometimes separated into attraction and selection)
• Induction and Orientation
• Skills management
• Training and development
• Personnel administration
• Compensation in wage or salary
• Time management
• Travel management
• Payroll
• Employee benefits administration
• Personnel cost planning
• Performance Appraisal

Best Practices on Human Resource on New City Commercial Corporation

People Department
- is the name of department that manage Human Resource.
- All transaction of the company should be manage by this department since
this department is the main department of the company.

Function
Maintenance personal data
Modification updating
Man power report
Government report
Prepare task for the necessary department
Certification of employee.
Insurance of employee

NCCC Spirit

“I will be humble in my way, Caring myself hardworking to do excel while having fun along the way”

NCCC Bylaws
• Humble
• Caring
• Hardworking
• Excellence
• Fun

NCCC job hiring qualifiacation

--Fresh Graduate should :
--Undergone trainee
--Experience is not necessary
--Good Background

High Position should :
--Has enough experience to desired position
--Good background

Qualification to be regular:
--Sales associate
--Performance
--Attendance
--Serve customer

Work limit
--5 months only

Company employee
--5000 employees (company wide)

HRIS
- this company used a magic software to manage the data of the employee working on the company.

Data employee
ID no - it is the primary key
-it is properly encode for lessen the redundancy of the data of the employee

Name - for employee’s identification
B-Date -for employee’s age
Address -for employee’s home
Background -to know what he is into. His quality being a employee/person.
Department -To know what department he is working

Date hired and date due
-if it color blue means active and if it is yellow he is lead out already
-but then the data of the employee that is lead out is never delete because of information the company may used soon

Ms Regine Castillo- a HR staff of NCCC who grant our interview.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_resource_management
www.nccc.com
www.globalhrms.com
http://humanresources.about.com/od/glossaryh/f/hr_management.htm

♥♥Information Environment♥♥

2009-10-17T01:32:00.000-07:00

What is an Information Environment?

There is now a critical mass of digital information resources that can be used to support researchers, learners, teachers and administrators in their work and study. The production of information is on the increase and ways to deal with this effectively are required. There is the need to ensure that quality information isn’t lost amongst the masses of digital data created everyday. If we can continue to improve the management, interrogation and serving of ‘quality’ information there is huge potential to enhance knowledge creation across learning and research communities. The aim of the Information Environment is to help provide convenient access to resources for research and learning through the use of resource discovery and resource management tools and the development of better services and practice. The Information Environment aims to allow discovery, access and use of resources for research and learning irrespective of their location.
An information environment incorporates all the factors affecting how an organization deals with information. It addresses all of a company’s values and beliefs about information, how people actually use information and what they do with it, the pitfalls that can interfere with information sharing and use, and the technology and information systems that are in place. A broad perspective is necessary to understand the impact of intangibles because addressing intangible assets and capabilities will require changes in and adaptations to regulation, governance, attitudes and behaviors—in addition to systems and technologies.

InTerNET

Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private and public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, and other technologies. The Internet carries a vast array of information resources and services, most notably the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support electronic mail. In addition it supports popular services such as online chat, file transfer and file sharing, gaming, commerce, social networking, publishing, video on demand, and teleconferencing and telecommunications. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) applications allows person-to-person communication via voice and video.

Advantages

♥Communication

The foremost target of internet has always been the communication. And internet has excelled beyond the expectations .Still; innovations are going on to make it faster, more reliable. By the advent of computer’s Internet, our earth has reduced and has attained the form of a global village.
Now we can communicate in a fraction of second with a person who is sitting in the other part of the world. Today for better communication, we can avail the facilities of e-mail; we can chat for hours with our loved ones. There are plenty messenger services in offering. With help of such services, it has become very easy to establish a kind of global friendship where you can share your thoughts, can explore other cultures of different ethnicity.

♥Information
Information is probably the biggest advantage internet is offering. The Internet is a virtual treasure trove of information. Any kind of information on any topic under the sun is available on the Internet. The search engines like Google, yahoo is at your service on the Internet. You can almost find any type of data on almost any kind of subject that you are looking for. There is a huge amount of information available on the internet for just about every subject known to man, ranging from government law and services, trade fairs and conferences, market information, new ideas and technical support, the list is end less.
Students and children are among the top users who surf the Internet for research. Today, it is almost required that students should use the Internet for research for the purpose of gathering resources. Teachers have started giving assignments that require research on the Internet. Almost every coming day, researches on medical issues become much easier to locate. Numerous web sites available on the net are offering loads of information for people to research diseases and talk to doctors online at sites such as, America’s Doctor. During 1998 over 20 million people reported going online to retrieve health information.

♥Entertainment
Entertainment is another popular raison d'être why many people prefer to surf the Internet. In fact, media of internet has become quite successful in trapping multifaceted entertainment factor. Downloading games, visiting chat rooms or just surfing the Web are some of the uses people have discovered. There are numerous games that may be downloaded from the Internet for free. The industry of online gaming has tasted dramatic and phenomenal attention by game lovers. Chat rooms are popular because users can meet new and interesting people. In fact, the Internet has been successfully used by people to find life long partners. When people surf the Web, there are numerous things that can be found. Music, hobbies, news and more can be found and shared on the Internet.
♥Services
Many services are now provided on the internet such as online banking, job seeking, purchasing tickets for your favorite movies, guidance services on array of topics engulfing the every aspect of life, and hotel reservations. Often these services are not available off-line and can cost you more.
♥E-Commerce
E-commerce is the concept used for any type of commercial maneuvering, or business deals that involves the transfer of information across the globe via Internet. It has become a phenomenon associated with any kind of shopping, almost anything. You name it and E-commerce with its giant tentacles engulfing every single product and service will make you available at your door steps. It has got a real amazing and wide range of products from household needs, technology to entertainment.

My Role in in the Internet and The Different Challenges

The Internet has become ubiquitous to our way of life; it’s everywhere, and so common that we only notice it when it’s not available. But what is this mysterious Internet, and what are its pros and cons?
Some of the Internet’s strengths are also its greatest weaknesses. The biggest Internet benefit touted by proponents is that it’s available to anyone. Even if you don’t have Internet access yourself, you can go to most public libraries and log on there. Of course, since anyone can take a trip into cyberspace, people who have less-than-pure intentions are out on the World Wide Web along with the rest of us.

Yet information and communication are two of the Internet’s biggest advantages, and those advantages are distinctive. Information can be shared across computers, localities, time zones, and countries. Multi-national corporations can keep a project going ‘round the clock, moving it between workstations electronically via the Internet. Communication can happen via e-mail, Instant Messaging, or file sharing. Even telephone calls can now travel via the Internet, in a process known as VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol.
Besides work, the Internet also enhances play. Music, pictures and video can all be shared with a worldwide audience via the Internet. Want to preview your favorite band’s new song? You can probably hear a short piece of it for free. Games are available, some hosted on web sites or servers so you can try to save the universe while a "villain" playing the same game in Australia or Austria tries to destroy it. Dating and online gambling, including blackjack and poker, are two very popular diversions on the Internet.
However, the Internet has a dark side. It can be anonymous, or almost so, if you know how to cover your cyber address. This anonymity tempts people to do things they normally wouldn’t do in real life. Pornography sites have sprung up, some disguised as legitimate websites.
There are also threats to your computer and your personal information out in cyberspace. Computers run on programs, and those can be compromised by people with the technical knowledge and skill. They can figure out ways to infiltrate your computer. At the least, they can "spam" you with unwanted e-mail messages. At the worst, your computer may become infected with a "virus", a malignant program that takes over your computer. It may wipe out your hard drive and all the information on it, or send that information to the cyber-crook’s computer. Your personal information may be stolen, and that could lead to identity theft.
Using the Internet requires good protection in the form of a strong anti-virus program, as well as becoming educated about what "spoof" e-mail, spamming, and phishing are. But with proper precautions, your Internet experience can be very enriching, and you’ll soon discover that the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.

Do you know about internet? I guess, this is one of stupid question that I ask. Everyone in this world is so close with computers, so it is unavoidable for them to know about internet. Internet is one of the best sources for gathering any information regarding with your doubts. At present, the usage of internet is high in numbers, which expects to be more in nearly future. The internet is having more advantages, one page is not sufficient for me to explain all about it.

So here, we are going to see some of the best advantages among it. First, we will see about Email, which is one of the valuable tools especially for business. You can able to keep touch with your business clients by such email. The email allows you to send or receiving messages at any part of the world. We can perk up our contacts with every one in this world by only using of emails. This internet facility is available for every 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, and 365 days in a year.
Lots of information is stored in the internet, which are the ideal advantages of using such internet technology. Most of the people are dependent on internet in order to improve their knowledge. You can also able to chat with your friends or business clients by using such internet, which will improve your relations effectively. One can also able to pay their telephone bills, electric bills in a single place without straining yourself in a long queues. The internet is the best source for satisfy all your thirst of hearing your favorite songs, videos and so on. The internet will offer you lots of advantages and some disadvantages as well.

Challenges

The rapid growth of the Internet, both in terms of data traffic and in terms of diversity of services, has led to a high complexity of the Internet architecture, which is ever harder to manage, the more the Internet grows and the more new services are added. Over time, a number of additional protocols have been put on top of the TCP/IP protocol suite, in order to accommodate the increased requirements of fixed and mobile Internet services. There are currently close to 40 different protocols on the data plane and more than 40 protocols on the control plane of the Internet.

The entirety of these protocols looks more like a patchwork than a consistent architecture that addresses current and future challenges. In the course of deploying these patches, almost all of the original architectural principles have been breached. This has led to a number of urgent problems, particularly in the areas of security and scalability. Some pundits even speculate that the Internet may soon be on the brink of collapsing, if its rapid growth continues.

The challenges resulting from the current patchwork architecture are manifold, and the goals for the envisioned architecture are sometimes conflicting. Although there is no common and agreed vision yet, most experts would probably agree that the Future Internet should be dependable, scalable, manageable, sustainable, and flexible in order to integrate new services yet unknown. The main challenge is to develop an Internet architecture that has all these attributes. Will it be possible to protect users from spam and malicious code, yet retain the openness of the Internet? How can privacy and accountability be reconciled? Can the Internet be open for a multitude of new services while at the same time ensuring high reliability?

References:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/themes/informationenvironment.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet
http://www.observatoire-immateriel.com/spip.php?article341

♥♥Outsource Or Insource?♥♥

2009-10-17T01:30:00.000-07:00

OUTSOURCING

In the recent times there have been lots of speculations and negative criticisms against Outsourcing to offshore destinations. But it has to be noted that outsourcing as a phenomena is not new but has been going on since ages. If one looks at the outsourcing history one can realize that since ancient time’s companies in developed countries have outsourced services to nearby less developed counties.
Before the IT revolution, many companies in the US outsourced manufacturing jobs to countries like Canada, Mexico and South America in order to cut costs. Many even set up separate workstations and factories in these regions. The only difference between then and now can be seen in the frantic pace at which things are happening. Also as manufacturing jobs involved solid goods they needed to be transported that gave rise to a different kind of employment opportunity. IT outsourcing does not involved any transportation from the manufacturing destination to the client\'s place. Apart from these differences outsourcing history seems to be quite an old thing.

WHAT IS OUTSOURCING

It involves the transfer of the management and/or day-to-day execution of an entire business function to an external service provider. The client organization and the supplier enter into a contractual agreement that defines the transferred services. Under the agreement the supplier acquires the means of production in the form of a transfer of people, assets and other resources from the client. The client agrees to procure the services from the supplier for the term of the contract. Business segments typically outsourced include information technology, human resources, facilities and real estate management, and accounting. Many companies also outsource customer support and call center functions like telemarketing, customer services, market research, manufacturing and engineering.

IMPORTANCE OF OUTSOURCING

Business services outsourcing includes a wide variety of businesses that offer services to other businesses on an outsourced basis that can comprise of accounting, receivables collection, benefits administration, HR administration, recruiting, training, security and computer-related services.
This industry is one of the three major industries in the United States that has seen a major growth in the last decade due to recent technological developments.
As organizations have become more comfortable with the benefits of outsourcing transactional processes, they have progressively started to outsource higher value-added services and more comprehensive processes for example, they move from outsourcing just one, discrete function to outsourcing an entire end-to-end process (from accounts payable to complete finance and accounting operations, from payroll to entire HR operations).

OUTSOURCING - ADVANTAGE

One of the most effective marketing tools to maximize profit is outsourcing which is a contract or dealing from an outside supplier or source. With its various advantages and benefits, a lot of companies have already adopted this kind of strategy which maximizes profits and minimizes losses.
Outsourcing allows companies to avail the same level of quality service at a much lower price. For example, call center services and medical billing outsourced to countries such as Philippines and India will allow companies to save almost 50 to 60 percent of the original total cost. Another financial benefit of outsourcing is that entrepreneurs can save capital expenditure and training cost.
With this cost-effective strategy, companies can save time, manpower, infrastructure, and other expenditures, and since there is no need to build infrastructure, repair and maintenance costs can be avoided. With this financial benefit, companies can focus more on its core business by investing on equipment, technologies, software, and other things which can further expand the companies’ operation. In addition to this, the talents and skills provided by the employees can be focused on its specified job, also, since they have more time to concentrate on their duties, employees can further improve their skills which can help their companies to achieve its goals.
Another advantage of outsourcing is that it allows companies to avail high-quality services. In this highly-globalize world where there is tight competition among businesses, it is easy to find a good quality skilled and specialized services which can help companies further expand. Outsourcing will also allow companies to find a business partner where both of these can have a mutual benefit such as increased productivity level, improved skills and talents, enhanced efficiency level, increased level of quality, improved business performance, and increased value of the products and services.

Outsourcing- disadvantages
a.) Before deciding on outsourcing your company\'s business process, keep in mind the disadvantages of outsourcing:
b.) Less managerial control - It may be harder to manage the outsourcing service provider as compared to managing your own employees.
c.) Outsourcing company goes out of business - If your outsourcing service provide goes bankrupt or out of business, your company will have to quickly transition to a new service provider or take the process back in-house.
d.) May be more expensive - Sometimes it is cheaper to keep a process in-house as compared to outsourcing.
Security and confidentiality issues - If your company is outsourcing business processes such as payroll, confidential information such as salary will be known to the outsourcing service provider.

POSITIVE EFFECTS OF OUTSOURCING
• Aids globalization
• Improves the standard of living in developing countries
• Creation of good job opportunities in developing countries
• Generation of innovative low cost products in counties that outsource
• Better customer service at lower rates
• Generation of newer jobs with better pays in the long run

MAIN OUTSOURCING TRENDS FOR 2009

1.Consolidation
The end of 2008 caused aggravation of the competition between outsourcing companies. There are lots of offshore vendors nowadays and new companies emerge every day. And in the situation that has formed at the present moment a lot of outsourcing organizations are unable to survive. That\'s why experts predict some significant consolidations in the nearest future.
2. Globalization of the market
Globalization of the sector is caused by the outsourcing boom. By recent time main outsourcing countries have been considered to be India and China. They still remain, but a number of states have joined the \'outsourcing movement\', e.g. countries of Eastern Europe (Russia, Ukraine). So the outsourcing sector gains the global scale. The large number of outsourcing companies leads to the more definite specialization of outsourcing.

INSOURCING

Advantages to In-sourcing:
• Helps economy
• More jobs become available to others
Disadvantages to In-sourcing
• More expensive
• Less chance for new companies to succeed
Despite some disadvantages, there are still instance which other people take in-source into account. Wherein they find in-source a way to transform business as usual into business as exceptional. All salt-worthy executives know that the name of the game is reinvention, and those who play best win. What many don’t realize is that they can play the game a lot better, and improve their company’s performance by growing a culture of innovators from within, not by continuing to acquire innovation resources from without. If pervasive innovation is what you want, there’s only one way to get it: in-source it, and make it part of everyone’s job.

In-sourcing Innovation provides a straightforward depiction of why leading organizations are making innovation more systematic and structured.

There are also firms and organizations supporting the in-sourcing – FAIR supports efforts to “in-source” but advises a deliberate and systematic approach based on facts and analysis. The Federal Acquisition Innovation and Reform Institute (FAIR) support efforts to “in-source” critical positions and personnel so that the government possesses adequate organic capability to address the challenging and daunting tasks ahead of us. However, we recommend that the administration, Congress, and agencies proceed with caution, through a deliberate and systematic approach to in-sourcing based on facts and analysis. Agencies should also adopt realistic timelines for recruiting and integrating new personnel as well as developing new business processes, if required... Rushing to undo what has been in the making for years, perhaps decades will be counterproductive.

Guidance for in-sourcing should address the critical question of ‘inherently
governmental’ and core competencies. As the Obama administration, Congress, and agency leadership lay out guidance and legislation regarding positions that should be in-sourced, the most important questions that we should be asking are:
• What are ‘inherently governmental’ positions? Are there any currently beingperformed by contractors and if so, how can they in-sourced immediately?
• What core competencies are critical to achieving agency and program missions?
• Which positions are tied to core competencies?
• What is the right balance between government versus contractor positions (in the short term and longer term)?
• Beyond number of positions, does the government have the ability to create
• Efficient business models to deliver capability and expertise being provided by
Contractors?
• Where should government still continue to leverage government expertise and technical capabilities?? How and when should positions be in-sourced? What are critical processes and policies, such as the hiring process and the pay system, that need to be improved to attract the required number of staff?
Perhaps there are doubts turned into confusing thoughts between outsourcing and in-sourcing. In that way, we probably ask this question -- What is best for your organization?

If your organization has a number of non-core processes which are taking plenty of time, effort and resources to perform in-house, it would be wise to outsource these non-core functions. Outsourcing in this case, would help you save on time, effort, manpower and would also aid you in making quicker deliveries to your customers. If you require expertise services in areas which do not fall under your core competency, then outsourcing will be a good option as you can get access to expertise services. For reducing costs and making faster deliverable, outsourcing is again a good option.

If your work involves production, then it would be more ideal for your organization to opt for in-sourcing, as you can save on transportation costs and exercise a better control over your project.

It is not necessary to choose outsourcing over in-sourcing or vice versa. Your organization can outsource and in-source at the same time. By outsourcing and in-sourcing simultaneously, you can have the best of what both offers and your business can get a competitive advantage!

the use of in-house personnel or an internal department to meet an organization\'s need for specific services. In-sourcing is seen as a reaction to the growing popularity of outsourcing that has not always met expectations. An in-sourcing strategy is chosen where it appears that a better service can be provided from internal resources than from an external supplier. In some cases, organizations opt for a combination of outsourcing and in-sourcing, in which external service providers work in cooperation with in-house personnel.

As a student,I prefer to choose outsourcing in such a way that I can save my time and I don't need to work hard for it.

♥♥SONA 2009 Related ICT♥♥

2009-10-17T01:26:00.000-07:00

Information and communication technologies are an umbrella term that covers all technical means for processing and communicating information. The term has gained popularity partially due to the convergence of information technology (IT) and telecom technology. ICT defines a broad range of technologies, including methods for communication (communication protocols, transmission techniques, communications equipment, media (communication)), as well as techniques for storing and processing information (computing, data storage, etc.)

S o N a 2009-Related ICT

TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION
The Philippines\' National Telecommunications Commission (Filipino: Pambansang Komisyon sa Telekomunikasyon), abbreviated as NTC, is an agency of the Philippine government under the Commission on Information and Communications Technology responsible for the supervision, adjudication and control over all telecommunications services throughout the Philippines. Telecommunications service providers and equipment vendors today face significant challenges as they address the multitude of changes and competitive challenges sweeping their industry. Networks are increasing in size and complexity as demand pressures grow and as new technologies — from wireless communications and fiber optics to multimedia, computers and advanced Internet technologies converge upon the network. As the competitive environment intensifies, it becomes increasingly important for service providers and equipment vendors to be able to react to changes quickly and effectively while maintaining the highest levels of performance and reliability.

“In telecommunications, I instructed the Telecommunications Commission to
act already on the complaints of dropped calls and disappearing loads in
cellphones. We need to amend the Commonwealth-era Public Service Law.
And we need to do it now.”

Telecommunications Commission greatly influences people. Cell phones are becoming an integral part of today’s world. As we all know, especially in the Philippines, most Filipino people are using cellular phones and as part of our daily routine. Aside for fun, it is very much useful also in terms of communicating relatives and friends and able to reach someone in an emergency. We can’t deny the fact that there were times that we encounter problems particularly in loads that we had bought and unfortunately, sometimes it was stolen blaming it to the NTC. However they had found ways to prevent to this situation.

For any person of this century, cell phone has become a part of his life without which he feels as if he is a handicap. The cell phone is one of the new inventions that have occurred in the 21st century. Even though some people are still new to the cell phones in many places of the world, there are other places where the cell phones have become history.

People cannot leave from their home without taking the cell phones with them. For majority of the people, cell phones are the most convenient way for communication. The parents are also gifting the children with cell phones for many reasons. The major reason for these types of gifts is the concern about the safety of the children.
People find some or the other reason to use the cell phone. They are used to the habit of using the cell phone so much that people even make excuses for avoiding certain occasions where the use of cell phone may be restricted.
The major advantages of using cell phones are three:
---the process of communication has been made faster and easier by the use of cell phones.
---The accessories or the extra devices which are provided to the users with the cell phone make their life easier.
---Last but not the least, cell phones act as safety devices also fro those who use it.

BUSINESS PROCESS OUTSOURCING

“If in the past electronics flourished, today we are creating wealth by
developing the business process outsourcing (BPO) and tourism sectors as
additional engines of growth. Electronics and other manufactured exports rise
and fall in accordance with the state of the world economy. But BPO remains
resilient. With earnings of $6 billion and employment of 600,000, the BPO
phenomenon speaks eloquently of our competitiveness and productivity. Let
us have a Department of Information and Communications Technology.”

High performance businesses continually assess new opportunities to outpace market rivals. Business process outsourcing (BPO) provides such an opportunity. Today, high performance businesses are turning to BPO to help them respond to the unprecedented market conditions and make vital changes both quickly and dramatically. Accenture\'s comprehensive portfolio of business process outsourcing services provides industry-specific as well as cross-industry BPO solutions that enable our clients to achieve immediate and sustained cost savings, improve cash flow and drive topline growth—key priorities in today’s economy.

Outsourcing involves the transfer of the management and/or day-to-day execution of an entire business function to an external service provider. The client organization and the supplier enter into a contractual agreement that defines the transferred services. Under the agreement the supplier acquires the means of production in the form of a transfer of people, assets and other resources from the client. The client agrees to procure the services from the supplier for the term of the contract. Business segments typically outsourced include information technology, human resources, facilities, real estate management, and accounting. Many companies also outsource customer support and call center functions like telemarketing, CAD drafting, customer service, market research, manufacturing, designing, web development, print-to-mail, content writing, ghostwriting and engineering.

ADVANTAGES

Cost reductions---- Cost reduction is done through process improvements, reengineering and use of technologies that reduce and bring administrative and other costs under control.
Concentration on core business---- With the day-to-day back office operations taken care of, the management is free to concentrate more on the core business of the company.
Outside expertise---- Company is saved from the hassles of recruiting and training personnel. BPOs ensure that experts from another company provide the needed guidance and skills.
Cater to changing customer demands---- It is another great advantage of out sourcing the business processes. Many BPOs provide the management with flexible and scalable services to meet the customers\' changing requirements, and to support company acquisitions, consolidations, and joint ventures.
Revenue increase---- As stated above, by outsourcing non-core processes, companies can concentrate on increasing their sales and market share, develop new products; spread out into new markets and increase customer service and satisfactions.

AUTOMATED ELECTION

“As the seeds of fundamental political reform are planted, let us address the highest exercise of democracy -- voting! In 2001, I said we would finance fully automated elections. We got it, thanks to Congress..”

Each person is aiming for the unbeaten, well-organized, straightforward and reliable 2010 elections. Through automation we can ensure a credible transition of power and orderly elections, of course, there are also advantages and disadvantages of implementing the automated system for election. It provides efficient way for voting with less hassle. Voters cannot prolong the process of voting and lined up in a crowd. But a thought came across my mind. This could be the cause to worsen political situation. Possibilities for the candidates can hire a computer expert to hack the system and manipulate the entire votes. Unless if the system is fully secured.
The result, the unceasing corruption can worsen financial crisis we are experiencing today and another leading cause of poverty is corruption. If the government did not put their hands into their secret pocket, the less fortunate Filipinos will be given extra attention in terms of education to provide a better and brighter future.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.com
http://rtvm.gov.ph/attachments/1506_SONA%202009%20(Full%20English%20Version).pdf
http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/213088/gma-sona-bats-dept-ict
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_and_communication_technologies

♥♥IT Consultant ?♥♥

2009-10-17T01:22:00.000-07:00

An IT consultant works in partnership with clients, advising them how to use information technology in order to meet their business objectives or overcome problems. Consultants work to improve the structure and efficiency and of an organsiation\'s IT systems.
IT consultants may be involved in a variety of activities, including marketing, project management, client relationship management and systems development.
They may also be responsible for user training and feedback. In many companies, these tasks will be carried out by an IT project team. IT consultants are increasingly involved in sales and business development, as well as technical duties.

with IT at the heart of the organization, not only for transfer of the billions of purchases made through its reach, but also for the decision making prospects of its owner/customers, namely the banks that both use and own the service. All in all, these lively discussions show how radical decentralization works with technology and suggests that other organizations of the “here and now” can benefit from revisiting their information sharing services.

Common Impact seeks an IT Consultant to design technology solutions to meet our nonprofit
clients’ needs. For the past eight years, Common Impact has built the leading model that connects skilled
professionals from global companies to high-potential local nonprofits; the IT Consultant will be
responsible for facilitating these connections while helping Common Impact grow its own systems and
operations to new geographies. This is an exciting opportunity, reporting to our Managing Director, for an
experienced architect to design technical solutions for nonprofits’ greatest challenges, to join Common
Impact’s talented team, and to grow a proven model of social impact.

INTERNET
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP). It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private and public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, and other technologies. The Internet carries a vast array of information resources and services, most notably the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support electronic mail, in addition to popular services such as online chat, file transfer and file sharing, online gaming, and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) person-to-person communication via voice and video.

TECHNOLOGY
Our schools thrive on information. In the ever-changing world filled with new technology, our teachers and students require the right information, from the right sources, today. Having direct access to industry information gives the competitive edge needed to succeed. Student performance can be improved when the enhancement of teaching and learning using technology is adopted as the norm.
Technology is the need of the day. The technological advancements have made society take a leap towards success. Every technological reform is a small step towards advancement. Every new invention in technology is a step towards progress of mankind. Centuries ago, hardly anyone would have even dream of working on a computer. Generations of the yesterday years would have hardly imagined being able to communicate with people on the other side of the globe. But there were some intelligent minds to dared to dream of such revolutionary discoveries and they made the \'impossibles\' possible. Ours as well as our future generations are lucky to be able to witness the technological reforms. We are fortunate enough to lead a life of luxury and comfort. Since ours are the times of technology, why not let the technological reform spread far and wide? Why not make the masses aware of the new technology? Why not equip the entire society with the knowledge of the new inventions in technology? Computers can offer livelier explanations of various subjects. The Internet is an ocean of information, which can be harnessed for the rendition of information in school.

Innovation refers to a new way of doing something. It may refer to incremental, radical, and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations. A distinction is typically made between invention, an idea made manifest, and innovation, ideas applied successfully

Infrastructure
Infrastructure is the basic, underlying framework or features of a system or organization. Can be defined as the basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function. The term typically refers to the technical structures that support a society, such as roads, water supply, sewers, power grids, telecommunications, and so forth. Viewed functionally, infrastructure facilitates the production of goods and services; for example, roads enable the transport of raw materials to a factory, and also for the distribution of finished products to markets. In some contexts, the term may also include basic social services such as schools and hospitals.

Inorder for the internet connectivity to be improved and as an IT CONSULTANT, I would suggest the following.

DSL TECHNOLOGY

DSL (Eng. Digital Subscriber Loop) - a digital subscriber loop, the family of broadband access to the Internet technology. The standard data reception speed fluctuates between128 Kbps up to 24,000 Kbps, depending on the applied DSL technology and its level.
The commercial success of DSL and similar technologies is reflected in the fact that in the last decades, as electronics is becoming faster and cheaper, the costs of digging out pits for the new wiring have remained unchangeably high. All of the DSL technologies use highly complex algorithms for converting the digital signal, overcoming the inseparable limitations of wires` strands. Recently costs of a similar installation would have been incredibly high but thanks to VLSI technology, costs of installation of DSL in the already existing local terminals, with DSLAM multiplexer on one end and a DSL modem on the other, requires a smaller amount of expenditures that could arise at the same route and distance, when installing a new optic fiber.
DSL technology is used in majority of apartments and minor offices, the proper filters enable simultaneous operation of voice services and of DSL. DSL modem can use the same subscriber`s line that the communication devices based on POTS technology use, turning faxes and analogue modems on. At the same time, only one DSL modem can use the subscriber`s line. The standard method of making DSL available to many computers in the same premises is using a router, which connects the DSL modem and local Ethernet or Wi-Fi net. The channels of dispatch and receipt streams are used to obtain connection between the subscriber and Internet services supplier.

DVB-S TECHNOLOGY
DVB-S is currently one of the most popular methods of satellite access to the Internet. As every connection, DVB-S has its drawbacks and advantages resulting directly from its physical construction and laws that manage it. Major advantages include:

- Global reach - the technology in-question, given application of proper layout of the satellites on the orbits (rose or polar) provides practically global reach, including areas on greater latitudes (poles). Unfortunately, geostationary orbits, which provide access in areas on moderate latitudes (Europe etc.) are currently used in commercial solutions.

- flexibility - it is obvious that the technique consists in wireless radio transmission, in consequence of which, the client is independent of all types of cables connecting him to the operator. As a result, it allows for application of portable (operating without movement but with the possibility to move them) and mobile (with operation in movement option) access terminals, which conditions the flexibility through adjustment of the system for clients` needs.

There are a few problems connected with this kind of access. First of all, the operator must guarantee constant access to his network (constant access to services and incessant rendering of the given service). He is also obliged to provide proper quality of the services (QoS) and constant control of this parameter. Failure to fulfill these conditions may force today`s client with high expectations (ex. a bank) to use services offered by a different operator. The next problem is the maximal radiation power of the receiving-dispatching system (EIRP), which is strictly determined by Telecommunication Regulatory Offices in the given country. The remaining, rather important aspects include: right capacity of the system and provision the necessary bandwidths in proper frequency ranges.
A crucial feature of the teleinformatic system are minor delays in transmission. As it was mentioned before, construction of the link itself (precisely distance between the satellite and Earth) introduces certain limitations connected with the speed of propagation of the electromagnetic wave in free space. The picture below presents the possible orbits on which satellites can be located. Logically, the shortest transmission delays will take place in case of units placed closer to Earth. Theoretic transmission delays for individual orbits are:
- LEO (Low Earth Orbit) - from 2 to 50ms
- MEO (Medium Earth Orbit) - from 30 to 70ms
- GSO (GeoStationary Orbit) - approx.120ms
- HEO (High Eliptical Orbit) - undetermined value due to far too great changes of the distance from Earth in time function

The satellite access systems usually operate in two frequency bands: Ku (10-18GHz) and Ka (18-31GHz). Ka band was divided into two sub-bands: dedicated to the `downward` link (satellite-terminal) - 19.7-21.2 GHz and to the `upward` link (terminal-satellite) - 29.5-31 GHz. Moreover, application of the so-called V band(40-75GHz) is also planned in communication via satellite. Multi-access to the system is realized in MF-TDMA (Multi Frequency Time Division Multiple Access) system, which consists in separation of particular tome spaces for the user in a given (one of many) frequency band (3 transmission dimensions - time, frequency and level of the signal)

OPTICAL-FIBER TECHNOLOGY
FITL (Fiber In The Loop) - Fiber in the Loop system
the latest offer of world telecommunication concerns are fiber in the loop systems which enable common realization of various telecommunication and TV services. Such type of systems includes FITL system. FITL enables construction of a common network for rendering services to telephone and TV subscribers with limitation or complete elimination of hitherto used copper wires. FITL systems constantly try to live up to forever growing requirements towards public telephone network operators. Apart from provision of basic telecommunication services, such as telephone connectivity, more and more is said about the possibility to render services out of the basic range, such as multimedia services: video on demand, videoconferences, video telephone, quick access to the Internet, electronic shopping and so on. FITL system widely uses the fiber technique, recognized and tested in cable transmission lines. It assumes application of optical carriers, mainly in main or distributive part of a classic access network. Depending on location of the optical network unit, ONU, three types of network architecture can be distinguished: FTTB (Fiber To The Building), FTTC (Fiber To The Curb) or FTTH (Fiber To The Home). Name of a given architecture describes the place of location of ONU. All of these solutions can use the transport part of a telecommunication network to obtain access to the group of services, which is also based on the optical-fiber cable.
Reference models for FITL architecture

FITL system consists of the following elements:
a) OLT (Optical Line Termination) - termination of the optical line, sometimes called HDT (Host Digital Termination),
b) ONU (Optical Network Unit) - optical network unit,
c) ODN (Optical Distribution Network) - optical distribution network.

OLT, optical line termination, is a type of access net contact point with the access point to telecommunication services (depending on configuration of the network, it can either be an access group or directly the service group. ex. the telephone exchange). Physically the connection between OLT and one or more of the optical network units is realized via ODN on one or two optical fibers, depending on the applied transmission method (possible duplex, diplex or simplex). ONU, delivers application information of the given telecommunication service between ODN and the subscriber and the other way around. The contact point of the user with the access network is subscriber`s plug.

FTTC, FTTB, FTTH Architectures Specification
Depending on location on ONU module in the access net, three FILT network architectures are distinguished:
a) FTTC - Fiber To The Curb,
b) FTTB - Fiber To The Building,
c) FTTH - Fiber To The Home.

It must be noted, however, that the above specifications determine the level of penetration of an optical-fiber medium into the access network. Transmission from ONU to the subscriber is based on classical access net, i.e. traditional copper strand using one of the available xDSL transmission techniques. All of the above-mentioned solutions provide a sufficient band for present and future interactive, distribution, narrow- or broad-band applications.

WIRELESS LOCAL AREA NETWORK TECHNOLOGY
WLAN - Wireless Local Area Network - is at present probably the most popular and the most often used wireless way to access the Internet by the net users. However, this solution is not one of those that guarantees top quality of the services (QOS) but the price one must pay investing in the devices totally makes up for this drawback. The equipment, especially the 2,4 GHz, is relatively cheap and is still getting cheaper. That is why it is willingly used by minor Internet providers to solve the last-mile problem.
The IEEE 802.11 standard is promoted by the Local and Metropolitan Area Networks Standards Committee, IEEE Computer Society. Before it was approved in June 1997, it was preceded by six draft versions. Only its final shape was recognized by both IEEE and ISO/IEC standards. It enabled a big group of producers and salesmen to develop a wide range of devices for ISM (Industrial, Scientific and Medical) and UNII (Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure) bands on general release.

At present a few standards of WLANs are dominant. The most popular ones are the following: 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g. Due to this a few physical layers are defined, which give the designer the possibility to chose one of them, depending on the system requirements and future users� needs. The IEEE 802.11 standard defines two lowest layers of the wireless computer network model operating with the throughput in the radio linkup to 2 Mbit/s. It presumes two types of radio interface: operating within 2,4 GHz band and one using the IR. The original specification of IEEE 802.11 was characterized by low bandwidth and problems with co-cooperativeness.

802.11b specification, published in 1999, determined a new PHY layer which guarantees a greater bit speed with application of DSSS (Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum) in 2,4 GHz range. Devices operating in this standard can dispatch data with speed up to 11 Mb/s. 802.11a specification was presented in 2001 and it defines PHY layer operating in 5 GHz band. The maximum bandwidth was increased up to 54 MB/s, thanks to, among others, application of a new modulation method, OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing). 802.11g is the latest PHY specification, operating in 2,4 GHz range and using OFDM spectrum dispersing technique.

WLAN TOPOLOGY
a) The temporary net ad-hoc in the group of 802.11x standards is called IBSS net (Independent Basic Service Set). In order to created IBSS at least two devices are required (ex. computers) equipped with wireless network adapter cards. Such a web is not connected to a wireless net and, therefore, data exchange with the framework net is impossible (ex. access to sources, ex. Internet). Ad-hoc net does not require application of access points.
b) Dependent net (BSS - Basic Service Set) uses devices called access points, Aps. Their task is to reinforce and regenerate received signals, to manage movement and provide access to the wireless part of the infrastructure. The reach of a dependent network is limited to one access point within which the mobile station may move without breaking the connection.
c) Compound network (ESS - Extended Service Set) is created when at least two BSS sub-networks are connected to LAN; it is the most developed example of a combined network which can be successfully used for creating vast, combined, local computer networks.

WiMAX TECHNOLOGY
WiMAX is a wireless access to the Internet technology whose aim is to provide broadband access to the network to end users, mainly in cities. It is based on the American IEEE 802.16 and European standards ETSI HiperMAN. WiMAX is an alternative to wireless networks, especially in areas where telecommunication network structure is poorly developed. WiMAX provides optimal solutions of the so-called last-mile problem, i.e. leading the link to its end user. Both standards (European and American) make creation of many base stations` configurations possible, which, in consequence, may cause a situation in which devices made by different producers may not co-operate with each other. That is why WiMAX`s task is to standardize the method of devices` configuration - to solve this problem. The discussed solutions are supposed to guarantee the possibility of co-operation of the devices both with and without direct optical visibility of the aerials and they also give operators the possibility to extend their range of access to the Internet services with mobility by creating competitive solutions (VoIP) for mobile networks. Solutions described in the hereby article refer to 802.16 standard and that is why it is worth to begin with presentation of the standards in-question. It was created from 1999 and, as one may expect, many versions of it have hitherto been created. At the moment two of them are valid:

- 802.16-2004 finished in 2004, it offers access to the network for terminals that are not on the move.
- 802.16e finished in 2005, it offers access to the network for terminals that are either stationary or on the move. Certification of devices that comply with this standard should begin in 2007. As I have already mentioned, the technology does not require direct visibility of the aerials, therefore it uses the NLOS model of radio waves propagation ( Non Line of Sight). Application of such a model created certain problems for the standard creators, the most important one being extension of reach of the system. Given lack of optical visibility, multiway propagation takes place, which means that many various signals reach the terminal, signals with various delay times, disturbed signals and with polarity different than in the direct signal. These phenomena cause a considerable decrease of the received power. That is why, in order to improve the system parameters, a number of solutions such as those presented below was applied:

OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing): It is a multiplexing technique in which every data portion is sent on a separate available subcarrier, into which the available spectrum is divided, i.e. the data stream is divided into many parallel smaller sub-streams. The subcarriers, each of which transmits one sub-stream, are orthogonal towards each other. In other words, they do not disturb each other despite the fact that they overlap. This solution is resistant to multiroad propagation and in case of degradation of one of the subcarriers, the whole data stream is not lost, only the part transmitted on the given subcarrier. Basing on OFDM, a whole OFDMA method can be created, used optionally in the upward connection, in which every user is allocated with a specific number of subcarriers out of the total number of subcarriers for transmission.
Division into sub-channels: such division is optional in the upward link. Without the division into sub-channels, construction of price-effective terminals would be difficult to realize. For example, if the terminal wanted to transmit in the same way as the base station, then it would require great power amounts and complex broadcasting systems which would result in higher expenses. Reduction of terminal`s transmitter`s power to ex. 25% of the base station transmitter`s power can be achieved in two ways: either by using all of the subcarriers and reducing power of each of them by 75% or by using division into sub-channels, i.e. transmit on every fourth subcarrier with the same power as the base station. Both solutions require the terminal to transmit with equal power. The second solution is obviously far better and its only drawback is fourfold reduction of the upward link`s speed. However, thanks to this, the terminal may transmit with far lower power than the base station and therefore, its costs decrease.

Application of aerial techniques:
- AAS: such aerials make it possible to direct the aerial beam in a given way. During the signal transmission light from the reflector may be directed at a given user. During the transmission, AAS can direct beams only in the direction from which the transmission comes.
- MIMO: application of numerous aerials for signal transmission at both ends of the radio connection (i.e. in the terminal and in the base station). This contributes to considerable speed increase.
- Adaptor modulation. This technique consists in the choice of the right modulation, depending on the distance between the terminal and the base station. The greater the distance, the more susceptible the signal is to degradations. Therefore, modulations more resistant to disturbances are used at the expense of lower transmission speed.
Others:
-Separation of transmission and receipt
-Proper detection and transmission errors correction techniques
-Power steering

VOICE OVER IP-INTERNET TELEPHONY
VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is a technology used for sending sound via network based on IP protocol, which is e.g. Internet. It allows for integration of telephony and data transmission into one net thanks to treating sound as an ordinary stream of data. This technology is more and more often perceived as an alternative to casual telephone networks due to its numerous advantages. VoIP enables making phone calls also to subscribers who do not have Internet and use traditional telephone network or a mobile.

The basic principle of the technology\'s operation is relatively simple, namely the speech signal is transferred to digital representation, it undergoes compression with a proper codec and then it is divided into packets and sent via IP protocol. Many new technologies are used here, including logical elements and special protocols. Logical elements are necessary for, among others, managing notifications and storing information on it, routing packets etc. New protocols are mainly signal protocols, which means that they are used for making connections and multimedia sessions, determining user\'s location, translation of addresses, negotiations of parameters of the notification link, disconnecting and managing notifications, billings and realizations of safety mechanisms. At present two main protocols are used for VoIP, namely H.323 and SIP.

H.323 Protocol
The first version of the protocol was adopted over 10 tears ago, namely in 1996, the second one in 1998. It belongs to the family of H.32x protocols, which describe multimedia connections inside various networks:
H.320 - narrow-band digital networks ISDN
H.321 - broad-band digital networks ISDN and ATM
H.322 - packet networks with guaranteed band
H.323 - packet networks with no guaranteed band
H.324 - analogue POTS networks

All of these protocols support various sets of audio and video codecs, depending on the band made available in the network. They can operate with transmission control (TCP) or without it (UDP), where in VoIP connections no control protocols are used due to additional delays. H.323 supervises the process of sending multimedia data in packet networks, performing this task in real time. Components of H.323 precisely define how particular components of the system, operating according to the protocol, initiate multimedia sessions and how working posts exchange compressed audio and video data between themselves. H.323 supervises processes of sending multimedia data in packet networks, performing this task in real time. Architecture of telephone IP network, base on H.323 standard, consists of four basic elements: terminals, gatekeepers, gateways and MCU (Multipoint Control Units).
Terminals are clients who have the possibility of initiation and receiving notifications. They are also used for sending and receiving two-way stream of data. A terminal can be both, software operating on a PC and a special device designed for this purpose. All terminals should make carrying out a telephone conversation possible, while data or video service is optional.
Gatekeepers manage the so-called zone, which is a collection of terminals, gateways and MCU. H.323 standard divides the net into these zones. Notifications inside a net are managed by a gatekeeper. Inter-zone notifications can engaged many gatekeepers. A gatekeeper, when present in the net, supervises the course of all telephone conversations carried out in a zone. Its basic tasks are the following: control of the available band, routing notifications, receiving, refusing notifications in a zone, translation of addresses and user authorization. Gatekeeper is also an interface to other H.323 networks. A \"gatekeeper\" is an optional element of the network but if it is present in a given subnetwork, then the terminals can use it.
A gateway is responsible for connecting the telephone IP network to other types of network. For example, a gateway can connect H.323 network with SIP, PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) or ISDN networks. The gateway must provide an interface of real time between various transmission formats and communication procedures. Moreover, it is responsible for establishing and disconnecting connections in both connected networks. The gateway must therefore have mechanisms converting various formats at its disposal and it must operate networks based on various technologies. MCU runs conferences in which at least three end points participate. An MCU unit manages conference resources, runs negotiations between end points (agreeing on, for instance, the method of encoding audio and video data) and it can steer streams of packets containing multimedia data. MCU consists of two basic elements: Multipoint Controller (MC) and optionally a few Multipoint Processors (MP). MC is responsible for exchange of information and for negotiation of communication parameters between the end points, it runs H.255.0 signaling MP is among others responsible for mixing various multimedia data, format translations and eventual redistribution of streams from users.

What is very often possible is integration of network elements in one physical device. For example, functionality of a gatekeeper can be combined with functionality of a gateway and an MCU or an MCU can be built into the terminal so as to make conference connections possible without additional devices.

LINUX ROUTER FOR SMALL ISP
Everything takes place in Linux environment (distribution practically does not matter but personally I recommend Slackware). I presume that people reading this article are equipped with basic knowledge on compilations, patching and software installation in Linux systems and that they are familiar with basic principles of working with packet filter iptables and a tool for queuing tc. The following elements influence the system so that it manages the band properly:

- linux kernel in version 2.6.15.x
- patch to linux kernel -2.6.14-imq6.diff
- patch to kernel esfq-kernel.patch
- latest iptables (1.3.5 currently)
- patch for the iptables iptables-1.3.0-imq1.diff
- ipp2p module for iptables
- packet iproute2
- patch for iproute2 esfq-iproute2.patch

I suggest installation of the software in the above-stated order. Kernel 2.6.x is much more stable than series 2.4.x. The above configuration was tested by me on a big group of routers (10 ) and it has been working perfectly well. Needles to say, in Linux, you can only limit the output movement from a given interface with tc (Traffic Control). What we need then is a virtual mediation interface (the so-called IMQ) to which the Input movement should be redirected (the so-called Input). Thanks to such an operation, the input movement could be limited as output movement from a virtual IMQ. Obviously, queuing of solutions can be done without IMQ but I do not recommend this method because it is based up feigning packets, which makes later classification and prioritization impossible. I need to say a few more words on the interfaces. No network card based on Realtek\'s chipset should be used (especially RTL 8319), as they are devices designed for working posts and they lose work stability when there are more connections, which is manifested in an increase of the \'pings\' and in many other awkward phenomena. Instead of them I recommend cards based upon Intel Pro or 3com.
Another aspect is the ESFQ mechanism (Enhanced Stochastic Fair Queuing) for the WAN router. In comparison to the traditionally used SFQ mechanism, it enables just division of links with a view to connections from the source and target address (hash src, hash dst - upload, download to WAN). Thanks to this, we are able to make WAN interfaces totally independent from LAN interfaces. Briefly speaking - no queuing is necessary for LAN, the whole movement will be justly separated between them. All of the above solutions refer obviously to HTB mechanism (Hierarchic Token Bucket).

Information Technology in Education, effects of the continuing developments in information technology (IT) on education. The pace of change brought about by new technologies has had a significant effect on the way people live, work, and play worldwide. New and emerging technologies challenge the traditional process of teaching and learning, and the way education is managed. Information technology, while an important area of study in its own right, is having a major impact across all curriculum areas. Easy worldwide communication provides instant access to a vast array of data, challenging assimilation and assessment skills. Rapid communication, plus increased access to IT in the home, at work, and in educational establishments, could mean that learning becomes a truly lifelong activity—an activity in which the pace of technological change forces constant evaluation of the learning process itself.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet
http://www.speedtest2.com/

♥♥Company Barriers in their IS/IT Implementation♥♥

2009-10-17T01:19:00.000-07:00

It seems that some business people always seem to be prosperous and successful and are able to easily attract clients and more revenue? While other business people seem to struggle constantly and despite their hard work and sincere efforts, they do not prosper and are not successful. Well, it really depends on there IS/IT implementation.
In different areas about businesses, especially in IS/IT implementations in a particular organization, there should be some barriers or risk that a company may encounter. Organizations are as alike and unique as human beings. Similarly, group processes can be as straightforward or as complex as the individuals who make up the organization. It is vital to successfully launching a new program that the leaders understand the strengths, weaknesses, and idiosyncrasies of the organization or in a particular company. Well in fact, we can have or find a company having a profitable and successful one when a certain company experiences some barriers in implanting there IS/IT. Barriers can be consider as an obstacle which prevents a given policy instrument being implemented.

In the company that we have visited which is the NCCC Mall.

PROFILE:
Their associates, customers, business partners and community. Since starting out as a textile store in 1952 they continue to grow, expanding to different retail businesses and locations to serve more people. They strive to offer Service from the Heart first of all to their associates. They also maintain solid relationships with their business partners to provide a wide assortment of basic and unique merchandise. They are proud of journey and we continue to pay tribute to o founders and history by living up to core values of humility, caring, hard work, excellence and fun. They live for their vision to be A Leader Who Cares. "
NCCC is one of the companies in regard of merchandising /retailing and having service to the Pilipino people .They showcase the need of the people ,they provides jobs and render service in the community.

NCCC starts only from one commercialize center that works manually for their documentation until they become a corporation that adopt the IT /IS change for the better management and improvement of their services and be a competitor.

To render more good services to every customer, NCCC created an ICT (Information and Communications Technology) Department. This department divided into three groups.

Application Group
---In charge for Systems Development, Applications development & support, Lead programming and database administration
Hardware Network /Security Group
---In charge for the security, maintenance of their network as well as software.
Operation Group
---In charge price controlling (inventory and cost benefit and risk analyses).

One barrier which the NCCC mall encountered especially in there is/IT implementation is the “Competition in Business” as cited by Mr. Hervin Miclat, current supervisor of HNS (Hardware Networking Software) “There should be risk in every IS/IT change.” Since we all know that when we talked about business there should be a lot of challenges so that a particular company may have a fast and profitable means of industrializing. In fact, being competitive and profitable mainly the aim of every company all through out the world. For them to earn, they should have a clear and fast system compared to other certain company in the market.
In connection with this, it servers as a challenge to their company to implement and create systems like MMS (Merchandise Management System) which concentrates on vendor management , price management , promotion management , financial control and merchandise receiving, allocation and replenishment Inventory control and procurement.
One simple example mentioned by Sir Miclat is the releasing of receipt (the title of the property obtained in the exchange.) For an instance that there is a STORE A and STORE B.

STORE A
•Releases receipts to their respective customers manually. Done through hand-written or hand-completed receipts.
STORE B
•Releases receipts to their respective customers in a printed record. Done through output devices.

In this case if you are wise customer, you should have to buy your items to a company or business establishment which releases fast and clear receipts. As time changes we should have to adapt the flow of technology. Why should you choose STORE A when there is other company (referring to STORE B) which offers you a fast and hustle free.
Operating System it mainly refers to security and vulnerability issues. These are hone to hacker to use and then compromised the system. Management challenge to conduct a case study regarding to this issue to protect and secure the system against the hacker.

One best example of this is the Microsoft 2000 and Microsoft 2008. Obviously since 2008 is the latest so the company would prefer to used the Microsoft 2008 because it contains a lot of new features and well-organized. This would also make the company to be more competitive in the market.
Other cited example was a server. Pertaining to a certain situation, if a company planning to change a new server, first they should a key study prior to the changes. At that way they can compare which server is appropriate to be used.

Firewall.A firewall is a part of a computer system or network that is designed to block unauthorized access while permitting authorized communications. It is a device or set of devices configured to permit, deny, encrypt, decrypt, or proxy all (in and out) computer traffic between different security domains based upon a set of rules and other criteria. It has a Unified Technology System (UTM).If the company decides to change a system, they should analyze the risk if they will change it or not then list the difference between the old and new system to know which is the appropriate.

Other Important Barriers:

COST
----in every changes in a particular company especially in updating new versions, it is very much important to consider certain amount to satisfy the company needs and to have a competitive business all through out the market.
This may include the following:
Installation- referring to the system development
Communication-referring to the cost that is being used in terms of sending and receiving such information

KNOWLEDGE
----All businesses have access to an extensive pool of knowledge - whether this is their understanding of customers' needs and the business environment or the skills and experience of staff.
The way a business gathers, shares and exploits this knowledge can be central to its ability to develop successfully. This doesn't just apply to huge multinational companies. Knowledge management can benefit everyone from a local newsagent to a manufacturing firm.

References:
http://www.nccc.com.ph/
http://en.wikipedia.org

♥♥Green Campus Computing♥♥

2009-10-17T01:13:00.000-07:00

OFFICE COMPUTER-GENERATED WASTE

Important steps toward green computing include modifying paper and toner use, disposal of old computer equipment and purchasing decisions when considering new computer equipment.

Paper Waste
• Print as little as possible. Review and modify documents on the screen and use print preview. Minimize the number of hard copies and paper drafts you make. Instead of printing, save information to disks, or USB memory sticks.
• Recycle waste paper, have a recycle bin at each community printer and copier location.
• Buy and use recycled paper in your printers and copiers. From an environmental point of view, the best recycled paper is 100 percent post-consumer recycled content.
• Save e-mail whenever possible and avoid needless printing of e-mail messages.
• Use e-mail instead of faxes or send faxes directly from your computer to eliminate the need for a hard copy. When you must fax using hard copies, save paper using a "sticky" fax address note and not a cover sheet.
• On larger documents, use smaller font sizes (consistent with readability) to save paper.
• If your printer prints a test page whenever it is turned on, disable this unnecessary feature.
• Before recycling paper, which has print on only one side, set it aside for use as scrap paper or for printing drafts.
• When documents are printed or copied, use double-sided printing and copying. If possible, use the multiple pages per sheet option on printer properties.
• When general information-type documents must be shared within an office, try circulating them instead of making an individual copy for each person. Even better, make the document electronically available to the audience and display it on a projector.

Electronic Waste
• Use the campus network where possible to transfer files. This avoids the need to write CDs or DVDs or use floppy diskettes.
• Use USB memory sticks instead of CDs, DVDs, or floppies.
• Use re-writable CDs and DVDs.
• There are hopes of the University Recycling program addressing e-waste in the near future

http://www.it.utah.edu/leadership/green/basics.html Basketball

ENERGY EFFICIENT COMPUTING
Here are some tested suggestions that may make it possible for you to reduce your computer energy consumption by 80 percent or more while still retaining most or all productivity and other benefits of your computer system, including network connectivity.

Screen savers save no energy

http://ecenter.colorado.edu/files/e341bac6bec357e48e6abfe49f51c3d70ad9f894.gif" border="0" alt="" />

if screen saver images appear on your monitor for more than 5 minutes, you are wasting energy! Screen saver programs may save the phosphors in your monitor screen, but this is not really a concern with newer monitors, especially LCD screens. And they do not save any energy.
A screen saver that displays moving images causes your monitor to consume as much as electricity as it does when in active use. These screen saver programs also involve system interaction with your CPU that results in additional energy consumption. A blank screen saver is slightly better but even that only reduces monitor energy consumption by a few percent.

When not in use, turn off the juice

This is the most basic energy conservation strategy for any type of equipment. Consider the following:
• Turn off your computer and/or peripherals when they are not in use. Turning on and off will not harm the equipment.
• Don’t run computers continuously unless they are in use continuously.
• Turn off at night and on weekends
• Look for ways to reduce the amount of time your computer is on without adversely affecting your productivity.

OTHER GREEN COMPUTING PRACTICES

You can take a giant step toward environmentally responsible or “green” computing by conserving energy with your computer. But green computing involves other important steps as well. These pertain to paper use, toner cartridges, disposal of old computer equipment and purchasing decisions when considering new computer equipment.
Reducing Paper Waste
Rather than creating a paperless office, computer use has vastly increased paper consumption and paper waste. Here are some suggestions for reducing waste:
• Print as little as possible. Review and modify documents on the screen and use print preview. Minimize the number of hard copies and paper drafts you make. Instead of printing, save information to disks.
Recycle waste paper.
• Buy and use recycled paper in your printers and copiers. From an environmental point of view, the best recycled paper is 100 percent post consumer recycled content.

http://ecenter.colorado.edu/energy/projects/green_computing.htm Basketball

Campus User
Green Computing Guide

There are 3 stages in the life cycle of an electronic product –
(1) the decision to purchase a product, (2) use and maintenance
of the product, and (3) its end life. At each stage, you can make
decisions that lessen the environmental impact and promote
better use of resources.

Purchasing Products

Do your research to ensure you purchase equipment that was made
with efforts to reduce environmental impact. The EPA offers a
procurement resource called “Electronic Product
Environmental Assessment Tool” to help purchasers evaluate and
compare computer equipment. It also includes information about
which manufacturers will take back and recycle their old products.
EPA’s Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool
http://www.epeat.net/

Some things to consider
• PROTECT OUR ENVIRONMENT: Buy from companies that design
their products to be easily recycled with less toxic materials,
increased energy conservation, recyclable packaging, with longer life
spans, and the option to upgrade.
• PROTECT THE HEALTH, SAFETY, AND ETHICAL TREATMENT OF
WORKERS WORLDWIDE: Buy from companies with ethical labor
standards for their employees and sub‐contractors which pay decent
wages, control health and safety risks, prohibit child and prison labor,
prohibit discrimination by gender, religion, race, caste, ethnicity,
sexual orientation, disability, union membership, or political
affiliation.
Many of the computers that were issued by IT to the campus
community meet the EPEAT gold or silver standard. As older
computers continue to be replaced, we are working towards having
all computers meet this standard. All CRT monitors on campus are
being replaced by flat screen LCDs which save a lot more energy.

http://www.fullerton.edu/it/news/publications/green_computing_guide.pdf

Simple steps you can take to save energy and resources

SCREEN SAVERS SAVE NO ENERGY

A screen saver that displays moving images causes your monitor to consume as much as electricity as it
does when in active use. Screen saver programs may save the phosphors in your monitor screen, but
this is not a concern with newer monitors, especially LCD screens. These screen saver programs also
involve system interaction with your CPU that results in additional energy consumption. The best option
is NOT to use a screen saver.

REDUCE YOUR COMPUTER’S POWER AND OPERATING COSTS

Campus computers will automatically go into stand‐by mode after 1 hour of inactivity. Monitors go sleep
after 20 minutes of idle time. Using the “stand‐by” feature will save you almost as much energy as if you
were to turn off your computer for the night. Your computer only truly uses zero energy when it is
unplugged. Computers should not be turned off at night or unplugged so that critical updates and
security patches can be downloaded from the network by your computer. It is important for your
computer to maintain local‐area network connectivity for security reasons. Monitors do use zero energy
when turned off. When you leave for the day, turn off your monitor, your printer and other peripherals.
Leave your computer in stand‐by mode. For more information about your Power Management settings.
http://www.fullerton.edu/it/services/Hardware/FAQ/powermgmt.asp

REDUCING PAPER WASTE AND TONER USAGE
While a paperless environment can be a goal to strive for, it takes a
coordinated commitment and changes in processes to accomplish
something like this. If that is not possible with your office, try these
suggestions:
--Print as little as possible.
-- Buy and use recycled paper
http://www.fscus.org/.

--Use e‐mail instead of faxes
--Reuse paper and recycle waste paper
-- Use double‐sided printing and copying.
-- Use smaller font sizes
--Print in “toner‐saving mode”

TOP TEN ways to REDUCE ENERGY usage

1. Turn off lights, appliances and computers when not in use. Even for a few minutes!
2. Replace incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL).
3. Plug electronics into power strips and turn them off when not in use to avoid phantom loads.
4. Turn down your thermostat and put on a sweater in the winter; turn up the thermostat and turn on a fan in the summer!
5. Turn your computer Monitor to save mode, screen savers don't save energy! Enable Power Management: In Windows XP; In Mac OS X, You go to 'System Preferences', click on the 'Energy Saver' icon, and set the computer and display (monitor), and Hard Drive to go to sleep. Alternatively, you can use a third-party program, or Press Cmd-Shift-Eject and your OS X Mac will immediately enter sleep mode.
6. Buy Energy Star® labeled appliances.
7. When doing laundry, wash full loads and use cold or warm rinses
8. Take shorter or cooler showers.
9. Waiting until after 7pm (after peak) to use appliances, such as, washers, dryers, and electric heaters, can help reduce to use of the dirtiest power plants.
10. Share a fridge with room/suite mates and keep it full.

http://www.greencampuscpp.org/takeaction.htm Basketball

References:
http://www.ecofont.eu/ecofont_en.html
http://www.fullerton.edu/it/news/publications/green_computing_guide.pdf

♥♥COMDDAP Learnings♥♥

2009-10-17T01:04:00.000-07:00

Thursday afternoon, July 02, 2009, it’s already 1:30 in the afternoon when I arrived at the Apo View Hotel.
I was not able to read the information about COMDDAP Expo in the forum or since I came to college so I don’t have any idea regarding to this event.

Fortunately, I was able to witness the latest in information technology’s fast-phase development. I am very much thankful because I’m one of the chosen few and given a chance to witness this kind or become part of this activity. Honestly, I found COMDDAP Expo as a very useful and helpful activity, since it serves as a paradigm. When I was attended that activity, I thought I am a professional one. As an IT student, the said program gives me lots of knowledge especially to the technology which is not really known to me. Not just imagining but in actual way I observe and I’ve seen the different high tech gadgets and technologies. It also gave me some general views and updates in some sectors especially personal and administration, and highly regarded individuals to further strengthen the self-esteem and knowledge of its society. COMDDAP Expo also serves as a stepping stone to each individual towards a brighter future. Why I say so because it provides to us or as a literate one to become fully aware to the different trends of technology. It is very much important to us as an IT student to have full of knowledge and wisdom as regards the use of technology and elevate its principles in the community. Most especially, the different booths advertising their product that helps to supply the market with quality products at reasonable prices. It gave huge help for us when we are going to purchase product, we are become responsive of which is the best one to choose. Indeed, COMDDAP Expo promotes and cultivates harmony and amity so that we can work together as one for the benefit of the industry.

COMDDAP is an association of the country's top information technology businesses.

Objective:

To promote the sustainable development of the of the country's information technology industry through voluntary collaboration of its member companies.

Goal:

To be able to provide its members general views and updates from different sectors - private and government, and highly regarded individuals to further uplift the morale and knowledge of its organization.

Vision:

Promoting and elevating the standards of Information technology (IT) in the Philippines fueled a group of prominent computer companies to form the Computer Distributors and Dealers Association of the Philippines or COMDDAP.

Since then, COMDDAP has been maintained and financed by its members through dues, fees, contributions or donations, and bannered by these specific objectives:

• Promote the use of information technology and elevate its standards in the Philippines;
• Make computers affordable and available to the masses;
• Provide and create opportunities for users to develop themselves to their fullest potentials;
• Supply the market with quality products at reasonable prices with good after-sales support;
• To work closely with the government, the private sector and international entities in promoting the use of information technology;
• Provide a forum of discussion on matters relating to the compute industry; and
• Foster and cultivate harmony, cordiality and camaraderie among the members so that they can work together as one for the benefit of the industry.

The first speaker talked about the ERIC [Enterprise Resource Information and Control] Dealer Management System (DMS). It is an end-to-end software solution for automotive dealer operation. ERIC DMS' range of solutions covers Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Vehicle Sales and Administration (VSA), and Service Management (SVM).

• Schedule prospects for test drives and follow up on appointments
• Monitor and increase sales
• Delight customers with gentle reminders for appointments
• Manage vehicle inventory
• Deliver impeccable service
• Control parts & consumables cost
• Monitor and correctly implement warranty for parts & service

The second speaker talked about Thin Client which is computing devices that function as an access device on a network. These solid-state devices connect over a network to a server where the bulk of the processing takes place. Thin clients have no hard drive, allowing for more secure storage of data and applications on the server. In fact, keystrokes, mouse events and screen images are all that is sent between the client and server. This makes the device much more secure than a standard desktop or notebook computer.

Here are some advantages:

----Enhanced security
----Easier manageability
----High reliability
----Increased energy efficiency
----Lower total cost of ownership

The increased security, reliability and ease of management contribute to a lower total cost of ownership for your client computing devices. With a longer useful lifespan, thin clients contribute to cost savings. According to a study by Gartner (TCO Comparison of PCs with Server-Based Computing, June 2006) thin client TCO annual savings have been measured as high as:

79% less downtime cost per user
16% capital cost savings
34% less in maintenance
19% less to operate
48% overall lower total cost

Reference:
http://www.comddap.org/events.htm

http://www.jupitersystems.com.ph/product.aspx?prod_id=1

http://www.hp.com/sbso/solutions/pc_expertise/article/thinclients_consider.html

♥♥Automated Election for 2010♥♥

2009-10-17T00:58:00.000-07:00

Automated Election

Each person is aiming for the unbeaten, well-organized, straightforward and reliable 2010 elections. Through automation we can ensure a credible transition of power and orderly elections, of course, there are also advantages and disadvantages of implementing the automated system for election. It provides efficient way for voting with less hassle. Voters cannot prolong the process of voting and lined up in a crowd. But a thought came across my mind. This could be the cause to worsen political situation. Possibilities for the candidates can hire a computer expert to hack the system and manipulate the entire votes. Unless if the system is fully secured.
The result, the unceasing corruption can worsen financial crisis we are experiencing today and another leading cause of poverty is corruption. If the government did not put their hands into their secret pocket, the less fortunate Filipinos will be given extra attention in terms of education to provide a better and brighter future.

REPUBLIC ACT NO. 8436

AN ACT AUTHORIZING THE COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS TO USE AN AUTOMATED ELECTION SYSTEM IN THE MAY 11, 1998 NATIONAL OR LOCAL ELECTIONS AND IN SUBSEQUENT NATIONAL AND LOCAL ELECTORAL EXERCISES, PROVIDING FUNDS THEREFOR AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES.

http://www.chanrobles.com/republicactno8436.htm

People shouted for a “Change”. And as a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology student[/i], I undoubtedly be of the same opinion with the “Automated Election Process.” As time goes by, a demand of new technology is now highly needed especially when we are going to consider an election. Filipinos who have seriously doubted the wisdom of participating in the voting exercise, saying a good many candidates win because of shameless cheating in the polls, may now witness honest elections, be assured that their vote will be counted, that there will be no flying voters, and no dagdag-bawas (adding and subtracting votes) starting with the 2010 polls.
The greatest source of doubt in the credibility of any election is “the number of hands that handle the ballot.” The automated process will respond to this concern “by limiting the amount of human handling of the ballots, through the use of technology, thus limiting the opportunities to tamper with them.
“Automation also means speed, giving no time for the painful loser to tamper with the ballot. The longer the period between the time that the vote is cast and the time that the winners are announced, the greater the time and opportunity to tamper with the results. This leads to violent elections as losing candidates who feel the stab of every vote counted against him or her, begin to resort to extra-legal means to change the tide of their fate. The psychological effect of approaching loss and the shame of losing face prompt losing candidates to use guns, goons and gold to tamper with the ballot.
For Filipino candidates, when guns, goons and gold prove inadequate, they resort to filing electoral protests, which block our courts and the Comelec. Millions of pesos are spent on resolving these cases; resources which are better spent addressing the immediate needs of the communities represented by these candidates. Losing candidates become perpetual roadblocks to the efforts of winning candidates, sowing hostility and disunity in the community.
The Automation Law is more than just an Automation Law. It is a commitment to respecting the right of our people to choose those who will lead them. It is a launching pad for a renewed sense of unity among our countrymen through the assurance that the process through which they choose their leaders is clean, free and credible. Let us be united in trying to bring about transparent, free and clean elections.”
Setting up the country's automated electoral system is a crucial step toward clean and honest elections. While it will not be a cure-all for the country's electoral problems, automating the polls will eliminate a lot of the human intervention that has made vote-rigging possible.
I am optimistic that an automated electoral system will facilitate fair and honest elections, provide a new set of government leaders with an unquestionable authority, and unite the country in facing the challenges ahead of us.
The heart of a true democracy lies in achieving clean and honest elections which provide mandate and authority to elect public officials. Our laws mandate the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) to use an automated election system in the conduct of national and local elections to encourage transparency, credibility, fairness and accuracy on the 2010 elections.

♥♥Risk Associated with IS/IT Change♥♥

2009-10-17T00:54:00.000-07:00

NCCC
New City Commercial Corporation

July 4, 2009 we had conduct an interview together with my MIS group members the NCCC Hardware Security Supervisor, Mr. Hervin Miclat.

To understand better, Mr. Miclat explained first the information regarding the NCCC Mall. I found out that it composed of hierarchy.

ICT Director
-Application Group
-Hardware and Networking services
-Operations Group

Every branch seeks help to the Information Communications Technology local level and usually they determine the cause and effect about the events in their company to become more competitive in the market.

These are the risks associated with business and IS/IT change.

First Example:

The MMS (Merchandise Management System)

This system includes:
• Vendor management
• Price management
• Promotion management
• Financial control
• Merchandise receiving, allocation and replenishment
• Inventory control and procurement

This usually talks about the receipt. Management in a certain company do there best to have a good system and to have a lot of customers because customers choose a company which has a better services offered, accurate and fastest way of printing receipt,

Second Example:

Operating System

It mainly refers to security and vulnerability issues. These are hone to hacker to use and then compromised the system. Management challenge to conduct a case study regarding to this issue to protect and secure the system against the hacker.

One best example of this is the Microsoft 2000 and Microsoft 2008. Obviously since 2008 is the latest so the company would prefer to used the Microsoft 2008 because it contains a lot of new features and well-organized. This would also make the company to be more competitive in the market.
Other cited example was a server. Pertaining to a certain situation, if a company planning to change a new server, first they should a key study prior to the changes. At that way they can compare which server is appropriate to be used.

Third Example:

Firewall

A firewall is a part of a computer system or network that is designed to block unauthorized access while permitting authorized communications. It is a device or set of devices configured to permit, deny, encrypt, decrypt, or proxy all (in and out) computer traffic between different security domains based upon a set of rules and other criteria. It has a Unified Technology System (UTM).

If the company decides to change a system, they should analyze the risk if they will change it or not then list the difference between the old and new system to know which is the appropriate.

Remember:

Every IT change there is always a corresponding risk involve. A company especially the NCCC Mall makes every effort to offer Service from the Heart first of all to their associates. They also sustain solid relationships with their business partners to endow with a wide variety of basic and unique merchandise.

Profile:

"NCCC is all about people: Their associates, customers, business partners and community. Since starting out as a textile store in 1952 they continue to grow, expanding to different retail businesses and locations to serve more people. They strive to offer Service from the Heart first of all to their associates. They also maintain solid relationships with their business partners to provide a wide assortment of basic and unique merchandise. They are proud of journey and we continue to pay tribute to o founders and history by living up to core values of humility, caring, hard work, excellence and fun. They live for their vision to be A Leader Who Cares. "

IT BEST PRACTICES:

 Proper documentation in every system(procedure)
 Standard operating procedure
 Policy

References:
www.nccc.com.ph
http://nickilo.wordpress.com/2007/10/17/malls-of-davao-nccc-mall-exterior/

♥♥Company IT/IS Best Practices♥♥

2009-10-17T00:37:00.000-07:00

ONE NETWORK BANK
One Network Bank, also known as ONB, is a rural bank based in Davao City in the Philippines. Formed in 2004 through the consolidation of Network Rural Bank of Davao del Sur, the Rural Bank of Panabo of Davao del Norte and the Provident Rural Bank of Cotabato, ONB is the largest rural bank in the Philippines in terms of assets, with a network of 75 branches and 78 ATMs (as of 2009) throughout the provinces of Mindanao, including seventeen localities where it is the sole provider of financial services.
It is the first rural bank in the Philippines to receive the nod of the Philippine Clearing House Corporation (PCHC) to establish a checking account, as well as to have its cheques cleared directly by the PCHC, instead of an intermediary bank. It is also an equity member of MegaLink, one of the first banks in Mindanao to join an interbank network.

Our Vission

One Network Bank is the leader in the Philippine Rural Banking industry with a nationwide network of branches, operated be highly motivated professionals, with a deep sense of mission, providing the state of the art technology and quality banking services especially for countryside clients.

Our Mission

• Expand presence in the countryside.
• Ensure wholistic development of human resources.
• Provide modern and responsive financialproducts and services.
• Provide innovative and quality lending approaches to agri-business.
• Forge alliances with financial institutions, governments organizations and non-government organizations.

About:

ONB’s core operating philosophy “Pera ng Minadanao”, Para sa Minadanao” has touched many lives. This movement intends to bring economic growth by keeping Mindanao’s money invested in Mindanao and its people- a direct challenge that ONB is painstakingly taking and driving into its full completion.
As rural bank devoted to this call, ONB is continually investing in beefing up its branch network. Going beyond the tradional mindset of setting branches only in Mindanao’s megacenters, ONB bravely extends its reach even to the remote and unbanked regions to become logistically closer to more and more small account clients , to date, the bank has identified around 40 growth areas for this expansion.
Complementing these investments in branch infrastructure, ONB also utilized its resources to deliver financial products and services using modern banking technologies at par with those offered by commercial banks and yet affordable to small account clients.
ONB further believes on the power of its well-defined market niche—the small accounts in countryside. In fact One Network Bank achieved tremendous growth and profitablity by embracing the small accounts culture in banking, as can be seen in its earning records, allowing the bank to widen its services and expand its branch of banking tio more and more sectors in rural Mindanao.
In lan where there is full potential of agricultural resource, ONB also provoides more and better financial assistance for the small farmers and growers through the event of One Agricultural Programs.
Grounded philosophy , ONB has been regarded as the manifestation of this commitment that no other fianancila institution can fully give—help Minadanao reach its fullest economic potential for the benefit of its deserving inhabitants.

“Pera ng Mindanao, Para sa Mindanao”

• Rural Bank of Panabo, Inc. (RB Panabo)
RB Panabo has been servicing Davao Province since 1967. While it was the component bank with the fewest branches, it provided technical and logistical support to its partner banks. Many of the banking systems and procedures used by its partner banks came from RB Panabo.
RB Panabo received its authority to operate from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas on February 11, 1967. Founded by Dr. Luis A. Buenaventura, Jr., the Bank started as a small company with a simple premise; to bring quality financial services to the community, delivered with warm human touch. It was in 1980 that RB Panabo saw the start of its rise to prominence in the rural banking industry with the induction of Alex V. Buenaventura as President of the bank. RB Panabo was a recipient of many prestigious awards from various finance industry groups and was consistently listed among PDIC’s Top Ten in terms of net income.
• Network Rural Bank, Inc. (NB)
Originally the Rural Bank of Davao City and operating four branches across Davao City, it was merged in 1993 with 5 other rural banks — Community Rural Bank of San Isidro (Davao Oriental), Rural Bank of Governor Generoso (Davao Oriental), Rural Bank of Pantukan (Compostela Valley), Rural Bank of Bayugan (Agusan del Sur) and Rural Bank of Kalamansig (Sultan Kudarat) – and renamed as Network Rural Bank.
RB Panabo’s success was such that also in 1993, Network Rural Bank, Inc. asked Alex V. Buenaventura of RB Panabo to take over its helm. Mr. Buenaventura’s acceptance brought his leadership and rural banking experience into Network Bank. This move was the start of a long-standing partnership between the two rural banks.
In its 11 years of existence, Network Bank became a giant in the Philippine rural banking industry. From 9 branches in 1993, NB expanded to 33 branches in Mindanao.
The cooperation between Network Bank and RB Panabo did much to enhance both financial institutions and maximize client’s benefits. Shared policy formulation brought out the best of both banks and created a “two banks, one system” framework.
The ties between the two banks even went so far as to spur the creation of another strong financial institution, what may be called the offspring of the RB Panabo and Network Bank.
• Provident Rural Bank of Cotabato (ProBank)
In 1996, Network Bank and a group of Cotabato investors, led by the Diocese of Kidapawan, acquired a rural bank in Central Mindanao called the Community Rural Bank of Matalam. Re-launched under a new name, Provident Rural Bank of Cotabato (Probank), a known Cotabato banker, Elpidio F. Masbad III, took over the reins as president of Probank.
From total assets of P5 million with P3 million owed to BSP, ProBank grew to a P 235 million bank with 7 branches in its 7-year run. The rapid turnaround can be attributed to aggressive marketing campaigns as well as logistic and systems support from Network Bank.
With a strong third partner in place, the basis for cooperation was set and the “three banks, one system” approach was formed.
• The Network Rural Banking Group (NRBG)
Working in parallel with similar systems was however not enough for the three rural banks. In 1996, RB Panabo and Network Bank entered a “mutual purchase” or stock swap arrangement. With Network Bank owning 49% of ProBank, the stockswap arrangement brought the three banks closer. This paved the way for the conception of The Network Rural Banking Group (NRBG).
The Network Rural Banking Group was created in 1998 when Network Bank, RB Panabo and ProBank resolved to operate as a single unit with joint policy formulation made possible through a common Executive Committee and synchronized systems and procedures. Sharing common central office services such as human resource development, legal services, treasury, product development, information technology, internal audit and appraisal, in effect, contributed to the rapid growth of the partner banks.

SAN PEDRO BRANCH
THERESA GRANADEROS
San Pedro St., Davao City
Tel. nos. (082)2213219/2214510/
(082)222-1730
Telefax Nos. (082)2213220/2213190

References
http://www.onenetworkbank.com.ph/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Network_Bank
http://www.bdo.com.ph/Personal_Banking/Remitta