1. Hardware, Software, and Mobile Systems
Chapter 4
Hardware, Software,
and Mobile Systems

2. "... If We Don’t Have an iPad App, We Don’t Have a Business."
GearUp not competitive without iPad app
Lack of knowledge could waste money and time
Outsourcing to India? Open source?
What have others done?
Conflict between low cost and technical competitiveness
GOALS
Illustrate need for business professionals’ knowledge of basic technology and terminology.
Learn a practical application for difference between hardware (iPad) and software (iOS).
Set up need for business managers (like Emily and Drew) to know about the differences between native and thin-client applications.
Set up need for business managers (like Emily and Drew) to know about mobile devices and mobile device USX.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

3. Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall
Study Questions
Q1: What do business professionals need to know about computer hardware? Q2: What do business professionals need to know about software? Q3: Is open source software a viable alternative? Q4: What are the differences between native and thin-client applications? Q5: Why are mobile systems increasingly important? Q6: What characterizes quality mobile user experiences? Q7: What are the challenges of personal mobile devices at work? Q8: 2023?
Chapter begins with basic hardware and software concepts followed by discussions of open source software development, and differences between native and thin-client applications.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

4. Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall
Q1: What Do Business Professionals Need to Know About Computer Hardware?
Basic types of hardware
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

5. Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall
Server farm
Large collection of coordinated servers
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

6. Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall
Computer Data
All forms of computer data are represented by bits.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

7. Important Storage-Capacity Terminology
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

8. Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall
Memory Swapping
When RAM too small to hold all open programs and data
CPU loads program segments into free memory
If none available, O/S swaps out existing segment, to a disk and copies requested segment to freed space
Swapping slows down computer
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

9. Specifying Hardware with Computer Data Sizes
CPU speed expressed in hertz
Slow = 1.5 GHz; Fast = 3+ GHz
32-bit or 64-bit
64-bit for 4+ GB memory
Processing large spreadsheets, database files, picture, sound, or movie files; using many large applications at same time
Cache and main memory are volatile
CPU has cache memory to keep a copy of frequently used instructions. Having a large cache makes computer faster, but more expensive.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

10. Q2: What Do Business Professionals Need to Know About Software?
Basic Categories of Computer Software
Servers provide services, such as , Web sites, large and shared databases. Some provide all these, or similar, functions.
Must be fast, have multiple CPUs, lots of main memory (at least 4GB), very large disks (often terabyte or more).
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

11. What Are the Major Operating Systems?
Windows 8 Metro-style applications are touch-screen oriented and minimize non-user data by providing context-sensitive, pop-up menus.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

12. What Are the Major Operating Systems? (cont'd)
Five principal mobile operating systems and three most popular server operating systems.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

13. Windows 8 Metro Interface
Key feature of Metro-style applications is minimization of menu bars, status lines, other visual overhead.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

14. Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall
Virtualization
Host operating system
Runs one or more operating systems as applications
PC virtualization
Personal computer hosts several different operating systems
Server virtualization
Server computer hosts other server computers
Makes cloud computing feasible
Virtual desktop
Allows access from any computer a user has authorization to use
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

15. Virtualization: Windows Server Computer Hosting Two Virtual Machines
Virtualization – process by which one computer hosts appearance of many computers. Host operating system runs one or more operating systems as applications.
Hosted operating systems called virtual machines.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

16. How Virtual Machine VM3 Appears to a User
User of VM3 is running a browser accessing SharePoint.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

17. Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall
Own Versus License
License
Right to use specified number of copies
Limits vendor’s liability
Site License
Flat fee to install software product on all company computers or all computers at a specific site
Open source software
Free usage license
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

18. Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall
What Types of Applications Exist, and How Do Organizations Obtain Them?
Horizontal-market applications – word processors, graphics programs, spreadsheets, and presentation programs
Vertical-market application – software serves specific industry, usually customized; example: applications used by dental offices to schedule appointments and bill patients
Off-the-shelf-with-alterations software – involves modifying packaged software to meet a specific need
Custom-developed software – last-choice alternative because of risk and expense; used only when no other option
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

19. Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall
What Is Firmware?
Computer software installed on read-only memory
Printers, print servers, communication devices
Coded like other software
Can be changed and upgraded
Program installed into special, read-only memory of printer or other device, becomes part of device’s memory
Users do not need to load firmware into memory.
Firmware can be changed or upgraded, but is normally a task for IS professionals.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

20. Using MIS InClass 4: Place Your Bets Now!
Three-way race for market share – Apple, Google, Microsoft
Merging software, hardware, personal communication devices, movies, etc.
All have deep technical staff, knowledge, patents, and plenty of money
Who will win?
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

21. Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall
Three-way Comparison
Go to and update financial data.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

22. Q3: Is Open Source Software a Viable Alternative?
GNL — General Public License
Standard for open source software
Successful open source projects
Open Office
Firefox
MySQL
Apache
Ubuntu
Android
Cassandra
Hadoop
GNU is Not Unix.
GNU Project started 1983 as free software, mass collaboration project.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

23. Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall
Some Terms
Open source – source available to public
Source code – computer code written by humans and understandable by humans
Machine code
Closed source code – highly protected and only available to trusted employees and carefully vetted contractors
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

24. Why Do Programmers Volunteer Their Services?
It’s fun
Freedom to choose projects
Exercise creativity on interesting and fulfilling projects
Exhibit one’s skill to get a job
Start a business selling services
Programming is an intense combination of art and logic. Designing and writing complicated computer program is exceedingly pleasurable (and addictive).
Programmers exercise creativity while working on projects they find interesting and fulfilling.
Programmers exhibit their skill, for pride, to find a job or consulting employment, or to start a business selling services to support an open source product.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

25. How Does Open Source Work?
Collaboration of many programmers
Examines source code and identifies a need, creates new feature or redesigns existing feature, or fixes a problem
Code evaluated and extended by others
Iteration, peer reviews and well-managed project yield high-quality code
A lot of give and take with many cycles of iteration and feedback
Well-managed project with strong peer reviews can result in very high-quality code
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

26. Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall
Source Code Sample
Object-oriented programming code
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

27. Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall
Is Open Source Viable?
Depends on requirements and constraints of situation
“Free” open source software require support and operational costs, could cost more than licensing fee
Future will involve blend of both proprietary and open source software
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

28. Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall
Q4: What Are the Differences Between Native and Thin-client Applications?
Characteristics of Native and Thin-Client Applications
Native application languages give programmers close control over assets of computing device, and enable creation of sophisticated and complex user interfaces.
Drawback – only run on operating system for which they are programmed
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

29. Developing Thin-client Applications
Browser handles idiosyncrasies of operating system and underlying hardware
Applications written by professional programmers, technically oriented web developers, or business professionals
Cheaper to develop
Limited by capabilities of the browser
Thin-client applications via Web go to
Users obtain thin-client applications via Web. Required HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript files are downloaded automatically.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

30. One Consequence of Browser Differences for Thin-Client Applications
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

31. Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall
Which Is Better?
Depends:
Strategy, goals, application requirements, budget, schedule, tolerance for managing technical projects, need for application revenue, etc.
Thin-client applications cheaper to develop and maintain, but may lack wow factor
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

32. Ethics Guide: “Because It’s Where the Money Is . . .”
Hackers target where money is
Windows targeted more than Mac
Malware: Viruses, Trojan horses, Spyware, Adware
Apple better get ready for avalanche of attacks.
GOALS
Understand that malware issues follow product popularity.
Learn basic malware definitions.
Investigate ethics of spyware and adware.
Sensitize students to vulnerability of , texting, and http use.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

33. Q5: Why Are Mobile Systems Increasingly Important?
2012, 5.9 billion wireless subscriptions. One-third of subscriptions involve smartphones or other mobile devices.
Forcing industry change while creating new career opportunities for mobile-IS-savvy professionals and large numbers of new, interesting mobile-IS-related jobs
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

34. Elements of a Mobile Information System
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

35. Q6: What Characterizes Quality Mobile User Experiences?
Primary characteristics of quality mobile applications
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

36. Chrome-less Mobile Windows Store Application
“Direct interaction” – using content to drive application behavior
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

37. Example of Application Scaling
Example of IE10 Charm Scaling
Mobile applications designed to share data. Charms are Windows 8 feature using icons that slide in from right of the display. One default charm is Share, used to share data from one mobile application to another.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

38. Example Use of Web Page Data Declared as Shared
User wants to a page, IE10 provides shared thumbnail, description, and link to mail application.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

39. Mobile Systems Cloud Use
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

40. Kindle Fire Roaming Message
Roaming occurs when users move their activities, especially long-running transactions across devices.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

41. Q7: What Are the Challenges of Personal Mobile Devices at Work?
Organizations have love/hate relationship with employees’ use of own mobile devices at work—Love cost-savings, hate increased vulnerability and loss of control.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

42. Six Common BYOD Policies
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

43. Advantages of Example BYOD Policies
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

44. Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall
Q8: 2023?
Can Microsoft take Office 365 to mobile market via its Skype acquisition?
PC mules rare
Large-screen computing/connectivity devices available everywhere
Use public device to connect to cloud
Won’t need desktop office applications
Cost performance issues of desktop virtualization will be gone
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

45. Ethics Guide: Churn and Burn
Conspiracy among hardware and software vendors?
Hardware vendors create new, faster computers
Software vendors create new products with more features only needed by some users
Time-consuming to learn
Churning
New software needs new hardware to run.
New hardware becomes obsolete fast.
Repeat steps 1 and 2.
GOALS
Think critically about software products.
Assess the responsibilities of users and software vendors.
Be a better consumer of software products by learning when to hold software vendors accountable.
Consider ways of managing an employee like Janet.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

46. Ethics Guide: Churn and Burn (cont’d)
Products have defects
Vendors turn these into a sales advantage
Should users accept these problems?
Should they rise up in protest?
What should vendors do?
Engage students via opinions of contrarian, and extend discussion to basic definitions to consider software as a product, nature of software industry, and financial needs of software vendors.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

47. Guide: Keeping Up to Speed
Relentless pace of technology change
21st century business professional cannot bury head in sand
Use knowledge of IT to gain competitive advantage
Don’t ignore technology
Read articles, technology ads, attend seminars, workshops
Get involved as user representative in technology committees
GOALS
Raise students’ awareness of the unrelenting change of technology.
Encourage students to take a stand about how they will react to technological change.
Emphasize that this issue is inescapable in modern business. If students ignore it, they are choosing a personal competitive disadvantage.
Teach the benefits of this class and of IS education, in general.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

48. Guide: Questioning Your Questions
Learn how to discern judgment quality and evaluate answers.
Most difficult and creative tasks are generating questions and formulating strategy for getting answers.
Be able to ask good questions and obtain good answers.
Learn about new IS alternatives and how to apply them.
GOALS
Teach the difference between formulating questions and answering questions.
Emphasize the importance of question formulation.
Describe and illustrate questions of varying quality.
Every question requires taking a calculated risk. This class can help students ask effective questions of IT and IS professionals.
Very important: Only simple, unimportant questions have a single correct answer. All other kinds, answers depend on perspective and have multiple, correct answers. Depending on their cognitive development, some students will not be comfortable with idea of multiple correct answers.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

49. Guide: Questioning Your Questions
Questions can be bad in three ways:
Irrelevant: Answer won’t tell you why
Dead: Provide no insight into subject
Asked wrong source
Don’t ask “What is it?” questions of valuable or expensive sources.
Ask: “How can I use it? Is it the best choice for our company or situation?”
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

50. Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall
Active Review
Q1: What do business professionals need to know about computer hardware? Q2: What do business professionals need to know about software? Q3: Is open source software a viable alternative? Q4: What are the differences between native and thin-client applications? Q5: Why are mobile systems increasingly important? Q6: What characterizes quality mobile user experiences? Q7: What are the challenges of personal mobile devices at work? Q8: 2023?
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

51. Case Study 4: The Apple of Your i
Tripled market share in three years
Second largest public company in world
Pioneered well-engineered home computers and innovative interfaces for students and knowledge workers
Every sales success feeds other sales successes
Succession of CEOs made numerous mistakes, such as not rewarding innovative engineering, creating too many products for too many market segments, and losing respect of retail computer stores.
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

52. Case Study 4: The Apple of Your i (cont’d)
Copyright © 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall