Information Systems for Management 2012-13

Your Task:
You are the Information Systems Manager of an organization of your choice. One of your key tasks is ‘technological gatekeeping‘, the monitoring of the rapidly changing technological environment for emerging information and communication technologies (ICTs) which may be of potential benefit to your organization. You are required to write a management brief for your board of directors reporting on emerging information technology (hardware, communications or software) of your choice, from the attached list from Gartner (www.gartner.com).

You should outline, in terms understandable to someone not familiar with technology, what the technology is, what it can do, how it might be of value to your organization and how/when it might be implemented in order to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the organisation.

Please Note: This is an individual piece of work. Your organisation must be a real organisation (small, medium or large, it doesn’t matter) but it doesn’t have to be one that you have worked in. Also, it doesn’t have to be a profit-making organisation; you could choose a charity if you so wish. You must, however, be certain that your chosen organisation has not already implemented the technology you have chosen.

Your brief should be no more than 1500 words (not including references).

You may attach a short description of your chosen organization as an appendix (half a page maximum). This appendix will count towards the 1500 words so make it short!

 
Learning outcomes:
On completion of this assignment you should be able to:

1. Seek relevant information about information systems in organizations using the Internet.

2. Research information about emerging technologies using the Internet.

3. Conduct an evaluation of the value of an emerging technology to an organization.

4. Present findings in a business-style brief.

Assessment criteria:
1. Explanation of your chosen emerging technology. This part should be aimed at a person who is not overly familiar with technologies. It should therefore be free of jargon and written in an easy-to-understand style. (20%)

2. Analysis of the potential use of and value of the technology for the chosen organization. You should be considering issues such as:

• Time: how long it will reasonably take to implement such a technology in the organisation.
• Change: the likely impact of such an implementation on the stakeholders who are going to have to use it or who will be affected by it.
• Costs: You should be able to provide a realistic assessment of how much it will cost to buy, use and maintain such technologies. We’re not expecting you to be exact but we are expecting a realistic cost that gives the reader an idea of what sort of cost you are talking about. There may also be intangible costs, such as reduced morale or deskilling of the workforce.
• Value/Benefits: In addition to the tangible benefits of such a technology (increased profit, reduced costs of doing business, etc.), you should also think about intangible benefits (better image, increased flexibility or customer service, etc.) (70%)

3. Written brief: structure, presentation and written English. If you are unsure about whether your English is good enough, please use the resources the university makes available for checking English grammar, spelling, etc. You have no excuse for handing in work that is difficult or impossible for us to understand. Please note: neither Julia Glenn nor I will check your reports prior to handing in. We simply haven’t got time. (5%)

4. Research and references. The references should be formatted in the Harvard notation. (5%)

Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2013
Analysts Examine Top Industry Trends at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, October 21-25 in Orlando
ORLANDO, Fla., October 23, 2012
Gartner, Inc. today highlighted the top 10 technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2013. Analysts presented their findings during Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, being held here through October 25.
Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt.
A strategic technology may be an existing technology that has matured and/or become suitable for a wider range of uses. It may also be an emerging technology that offers an opportunity for strategic business advantage for early adopters or with potential for significant market disruption in the next five years. These technologies impact the organization’s long-term plans, programs and initiatives.
“We have identified the top 10 technologies that will be strategic for most organizations, and that IT leaders should factor into their strategic planning processes over the next two years,” said David Cearley, vice president and Gartner fellow. “This does not necessarily mean enterprises should adopt and invest in all of the listed technologies; however companies need to be making deliberate decisions about how they fit with their expected needs in the near future.”
Mr. Cearley said that these technologies are emerging amidst a nexus of converging forces – social, mobile, cloud and information. Although these forces are innovative and disruptive on their own, together they are revolutionizing business and society, disrupting old business models and creating new leaders. As such, the Nexus of Forces is the basis of the technology platform of the future.
Please Note: Although there are ten strategic technologies listed by Gartner for 2013, you will be required to choose one from the following six:
1. Mobile Applications and HTML5
The market for tools to create consumer and enterprise facing apps is complex with well over 100 potential tools vendors. Currently, Gartner separates mobile development tools into several categories. For the next few years, no single tool will be optimal for all types of mobile application so expect to employ several. Six mobile architectures – native, special, hybrid, HTML 5, Message and No Client will remain popular. However, there will be a long term shift away from native apps to Web apps as HTML5 becomes more capable. Nevertheless, native apps won’t disappear, and will always offer the best user experiences and most sophisticated features. Developers will also need to develop new design skills to deliver touch-optimized mobile applications that operate across a range of devices in a coordinated fashion.
2. The Internet of Things
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept that describes how the Internet will expand as physical items such as consumer devices and physical assets are connected to the Internet. Key elements of the IoT which are being embedded in a variety of mobile devices include embedded sensors, image recognition technologies and NFC payment. As a result, mobile no longer refers only to use of cellular handsets or tablets. Cellular technology is being embedded in many new types of devices including pharmaceutical containers and automobiles. Smartphones and other intelligent devices don’t just use the cellular network, they communicate via NFC, Bluetooth, LE and Wi-Fi to a wide range of devices and peripherals, such as wristwatch displays, healthcare sensors, smart posters, and home entertainment systems. The IoT will enable a wide range of new applications and services while raising many new challenges.
3. Strategic Big Data
Big Data is moving from a focus on individual projects to an influence on enterprises’ strategic information architecture. Dealing with data volume, variety, velocity and complexity is forcing changes to many traditional approaches. This realization is leading organizations to abandon the concept of a single enterprise data warehouse containing all information needed for decisions. Instead they are moving towards multiple systems, including content management, data warehouses, data marts and specialized file systems tied together with data services and metadata, which will become the “logical” enterprise data warehouse.
4. Actionable Analytics
Analytics is increasingly delivered to users at the point of action and in context. With the improvement of performance and costs, IT leaders can afford to perform analytics and simulation for every action taken in the business. The mobile client linked to cloud-based analytic engines and big data repositories potentially enables use of optimization and simulation everywhere and every time. This new step provides simulation, prediction, optimization and other analytics, to empower even more decision flexibility at the time and place of every business process action.
5. In Memory Computing
In memory computing (IMC) can also provide transformational opportunities. The execution of certain-types of hours-long batch processes can be squeezed into minutes or even seconds allowing these processes to be provided in the form of real-time or near real-time services that can be delivered to internal or external users in the form of cloud services. Millions of events can be scanned in a matter of a few tens of millisecond to detect correlations and patterns pointing at emerging opportunities and threats “as things happen.” The possibility of concurrently running transactional and analytical applications against the same dataset opens unexplored possibilities for business innovation. Numerous vendors will deliver in-memory-based solutions over the next two years driving this approach into mainstream use.
6. Integrated Ecosystems
The market is undergoing a shift to more integrated systems and ecosystems and away from loosely coupled heterogeneous approaches. Driving this trend is the user desire for lower cost, simplicity, and more assured security. Driving the trend for vendors the ability to have more control of the solution stack and obtain greater margin in the sale as well as offer a complete solution stack in a controlled environment, but without the need to provide any actual hardware. The trend is manifested in three levels. Appliances combine hardware and software and software and services are packaged to address and infrastructure or application workload. Cloud-based marketplaces and brokerages facilitate purchase, consumption and/or use of capabilities from multiple vendors and may provide a foundation for ISV development and application runtime. In the mobile world, vendors including Apple, Google and Microsoft drive varying degrees of control across and end-to-end ecosystem extending the client through the apps.
Remember: you must choose only one of these technologies.

The technologies you have chosen to concentrate upon are to be evaluated on how they could make the internal operations of your chosen organisation more efficient/effective/profitable, etc. You might think that technology A could help department B in organisation C to become more streamlined, profitable, efficient, innovative, flexible, or it might help to improve customer service.

You are *not* supposed to be considering how your organisation could *sell* these technologies. So, for example, you should *not* be considering how organisation C could market and sell technology A to make more money.

 
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