Question:
1. Why is open source so important for software development and IS professionals? How should programming students leverage resources available to improve learning, job prospects, and their credibility when job hunting?
2. Describe the impact of OSS on the IT market
3. Visit Mozilla.org. Which open source products does this organization develop? Investigate how development of these efforts is financed. How does this organization differ from the ones mentioned above?
4. In what ways can firms using SaaS products dramatically lower costs associated with their information systems?
5. What is cloud computing? What kinds of services are described by this term? What are other names for this phenomenon?
From Chapter 15
6. Why is an understanding of database terms and technologies important, even for non-technical managers and staff? Consider factors associated with both system use and system development. What other skills, beyond technology, may be important when engaged in data-driven decision making?
7. What is HIPPA? What industry does it impact?
8. What ethical issues are created through public data-sharing sites like GEDmatch? List the positives and negatives. Do you feel sharing your personal data should be regulated? Why or why not? Could loopholes be plugged by preventing this data from being used in hiring, insurance, or other contexts? Why or why not?
Summary
Firms using SaaS products can dramatically lower several costs associated with the care andfeeding of their information systems.
Business intelligence refers to the process of combining aspects of reporting, data explorationand ad hoc queries, and sophisticated data modeling and analysis.
Oracle, a firm that sells commercial ERP and database products, provides Linux for free,selling high-margin Linux support contracts for as much as five hundred thousand dollars.
Oracle’s motivation for this lies in: using open source software to wean customers away fromcompetitors.
Platform as a service –Which of the following refers to a variant of utility computing wherevendors provide the operating system and supporting software like database management systems but where client firms write their own code
Microsoft’s Xbox operating system provides Xbox programmers with a set of common standards to use to access controllers, the Kinect motion sensor, play sounds, draw graphics,save files, and more. Without this, games would: cost more
Enterprise Resource Planning software has proven popular in part because the standardization these products impose makes them exceptionally easy to deploy. False The more application software that is available for a platform, the less valuable it potentially becomes.
All of the costs associated with the design, development, testing, implementation, documentation, training and maintenance of a software system are collectively termed as:
Total Cost of Ownership
Which of the following was an outdated notion regarding open source software and has been shown to be inaccurate
Open source is fueled on the contributions of loners tooling away for the glory of contributing to better code.
Cloud Computing refers to:
Replacing computing resources with services provided over the internet
Linux is one of the most used operating systems in desktop computers, but can be found only in a tiny fraction of mobile phones, and consumer electronics.
False
For organizations with high volume, low maintenance systems, it makes sense to rent hardware clouds rather than buying their own systems.
False
Installing a complex set of systems on third-party hardware can be a brutal challenge. For that reason we can expect most cloud computing efforts to focus on:
New Software development projects
Oracle, a firm that sells commercial ERP and database products, provides Linux for free, selling high-margin Linux support contracts for as much as five hundred thousand dollars. Oracle’s motivation for this lies in:
Using open source software to wean customers away from competitors
The marginal cost to produce an additional copy of a software product is effectively zero.
True
Just about every type of commercial product has an open source equivalent
True
A __ refers to a firm that offers third-party software-replacing services that are delivered online.
Hosted Software Vendor
The cost of producing an additional unit of a product is known as its
Marginal Cost
Which of the following is necessary for the operation of server farms
Cheap Land
Which of the following factors should a manager consider while making a make, buy, or rent decision
Contingency plans for vendor failure
Firms using SaaS products can dramatically lower several costs associated with the care and feeding of their information systems
true
Which of the following is one of the sources of revenue for open source vendors?
Selling support and consulting services
Vendors who use open source as part of their product offerings can expect to bring new products to the market faster because
They can skip whole segments of the software development process
Technology products with particularly strong security features are said to be:
hardened
Cloud computing is not suited for situtations
Where complex legacy systems have to be ported
The software business is extremely profitable compared to the hardware business because:
The marginal cost to produce an additional copy of a software product is effectively zero
One of the risks associated with SaaS is the:
Dependence on a single vendor
Open source software products often have fewer bugs than their commercial counterparts because of the:
Large numbers of persons who have looked at the code
Scalability allows a firm to scale from start-up to blue chip without having to significantly rewrite its code
True
Migrating from commercial database products to MySQL’s open source alternative is relatively easy because:
They are based on the same standard
_ refer to pools of computing resources that reside inside an organization and that can be served up for specific tasks as need arrives.
Private Clouds
In _, clients can select their own operating systems, development environments, underlying applications like databases, or other software packages, while the cloud firm usually manages the infrastructure.
Infrastructure as a Service
