Transcript Managing Telecommunications

Managing
Telecommunications
Chapter 6
Information Systems Management In
Practice 6E
McNurlin & Sprague
PowerPoints prepared by Michael Matthew
Visiting Lecturer, GACC, Macquarie University – Sydney Australia
Chapter 6
•
Telecommunications is the flow of information among individuals, work
groups, departments, customer sites, regional offices, between
enterprises, and with the outside world
•
The Internet has also opened up a “cyberspace” where people can be
in a virtual world, where organizations can conduct business, and in
fact, a place where organizational processes exist. This is providing the
foundation for the e-business economy, as just about everything about
telecom is shifting
•
This lecture / chapter devotes itself heavily to this evolving
telecommunications scene, utilizing case examples from ICG
Communications, National Semiconductor, Toronto Pearson
International Airport, BMW, Louisville Metro Sewer District, American
Greetings and Keebler
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
6-2
Today’s Lecture
• Introduction
• The Evolving Telecommunications Scene
– A New Telecommunications Infrastructure is Being Built
• The Telecom Industry is Being Transformed
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The Internet is the Network Of Choice
Digital Convergence Has Become a Reality
The OSI Reference Model Underlies Today’s Networks
The Rate of Change is Accelerating
The Optical Era Will Provide Bandwidth Abundance
The Wireless Century Begins
Messaging is a Killer App
Coming: An Internet of Things
• The Role of the IS Department
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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Introduction
• Telecommunications = electronically
sending data in any form from one place
to another between
– People
– Machines, or
– Objects
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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Introduction cont.
• Generally, IS departments have been responsible for
designing, building, and maintaining the information
highway in the same way that governments are
responsible for building and maintaining streets, roads,
and freeways
• Once built, the network, with its nodes and links, provides
infrastructure for the flow of information and messages
• Telecom is the basis for the way people and companies
work today
– It provides the infrastructure for moving information and
messages
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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The Evolving Telecommunications Scene
• Even with the recent ‘downturn’ (correction?)
in some countries – the changes in Telecom
are coming fast and furiously. Here are some
major changes taking place:
• A New Telecommunications Infrastructure is
Being Built:
– The oldest part of the telecommunications
infrastructure is the telephone network
• This global network was built on twisted-pair copper wires
and was intended for voice communications
• It uses analog technology, which although appropriate for
delivering high-quality voice, is inefficient for data
transmission
– Dedicated circuit (switching)
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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The Evolving Telecommunications Scene cont.
• A New Telecommunications Infrastructure is Being
Built cont.:
– The basic traffic-handling mechanism had to change for data
– Today, the new telecommunications infrastructure is being
built around the world aimed at transmitting data, and consists
of:
• Wired - fiber optic links
• Wireless – radio signals
– Both use packet switching, where messages are divided into
packets, each with an address header, and each packet is
sent separately
• No circuit is created; each packet may take a different path
through the network
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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The Evolving Telecommunications Scene cont.
– Packets from any number of senders and of
any type, whether e-mails, music downloads,
voice conversations, or video clips, can be
intermixed on a network segment –
– Making these next generation networks able to
handle much more traffic and a great variety of
traffic
– This architecture allows new kinds of services
to be deployed much more rapidly
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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The Evolving Telecommunications Scene cont.
– The Internet can handle all kinds of intelligent
user devices, including:
– Voice-over-IP (VoIP) phones
– Personal digital assistants (PDAs)
– Gaming consoles, and
– All manner of wireless devices
– The global telecom infrastructure is changing
from a focus on voice to a focus on data
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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The Telecommunications Industry
is Being Transformed
•
•
•
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The telecom structure of old was originally provided
by (often Government owned) monopolies
– Only ones with the $ to support set up costs
– Public infrastructure
Gradually, the telecom industry has been
deregulated
The telecom industry is becoming like the
computing industry in that each year brings
‘predictable’ (and ‘huge’) improvements
– Performance
– Capacity
Bandwidth on fiber is now doubling capacity every
four months
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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The Telecommunications Industry is
Being Transformed cont.
• ‘Last Mile’ problems:
– Who ‘owns’ the ‘last mile’
• In the 1990s, the ‘monopolies’ began encountering
competition for “the last mile”
– Bottleneck issues (hose to straw)
• Visualize the world’s networks as huge fire hoses because
they use fiber optic cables that can transmit at a whopping
speed of a terabit (1012 bits per second)
• 1,000,000,000,000
– Then visualize the twisted pair phone line coming into your home
or business as a straw, only operating at speeds of 56 kbps (104)
• 10,000
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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ICG COMMUNICATIONS
Case example: Changes in the Telecom Industry
•
•
•
•
•
This competitive local exchange carrier provides voice
and data services in 25 metropolitan areas in the
United States
It was formed in 1984 to provide local telephone
service in Denver. It expanded to provide long
distance, buying up companies with fiber routes
It later focused on being an Internet backbone
provider, serving ISPs
When the dot-com bubble burst, ICG filed for
bankruptcy, but moved out of bankruptcy in late 2002
‘Similar’ things have happened in other countries
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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The Internet is the Network of Choice
• What has surprised most people is the Internet’s
surprisingly fast uptake for business use
• As did the fast plummet of the dot-com and
telecommunications industries
• In the late 1990s, the Internet caught most IS
departments by surprise, not to mention the hardware and
software vendors who serve the corporate IS community
• The Internet actually began in the 1960s when it was
called ARPANET, mainly used for electronic mail
• By 1993, it was still mainly a worldwide network for
scientists and academics, text only - no graphics
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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The Internet is the Network of Choice cont.
• That all changed in 1994 when the World Wide Web was
invented (By Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in Geneva.)
• This graphical “layer” of the Net made it much more user
friendly:
– Web sites had addresses specified by their universal resource
locator (URL)
– Its multimedia Web pages were formatted using hypertext markup
language (HTML)
– All the Web sites could be accessed via an easy-to-use browser
on a PC
– At first populated by computer geeks’ homepages, business (and
‘normal’ people’s) use of the Web skyrocketed by the late 1990s
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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The Internet is the Network of Choice cont.
• The Internet has done for telecom what the IBM
PC did for computing: brought it “to the masses”
• In 1981, when the IBM PC was introduced, its
architecture was open
– An entire industry developed around this open
architecture. The same is happening with the Internet
because it provides the same kind of openness
– Like the PC, this openness yields the most powerful
solutions and the most competitive prices
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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The Internet is the Network of Choice cont.
• The Internet has three attributes that make it important to
corporations:
– Ubiquity
– Reliability, and
– Scalability
• Today, the protocols underlying the Internet have become
the protocols of choice in corporate networks, for internal
communications as well as communications with the
outside world
• The norm is now end-to-end Internet protocol (IP)
networks
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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XYZ COMPANY
Case example: Network Options
•
The Internet will be the heart of XYZ’s corporate
operation. So the CTO will create:
 An intranet for use by employees
 An extranet for use by suppliers and some
large customers, and of course,
 The Internet as the all-important central public
network
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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XYZ COMPANY
Case example: Network Options cont.
•
•
Serving remote users: XYZ has 4 choices of communications
wiring:
–
twisted pair (standard phone line)
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coaxial cable (like cable TV)
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fibre optic (glass fibre that carries signals via light pulses) and
–
wireless
Modems can be:
–
standard telephone modems (56kbps) – no longer really a viable
option due to size of files (PowerPoints etc,)
–
digital subscriber line (DSL) modems at 1.2 mbps 20 times faster,
or
–
cable modems at 10mbps or 200 times faster
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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XYZ COMPANY
Case example: Network Options cont.
•
•
•
Serving local users: In the office, all the computers and telephones will
be connected directly to an always-on LAN. The various LANs in
XYZ’s offices will use hubs, switches and routers to route traffic
The CTO will likely choose Fast Ethernet Protocol for his IP-based
LAN. It has speeds of 100 mpbs (10^8)
Communicating Between Offices: XYZ employees need to
communicate between sites, so they need some sort of wide area
network. As expected, the CTO has choices here as well
–
–
•
Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) is high speed - up to 622 mbps
A fairly new option for XYZ to link several offices in a city, or link floors
within a building, is a Gigabit Ethernet which operates at speeds of one
gbps (10^9 bits per second)
The CTO is definitely going to base all his decisions on being
Internet protocol centric
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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Extranets
• Not long after creating intranets, businesses
realized they could extend the intranet concept
into an extranet
– A special part of the intranet for use by trading
partners, customers, and suppliers for electronic
commerce
• The notion caught on and extranets have
become an important component of B2B ecommerce
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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NATIONAL SEMICONDUCTOR
Case example: Extranet
•
National Semiconductor designs and manufactures
semiconductor products
–
To gain market share and move into new markets, it created
an intranet that the sales force could access and keep upto-date on products and order products
–
It also created the “National Advisor” to electronically send
news, sales reports, and customer information to the sales
force and its management
–
National also created an extranet for distributors and
channel partners, and a Web site for design engineers.
•
The Web site is replicated around the globe, with
maintenance outsourced to a company with data centres
around the globe, which provides hosting and other Internet
infrastructure services
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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NATIONAL SEMICONDUCTOR
Case example: Extranet cont.
•
•
National’s Web site now supports 1 million design
engineers around the globe, who download more
than 10,000 data books a day, in about two
seconds each
The company only needs to replicate its site once;
the hosting company takes care of global
coverage
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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Digital Convergence Has Become a Reality
• Digital convergence is the intertwining of
various forms of media – voice, data and
video
• Convergence is now occurring because IP
has become the network protocol of choice
– When all forms of media can be digitized, put into
packets and sent over an IP network, they can be
managed and manipulated digitally and integrated
in highly imaginative ways
• IP telephony and video telephony have been
the ‘last frontiers’ of convergence – and now
they are a reality
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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Digital Convergence Has Become a Reality
IP Telephony
•
The use of Internet to transmit voice to replace their
telephone system
– Few companies have given up their telephone networks for
a VoIP network, but as the cost differential continues, more
will switch
– Became ‘hot’ in 2004. Previously the voice quality wasn’t
there
– Can be managed electronically from e.g. one’s PC =
possibility of ad hoc conferencing
•
Rather than analog, the IP phone generates a digital
signal
– Routed over the LAN like any other data in packets either:
1. To another IP phone on the LAN
2. Through the company’s WAN to a distant IP phone on another
of the company’s LANs, or
3. Through an IP voice gateway to the PSTN to a standard
telephone
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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Digital Convergence Has Become a Reality
Video Telephony
• Similar story to IP Telephony
• Not video conferencing via a PBX, but rather
video over IP
– With the appropriate IP infrastructure, video
telephony can be, say, launched from an instantmessaging conversation
• IP phones with cameras also facilitate it, phone to
phone
• Heaps of new converged products are now
flooding the market now that high quality
voice has become IP based
– Watch this space!
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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TORONTO PEARSON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Case study: Digital convergence via IP
• Canada’s busiest airport
• Network is common use because its infrastructure is
shared by all the airport tenants
– Each tenant has a private LAN for its own voice, data and
video applications
• VPN = private and secure
• Yet = can be (authorised) accessed from anywhere – wired or
wireless
– Each gate can be used by any airline
– Baggage tracking integrated with passenger reconciliation
• Numerous benefits:
–
–
–
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Reduced network operations costs
Consolidated network support
Increased terminal operational efficiency
Increased capacity
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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Digital Convergence Has Become a Reality
The Battle Begins
•
Setting up a collision among three massive
industries
1.
$1.1 trillion computer industry
•
2.
$225 billion consumer electronics industry
•
3.
Asian roots and new aggressive Chinese companies
$2.2 trillion telecommunications industry
•
•
•
Led by the U.S.
Leading wireless players in Europe and Asia
Data networking leaders in Silicon Valley
The Internet and its protocols are taking over!!!!
–
To understand the complexity of telecommunications, we
now look at the underlying framework for the Internet: the
OSI Reference Model
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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OSI Reference Model
• The worldwide telephone system has been so
effective in connecting people because it has
been based on common standards worldwide
– Today’s packet-switching networks are also following
some standards in most cases
– The underpinning of these standards is the OSI
Reference Model.
• We now live in an “open systems” world, and
the most important architecture in the Telecom
world is the Open Systems Interconnection
(OSI) model
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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OSI Reference Model cont.
• Analogy of mailing a letter: - see Figure 6-2
– Control information (address and type of delivery) on the
envelope - determines the services provided by the next lower
layer and addressing information for next lower layer
– When a layer receives a “message” from the next higher layer, it
performs the requested services and “wraps” the message in its
own layer of control information
– It passes the “bundle” to the layer directly below it. On the
receiving end, a layer receiving a bundle from a lower layer
unwraps the outermost layer of control information, interprets the
information, and acts on it
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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OSI Reference Model:
The Seven Layers
• 7 - Application Layer: contains the protocols
embedded in the applications used, e.g., HTTP
(hyper-text transfer protocol), which anyone who
has surfed the Web has used to locate a Web site
• The rest = read the text but many people are of
the opinion: “who cares”? – provided it works
– But just in case it doesn’t, the ‘techies’ need to know!!!
• Major area of outsourcing and use of external
consultants
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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The Rate of Change is Accelerating
•
•
Although no one seems to know for sure, many
people speculate that data traffic surpassed
voice traffic either in 1999 or 2000
In 1995, exactly 32 doublings of computer power
had occurred since the invention of the digital
computer after World War II
–
•
Chess example
E-mail outnumbered postal mail for the first time
in 1995
–
–
Unfortunately now = many are Spam (junk)
Looking for a solution!!
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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The Rate of Change is Accelerating cont.
•
The number of PC sales overtook the
number of TV sales in late 1995
•
Such changes will only accelerate
– Everyone in business must become
comfortable with technology to cope with
this brand new world of ever-increasing
technological change
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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The Optical Era Will Provide
Bandwidth Abundance
•
Decline in cost of key factors:
–
–
–
•
We are now approaching another “historic cliff of
cost” in a new factor of production: bandwidth
–
•
During the industrial era = horsepower
Since the 1960s = semiconductors
Now = bandwidth
“If you thought the price of computing dropped rapidly in the
last decade, just wait until you see what happens with
communications bandwidth”
Fiber optic technology is just as important as
microchip technology. 40 million miles of fiber optic
cable have been laid around the world, in the USA at
a rate of 4,000 miles per day
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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The Optical Era Will Provide
Bandwidth Abundance cont.
•
•
Half of the cable is dark, that is, it is not used. And
the other half is used to just one-millionth of its
potential, because every 25 miles it must be
converted to electronic pulses to amplify and
regenerate the signal
The capacity of each thread is 1,000 times the
switching speed of transistors
– As a result, using all-optical amplifiers (recently
invented), we could send all the telephone calls in
the United States on the peak moment of Mother’s
Day on one fiber thread
•
What about Fathers’ Day????
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
6-38
The Optical Era Will Provide
Bandwidth Abundance cont.
•
Downloading a digital movie, such as The
Matrix:
–
–
–
•
Takes 7 hours using a cable modem
1 hour over the Ethernet
Four seconds on an optical connection
Over the next decade, bandwidth will expand
ten times as fast as computer power and
completely transform the economy
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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The Wireless Century Begins
•
•
The goal of wireless is to do everything we can do on
wired networks, but without the wire
Wireless communications have been with us for
some time
–
•

Mobile (cell) phones, pagers, VSATs, infrared networks,
wireless LANs etc.
We are just on the cusp of an up-tick in wireless use
for all types of networks
The 20th century was the Wireline Century, the 21st
will be the Wireless Century
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
6-40
The Wireless Century Begins cont.
Licensed Versus Unlicensed Frequencies
•
•
Some frequencies of the radio spectrum
are licensed by governments for
specific purposes; others are not
Devices that tap unlicensed frequencies
are cheaper = no big $ licensing fees
–
BUT = possibility of collision between
signals
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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The Wireless Century Begins cont.
Wireless technologies for networks that cover different distances
•
•
•
•
Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPANs)
– Provide high-speed connections between devices that are up to 30
feet apart
Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs)
–
Provide access to corporate computers in office buildings, retail
stores, or hospitals or access to Internet “hot spots” where people
congregate
Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks (WMANs)
– Provide connections in cities and campuses at distances up to 30
miles
Wireless Wide Area Networks (WWANs)
– Provide broadband wireless connections over thousands of miles
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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BMW
Case Example: Wireless LANs
•
A plant in South Carolina has more than
30 suppliers nearby
– Real-time delivery of data to the suppliers
is key to efficiency
– Suppliers especially needed accurate
inventory data of the components they
supply to BMW, so they know when to
make just-in-time deliveries to the plant
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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BMW
Case Example: Wireless LANs cont.
•
To gather inventory data for SAP to track
parts, scanner terminals in the factory
transmit the data from the barcode readers
(as parts move through the assembly
process) to SAP via a wireless network that
covers the entire 2-million-square-foot plant
•
•
The system uses RF technology
A number of suppliers have followed suit
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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The Wireless Century Begins cont.
Wireless Long Distance
• The only two wireless technologies are infrared light and
radio airwaves
– Figure 6-5 shows the bandwidth spectrum, which illustrates
where the different technologies lie
– Cell (mobile) phones use radio transmitters and receivers
 Call is passed from one cell to another – fades out of one and into
another
– Much of the bandwidths and radio waves are regulated by
governments
• In the main, GSM has become the mobile telephony
standard for all but the Americas
– Unlike the computing industry, a number of leading global
telecom manufacturers are outside the United States. NTT is in
Japan, Ericsson and Nokia are in Scandinavia
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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The Wireless Century Begins cont.
Wireless Long Distance cont.
• The first cell phones used analog technology
and circuit switching, now called first-generation
(1G) wireless
• 2G cellular. 2G, which predominates today, uses
digital technology, though it is still circuit
switched
– It aims at digital telephony, not data transmission, but
2G phones can carry data
– 2G can use a laptop with a wireless modem to
communicate
 Not always the most ‘reliable’
– 2G can carry messages using short messaging
service (SMS)
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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LOUISVILLE METRO SEWER DISTRICT
Case Example – 2G mobile telephony
• When Louisville encountered big storms, sewer repair
workers had to return to headquarters to get assignment
details and look up customer records – a process that
slowed their response to the flooding
• Now they have laptops and wireless modems
• As customers call in for emergency repairs, operators at
the sewer district’s headquarters enter the orders into a
database that work crews can immediately access from
the field
– They can view neighborhood maps, locate broken water mains
and pipes, and check out the most likely areas of damage,
potentially saving entire neighborhoods from flooding
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
6-49
The Wireless Century Begins cont.
Wireless Long Distance cont.
• 2.5G cellular is extending the life of 2G digital
technologies
– Essentially adds data capacity to a 2G network
– The problem with adoption has been pricing
• The goals of 3G are to provide WANs for PCs and
multimedia, allowing bandwidth on demand.
– CDMA (code division multiple access) is the universal standard
for 3G
– It faces the same pricing issues at 2.5G – perhaps worse
 Court battles over the “leased” spectrum
 Costs to deploy not seen as tenable in many circumstances
 Hutchinson (UK) making a play in this area in Australia and
elsewhere with ‘3’ (big brother of ‘Orange’)
– Sponsors of Australian Cricket Team
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
6-50
The Wireless Century Begins cont.
Wireless Long Distance cont.
• New entrants are looking for 3G alternatives
– One is mobile broadband IP, which could actually provide 4G
services (the user paying for different kinds of services)
– Wireless mesh networks
• Links are radio signals not wires
• More flexible but uses a lot of battery power
– VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) technology is taking off in
some countries because it is seen as the best technology for
providing stationary wireless broadband
• Provided by DSL, coaxial cable and T carriers
• Heaps to be made and lost
– Watch the battles
– Ask your friends who are always up with the ‘latest and greatest’
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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AMERICAN GREETINGS
Case Example: Extending Internet to Cell phones
•
•
•
•
American Greetings, a leader in exploiting the Internet, is
extending its Internet presence to cell phones using WAP to
garner a wireless presence
The company was one of the first with a Website — it sends
reminders to subscribers, and often finds itself overwhelmed on
holidays such as Mother’s Day
It also forms “side door” alliances with retailers’ Websites
And now, subscribers can order cards from their cell phone. The
company reasons that when people have idle time, besides
checking e-mail or playing a game using their cell phone, they
also might want to send an animated funny card to someone
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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Is Wireless Secure?
• Security is a major issue today
• Eavesdroppers need special equipment
• Radio scrambling and spread-spectrum
technologies add security, encryption protects
data, and eventually , 802.11i will provide a
framework for security
• Requires eternal vigilance
– Note: the network is often not the main problem
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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Is Wireless Safe?
• Although a lot of attention is focussed on all the
new wireless services, a troubling question has
not yet been answered: Are these transmissions
safe for humans?
• It is quite possible that there could soon be a
backlash against wireless devices, similar to
protests against genetically modified organisms
– Already = heaps of debate (informed and otherwise)
in this area
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
6-54
Messaging Is a Killer App
• What has proven true with data communication
technologies over and over again is that the
killer application is messaging
–
–
–
–
Original purpose of Internet
Email
E.g. BlackBerry messaging service
SMS in the ‘rest of the world’ (outside the U.S.)
• Instant Messaging = Considered by many to be
the ‘killer app.’ of wireless
– Not just for teenagers e.g. U.S. Navy (9/11)
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
6-55
Messaging Is a Killer App cont.
• The key attribute of Instant Messaging (IM) is
that it provides presence, which means that a
person on your buddy list can see when you are
using a computer or phone and therefore knows
you are “present” and available to receive an IM
• Newer technologies will allow messaging to
become even more personal
– Photo messaging
– Video messaging
– Video phones
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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KEEBLER
Case example: Instant Messaging (IM)
•
September 2002 – this cookie and cracker company
launched Recipe-Buddie on its Web site
–
“She” is an instant-messenger bot that converses with
people who IM her
•
She only talks about recipes using her database
•
Very successful
•
Three lessons learnt:
1. Users really like to converse with bots
2. Scripting is just like writing a novel – needs to be done by
just a couple of people working closely together
3. Others, besides the original scripters, should be able to
add their own content e.g. answers to FAQs
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
6-57
Coming: An Internet of Things
• Wireless communications = not just for
people
– A machine-to-machine Internet is coming
• Likely to use Wi-Fi as one wireless communication
protocol
• RFID (Radio Frequency Identification)
– Like the barcode = involves small tags affixed to
objects that provide information about the object
• Discussed in detail in Chapter 11
• Communication systems = a mix of wired and
wireless = one of the many challenges for
CIOs
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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The Role of the IS Department
•
•
This long discussion of telecommunications
gives just a glimpse into its complexity as
well as its increasing importance
What is the IS department’s role?
•
IS has three roles:
•
–
–
–
create the telecom architecture
run it, and
stay close to the forefront of the field
Sound familiar?
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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The Role of the IS Department cont.
•
•
•
The key challenge in network design is
connectivity
Connectivity means allowing users to
communicate up, down, across, and out of
an organization
The goal is not a single, coherent network,
but rather finding a means to interface
many dissimilar networks, so that users
think they have one network
–
Like we do with the telephone, Internet etc.
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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The Role of the IS Department cont.
•
A truly interoperable network would allow PCs, laptops, and
handheld devices to interoperate with servers running Linux
and Windows and mainframes running MVS and
communicating over IP networks
–
•
The second job of the IS department is to operate the
network
–
•
This interoperability is the goal of architecture and is the main
job of the IS department
Many companies are outsourcing (part of) this work
The third job of IS is to stay current with the technology
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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Conclusion
•
•
•
•
The Telecom world is big and getting bigger by
the day. It is complex, and getting more complex
every day
–
Don’t worry – there’s plenty of help available!
The business world of old has depended on
communications, of course, but not to the extent
of the ‘New Economy’
The first generation of the Internet economy has
been wired. The second is unwired
Today telecom is all about connecting and the
number of possible connections is about to
explode worldwide
©2006 Barbara C. McNurlin. Published by Pearson Education.
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