ICT

magazine article | Published in TES Newspaper on 7 January, 2005 | By: Georgina Stein

• Section: magazine article

The quality of the resources available to schools and colleges today demonstrates the commitment that different agencies and the ICT industry have to providing the very best solutions to meet the requirements of the ICT curriculum. The ICT in Schools division of the Department of Education and Skills, professional advisers associations such as Naace, as well as technology agency Becta and the Teacher Training Agency certainly know that today's teachers and learners demand high-quality solutions, so if you are looking for "a slice of the best" resources available for use in the ICT classroom, believe me you won't be disappointed when you see what's on offer at BETT this year!

Apple's iLife suite for example, now includes iStopmotion. This is a great new edition to the portfolio of Apple products and this suite of resources is specifically designed to increase pupils' ICT skills. Enhancing capability is important and Heinemann's ICT Matters books and CD-Roms will provide you with full coverage of the key stage 3 framework and it is matched to the National Curriculum programmes of study and the QCA Scheme of Work.

If, however, you are looking for an online course for KS3, the Letts Educational Key Stage 3 ICT Online course contains everything you need to deliver KS3 ICT and it is modelled on the Framework for Teaching ICT. This course is intended for use via an interactive whiteboard, data projector and/or a computer.

When thinking about interactive whiteboards, don't forget to take a look at what's on offer via the National Whiteboard Network and if you want to purchase a whiteboard, the SMART Rear Projection 2000i Interactive Whiteboard nominated for a BETT award this year should be of interest to you (competition page 70). The latest SMART Notebook software, with a host of advanced features will certainly be useful to ICT teachers. There are also specific software packages available with the Promethean whiteboards allowing them to be used for ICT as well as broadly across the Curriculum.

The software content of programs such as ActivPrimary and ActivStudio 2 makes the hardware deliver and perform well and therefore makes the most of the equipment.

KnowledgeBox is definitely worth looking at. It has been shortlisted for no less than four BETT Awards this year and Pearson Longman will be unveiling the latest additions. BlackCat also needs to be seen - the new ICT toolbox covers the ICT skills needs of foundation stage to lower key stage 2 pupils. The 2Simple products are specifically designed to develop ICT capability and they are very popular. The Infant Video Toolkit (£75 single user) will enable you to meet the QCA Scheme of Work for ICT in KS1 and you should take a look at 2Animate (£29) too. Max's Toolbox software (£35) looks good and it includes MaxWrite, MaxCount and MaxDraw, a powerful set of resources that work with Microsoft products to make ICT fun. What could be simpler?

If you are looking for something different take a look at the Macromedia Contribute 3 School Site License Solution. It will enable everyone in your school to easily update, add, and publish to websites without knowing any HTML. If you are keen to make assessment for learning dynamic and interactive then the Qwizdom UK Ltd Interactive Learning System, short-listed for a BETT award will be of interest to you. Take a look at the new KS4 ICT lessons and questions. Did you know about the new Gridclub Superclub. They now include an ICT online course for pupils and this Superclub offers a range of features tailored to the needs of KS2 pupils.

Find out more about SuperTalker from Inclusive Technology as well as the USB Switch Box from Crick. Both have been nominated for BETT awards. Also take time to see Granada's My Modelling Toolkit (£39 single-user) - it fits directly with the teaching of QCA ICT Unit 1A.The range of must-have resources available from TAG Learning includes the Maps (Managed Assessment Portfolio System) web-based e-portfolio tool for KS2 and KS3 and Digital Movie Creator 2 (£84.95), a robust digital video camera.

Have you encountered any "invisible technology" in your classroom lately? Remember that what is also making a significant difference to ICT falls into the "invisible" category and there will be lots to see at BETT!

ICT teaching is now benefiting from fast, simultaneous access to even more online resource materials made available by suppliers, Government departments and other ICT champions. Together we are making a difference.

Why IT Does Matter

In no other area is it more important to have a sense of what you don't know than it is in IT management. The most dangerous advice to CEOs has come from people who either had no idea of what they did not know, or from those who pretended to know what they didn't. Couple not knowing that you don't know with fuzzy logic, and you have the makings of Nicholas Carr's article.

Carr's examples of railroads and electric power played out over eighty years, (not forty, as he suggests), turning society, business organizations, and lifestyles inside out. The deeper societal impacts came during the second forty years, as society's insights on how to use the technology changed. It is worth noting that although these technologies mutated significantly (for trains, it meant moving from fifteen miles an hour to eighty miles an hour), the mutation was on a totally different and much smaller scale than IT's.

The cost performance of IT technologies over the first forty years changed by roughly 10⁷, and for the
foreseeable future will continue to evolve at the same rate. That is in sharp contrast to a train, which after eighty years moved six times faster than it had in the earlier period. This is impressive, but not nearly as dramatic as a computer produced in 2000, which runs 10 million times faster than a 1960s' computer.
Carr's graph on information technology stands as a subject lesson for Darrell Huff's well-known book How to Lie with Statistics. Carr's chart would look very different if he had tracked the number of MIPS or CPU cycles on the network from 1990 to 2002. Even using a log scale on the vertical axis would be barely enough to tilt a vertical straight line enough to create something resembling the curves of the other two schematics in Carr's article. With this explosion of cost effectiveness has come the ability to do things truly differently. American Hospital Supply's distribution software and American Airlines' SABRE reservation system are examples of victories in past technologies. The firms were the first in their industries to see technology's transforming potential, they had the courage to invest in its performance, and they used it to gain a significant competitive edge. It is naive to assume that other sharply discontinuous technologies will not offer similar transformation opportunities in the future.

In our view, the most important thing that the CEO and senior management should understand about IT is its associated economics. Driven by Moore's Law, those evolving economics have enabled every industry's transaction costs to decrease continually, resulting in new economics for the firm and creating the feasibility of products and services not possible in the past. The economics of financial transactions have continually dropped from dollars to cents. New entrants have joined many industries and have focused on taking strategic advantage of IT's associated economics. Company boundaries have become permeable, organic, and global in scope through IT networks and the Internet.

The most important thing that the CEO and senior management should understand about IT is its associated economics.

As the pace of doing business increases, the CEO and senior management team must be aware of how IT can change rules and assumptions about competition. The economics of conducting business will likewise continue to improve—providing opportunities for businesses to expand the customer value proposition by providing more intangible information-based services. For example, the automobile value proposition continues to expand with technology that continuously senses road conditions and applies the appropriate wheel traction and suspension system pressures.

CEO and senior management must understand that historical constraints of every kind continue to be knocked off IT because it is a "universal information-processing machine." Before e-mail and the Internet, the cost of communications was seen as limiting IT's wider use. Packet switching was invented as a way to digitize voice, data, and video in a matter that enabled digital computers (and its associated economics) to communicate, and the cost of communication sharply and suddenly dropped. Similar situations have transpired with the advent of digitized photography, use of radio frequencies for various handheld IT appliances, and the development of such products as elevators that call in to the service center or to a computer that automatically dispatches collective software or people when a part or system is about to fail. Often, only the senior management team's imagination limits new IT-based opportunities.

Our research suggests the following:
New technologies will continue to give companies the chance to differentiate themselves by service, product feature, and cost structure for some time to come. The first mover takes a risk and gains a temporary advantage (longer if there are follow-on possibilities). The fast follower is up against less risk but also has to recover lost ground. Charles Schwab versus Merrill Lynch and Walgreens versus CVS are examples of this playing out over the past decade. Our advice to the CEO is to look at IT use through several different lenses. One lens should be focused on improving cost savings and efficiencies. Another should be focused on the incremental improvement of organizational structure, products, and services. Still another should be focused on the creation of strategic advantage through extending competitive scope, partnerships (customers and other parties), the changing of the rules of competition, and the provision of new IT-based services to extend the customer value proposition.

Unless nurtured and evolved, IT-enabled competitive applications, like many competitive advantages, don't endure. Even historic strategic systems like American Hospital Supply's (after a decade of financial malnourishment) may wind up turning into a strategic liability. Others, however, like American Airlines' SABRE have shown extraordinary robustness and have permitted the survival of otherwise doomed organizations.

Evaluating these opportunities as well as thinking through their implications and timing, is vitally important, nonboring work. The new technologies will allow new things to be transformed in nonlinear ways. Radio-frequency identification devices for grocery stores, smart cards, and automated ordering systems for hospital physicians are all examples of new process targets that technologies will soon address. In the more distant future we will see the improved creation of drugs and treatments through the ability to rapidly and more deeply analyze huge databases. Understanding the potential and then deciding when the time is right to seize these transformative applications will be neither routine nor boring for the CEO or CIO.

Grid computing, standardization of components, and open systems, far from stifling differentiation, provide a stable platform to build on and offer new ways of differentiating, either by cost, structure, product, or service. Just as literacy stimulated innovation, so do open systems and grids. Outsourcing the commodity infrastructure is a great way to control costs, build competence, and free up resources, which can be used to combine data bits in creative ways to add value. Relatively bulletproof operational reliability will be a key part of the price of success. Back-office or server farms, help desks, and network operations will be outsourced to specialists to attain this reliability (at rock-bottom costs). Packages like SAP further help remove commodity maintenance activities and allow firms to better analyze customer information and provide service at the sharp end. The package of skills needed inside an organization is changing very fast for competition in the information age.

The jobs of the CTO and CIO are and will be of unparalleled importance in the decades ahead. Max Hopper of American Airlines and Paul Strassmann of Kraft and NASA are not the last of a dying breed of dinosaurs, but prototypes of the leadership skills needed for survival.

If you take 1955 (with the IBM 701) as the start date and use eighty years as a technology cycle, 2035 may not be far off the mark for playing much of this out. Even then, the special recombinant nature of this technology makes us uncomfortable calling an end date. We wish Carr were right, because everyone's golf handicap could then improve. Unfortunately, the evidence is all to the contrary.

Excerpted with permission from "Does IT Matter? An HBR Debate," Harvard Business Review Online, June 2003.

Microsoft Makes Money Off Android

In the hunt for the next billion-dollar business, Microsoft may have discovered one in mobile software. It costs Microsoft nothing to produce and sell, and it's not Windows Phone. It's Android, the wildly popular — and free — mobile-phone software made by competitor Google. In the past nine months, Microsoft has gone after a handful of companies that make Android phones and tablets. It has either sued or persuaded the companies to pay it license fees for some technologies found in certain Android features. Microsoft contends it has patents on those technologies. Four companies in the past two weeks said they will pay licensing fees to Microsoft for selling tablets and phones that run on Android. HTC, a major Taiwanese smartphone maker, entered into a licensing agreement in April to pay Microsoft a reported $5 per Android phone Microsoft has begun talking to Samsung, the world's largest maker of Android phones, about a licensing agreement, Reuters reported Tuesday, citing South Korean media reports. Microsoft, Google and Samsung declined to comment for this story. But Brad Smith, Microsoft's chief attorney, addressed the issue in a wide-ranging discussion with reporters in June. Asked whether Android is a new business for Microsoft, Smith said, "We've been open that we're happy to enter into a licensing agreement" with companies that make Android devices.

Asked about a Citi analyst report that HTC was paying Microsoft $5 per Android phone, Smith said, "That seems like a fair price." He said $5 is less than how much Microsoft charges for each Windows Phone license. "At Microsoft, we stand behind our products and customers," Smith said. "Google says it stands behind its products, but some days they stand so far behind, I'm not sure anyone can see them."

If Microsoft managed to get all Android phone and tablet makers to cough up $5 per device, Microsoft could make more than $913 million a year, using Google's figure of 500,000 new devices per day.

At Microsoft, any business that can bring in $1 billion annually is significant. In fiscal 2010, the Entertainment and Devices division, which includes the Xbox business and mobile software, made $8.1 billion in sales and $679 million in operating profit. Google has said its mobile business, including search, advertising and services, is a $1 billion enterprise. The company gives away Android, but it sells deals to phone and tablet makers who want exclusive rights to offer the latest software for a limited period. Android is the world's fastest-growing mobile operating system. Google said 100 million people are using Android devices and, by year's end, it's projected to have 40 percent of the worldwide smartphone market, according to Framingham, Mass. research firm IDC. Nokia's Symbian software, which topped the market for a long spell, is expected to shrink to 21 percent; Apple will maintain a share of 16 percent and Research in Motion's BlackBerry will slip to 15 percent. Microsoft's share, which includes both Windows Phone and its older Windows Mobile software, will grow slightly to 6 percent. Analysts think Microsoft has the potential for faster growth over the next few years because of a partnership with Nokia that makes Windows Phone the primary software for phones Nokia says it will start selling in the fourth quarter. Tablet and phone makers flocked to Google because Android is a royalty-free alternative to Apple's iPhone and iPad software (Apple does not license its software to other companies, in any case). Android was more technologically advanced than Microsoft's previous phone software, Windows Mobile. Microsoft has yet to develop an operating system designed specifically for tablets. It said it is building its next operating system, Windows 8, to run tablets and traditional PCs. That system is expected to be finished between October 2011 and 2012.

In October 2010, Microsoft launched the first volley at Android, suing Motorola Mobility in U.S. District Court of Western Washington and complaining to the International Trade Commission. Microsoft claims Motorola's Droid phones, which use the Android platform, infringe on nine of Microsoft's patents.

In November, Motorola countersued Microsoft in federal courts in California and Florida, saying Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Phone 7, Hotmail and Exchange Server software infringe on its patents.

Microsoft also sued Barnes & Noble in U.S. District Court in Western Washington over its Nook e-reader, claiming the book giant copied Microsoft's intellectual property as well. The Nook runs on Android.

Smaller companies Onkyo, Velocity Micro, General Dynamics Itronix and Wistron said in the past two weeks they will pay Microsoft license fees for devices they sell that run on Android. Microsoft could potentially target many other companies with Android devices, including Dell, Sony, Sony Ericsson, Asus, Acer, LG and Toshiba. One company is absent from Microsoft's cross hairs: Google. Law professor Mark Lemley said large companies in the IT industry normally avoid suing each other directly. "It's kind of like in the Cold War, this idea of mutually assured destruction," he said. "You have the power to take me out of the market and I have the power to take you out of the market, so why should either of us exercise that power?"

Lemley, the William H. Neukom professor at Stanford University, has represented Google's book-search business, but not its mobile-software business. He said it's not unusual for companies to sue each other's customers. "What's interesting about smartphone litigation is that we're seeing that traditional détente in the IT industry breaks down," he said. "It's because companies are aggressively jockeying for market share, and nobody really knows how the market is going to shake out." He said the lawsuits could stifle innovation; that happened during the early days of the aviation and radio industry. Colleen Chien, a patent-law professor at Santa Clara University Law School in California, said Microsoft has become much more aggressive about intellectual property. Microsoft and Google, along with other companies, recently bid against each other for a set of Nortel mobile-technology patents. Microsoft's consortium won. "They're fighting over patents in the courtroom, and in the auction house, and for the customer in the marketplace," Chien said.

SOURCES: CLICK HERE
AUTHOR: SHARON PIAN CHAN

ICT Zone Offer Investment Scheme

KUALA LUMPUR: ICT Zone Ventures Bhd is looking for investors from all walks of life to invest in its rental business of electronic equipment such as personal computers, notebooks and projectors, services and software solutions to offices and government institutions.

Its chief executive officer Lim Kok Kwang said the company is offering 22,000 units equivalent to RM110 million of shares up for grabs to anyone who is above 18 years old including foreigners.

"Each unit is RM5,000 and this investment maturity date ends on March 27 2020. When they invest with us under this ICT scheme they will get a return of 8 per cent per annum for the next nine years until the scheme ends," Lim told Business Times in an interview, recently.

Lim said once the scheme reached its maturity date in 2020, only then can investors recoup their entire investment with the company.

"In the meantime, investors who invest with us can check our financial records with the Companies Commission of Malaysia (SSM) which will be renewed every six months," he said.

He also said that investors' capital is protected within the cumulative nine-year redemption reserve fund, which is managed by a trustee called My Premier Trustee (Malaysia) Bhd that is approved by Bank Negara Malaysia and SSM.

An independent consultant Pannell Kerr Forster (PKF) accountants will audit the interest scheme every six months to validate its governance.

He said the scheme, which comes under the Companies Act 1965, is another type of scheme which allows small and medium enterprises to raise funds if they are not qualified yet to go for listing.

"We are the first ICT company approved by SSM to be qualified for this scheme. Prior to this only three companies have been approved to raise money from this scheme and they are all from the agricultural sector," Lim said.

He said the company had been approved to collect funds under this scheme on March 28 this year and would launch the fund on a bigger scale sometime in mid July.

According to Lim, the company has over RM50 million worth of electronic equipment and plans to invest another RM10 million this year to purchase more personal computers and other office equipment which can be rented out to its clients.

On the company's performance, Lim said he expects the company to do well this year with a growth of at least 30 per cent by year end.

"Since our establishment in 2001, we have been growing year on year basis on a 30 per cent rate. That is normal for us. However, I hope our growth can surpass the 30 per cent mark this year," he said, adding that the company made a net profit or RM1 million last year.

At present, its cliental includes University Teknologi Mara, The Education Ministry, Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre and Popular bookstore to name a few. 

AUTHOR: JUNE RAMLEE

SOURCE: NEWS STRAITS TIMES

Malaysian ICT to Grow as Economy Recovers

Malaysia’s information and communications technology (ICT) sector could grow by 7% if economic recovery and business confidence continues, says Malaysia’s Science, Technology and Information Minister Dr Maximus Johnity Ongkili. ICT contributed as much as RM48 billion (US$15.8 billion) or 10% of Malaysia’s GDP in 2007, but only RM40 billion ($13.2 billion) last year. Before the financial crisis ICT in Malaysia had been projected to grow 10% per year, one of Asia’s fastest, he said.

Ongkili made his comments at Mimos, a major R&D center for ‘frontier technologies’ and advisor to the Malaysian government, which focuses on technology that can be commercialized for growth. Mimos yesterday held a ceremony to transfer technology platforms to three local companies to be developed for market by the private sector: Jaring Communications Sdn Bhd, Mutiara.com and Smart Computing Sdn Bhd.

Six other Malaysian companies also signed deals to licence and develop Mimos’ technology: Disability Solutions Sdn Bhd, Alam Teknokrat Sdn Bhd, Innovision Business Solutions Sdn Bhd, Phytofolia Sdn Bhd, Quantum Beez Sdn Bhd and Fabtronic Sdn Bhd.

131 ‘WiFi Villages’ for Sandakan

Meanwhile, in Malaysia’s far eastern city of Sandakan, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) said it was halfway through a project to provide minimal-charge wireless internet access to 131 area villages, enabling urban and rural populations equal access to online services. MCMC has also distributed 49,800 netbooks to students in Sabah province on Borneo under the 1Malaysia project.

source & articles: The Star Online, Mimos

How IT Shapes Top-Down and Bottom-Up Decision Making

What determines whether decisions happen on the bottom, middle, or top rung of the corporate ladder? New research offers a surprising conclusion: The answer often lies in the technology that a company uses.
Information-based systems, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, will push decision-making toward the bottom of the corporate ladder. Communication systems, such as e-mail and instant messaging applications, will push the decision-making process toward the top.
And that means developing an IT strategy isn't all about deploying the best technology, says Raffaella Sadun, an assistant professor of strategy at Harvard Business School.

"If a CEO can trust his senior managers, he will be more willing to decentralize decision-making"

"The bottom line is that whoever is in charge of the acquisitions and the IT strategy, they obviously cannot just think about the technology side, they also have to think about the organizational side," she says. "Traditionally, technology is thought of as a tool that enables empowerment, but that's not always the case."
Sadun discusses the issue in "The Distinct Effects of Information Technology and Communication Technology on Firm Organization," a paper she cowrote with Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University and Luis Garicano and John Van Reenen of the Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics.
"Technologies that make the acquisition of information easier at the lower level of the hierarchy are associated with a decentralization of the decision-making process," Sadun says. "On the other hand, we have the communication technologies, which actually do exactly the opposite."

 

IT's different roles

Companies, however, often fail to consider the disparate roles of their software systems, let alone their effects on organizational behavior. Rather, they lump "information technology" into one amorphous idea—the "IT" department—which encompasses all the technology in the organization.
"Technology tends to be dumped into a single category," Sadun says. "The reality is that IT is a huge, heterogeneous set of technologies."
Similarly, when examining issues such as organization and productivity, industry and academic studies historically tend to treat information and communication technologies as "an aggregate homogeneous capital stock," according to the paper. To that end, Sadun and her fellow researchers set out to show how—and why—managers need to consider the very different organizational effects of communication and information technologies.
"This difference matters not just for firms' organization and productivity, but also in the labor market, as information access and communication technology changes can be expected to affect the wage distribution in opposite directions," their paper states.
The researchers looked at non-production decisions such as capital investment, new hires, and new product plans. Such decisions are either centralized near the top of the corporate ladder or decentralized and delegated to the top of a particular business unit. And the decision makers often depend on ERP software, which facilitates the dissemination of information throughout a large company, enabling detailed coordination among various operating units.
Next, they looked at production decisions, which involve figuring out the tasks necessary to meet the goals and deciding how to pace them. These decisions are generally the bailiwick of either a factory floor worker or a supervisor. For those cases, the researchers studied the role of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) software in decision-making.
In both instances, the researchers hypothesized that the information software would lead to decentralized decision-making. Because the software eases access to the information necessary to make important choices, both the ERP and CAD systems would increase the likelihood that plant managers and production workers would make decisions and act on them without having to consult an executive at headquarters.
On the other hand, the team hypothesized that a rise in leased lines and corporate intranets would lead to a rise in centralized decision-making at the top of the corporate ladder.

Enabling micromanagement

In the past, communication often depended on faxes, overnight delivery services, "snail mail," or site visits. Even with phone calls, it was difficult for anyone at headquarters to make educated decisions and communicate them to branch offices. In those cases, it was natural to cede control of daily operations to a local manager.
With today's networking technologies, it's easier for top executives to keep a constant flow of communication with branch offices. However, the network may actually deter innovation. When technology makes it easier to communicate, erstwhile independent workers may find themselves pestering their bosses with e-mailed questions throughout the day. Micromanaging executives find themselves making all the decisions and constantly sending mandates down the corporate ladder.
"Whenever there is a reduction in the cost of transmitting information, it's easier for the person down in the hierarchy to communicate with the CEO," Sadun says. "And the CEO can monitor constantly what this person is doing and just give orders, rather than rely on the judgment of those below."
The research team evaluated data from some 1,000 manufacturing firms in eight countries, including detailed technology rollout histories and surveys that gauged the relative decisional autonomy of plant managers and floor workers. (In gauging the factors that determine whether a firm adopts any given technology, the researchers considered geographic variables that might affect the cost of acquiring the technology—the firm's distance from the Walldorf, Germany, headquarters of ERP market leader SAP, for instance, and the fact that telecom industry regulations vary from country to country, which means networking prices vary, too.)
The findings were consistently parallel with the hypotheses: An increase in the penetration of ERP systems led to a substantial increase in plant manager autonomy. A CAD/CAM deployment raised the likelihood of floor worker autonomy. But communication technologies served to lower autonomy, meaning more decisions happened at the corporate level.
"I was reassured and surprised at the same time that these results were holding across countries and industries," Sadun says.

The importance of trust

That said, Sadun notes that technology is hardly the only factor that determines whether a firm allows decision-making both up and down the corporate ladder. Another major factor lies in cultural differences across and within countries. In a separate study, Sadun found that otherwise similar companies showed huge differences in decision-making tactics, according to their geographical location. In the paper "The Organization of Firms across Countries," coauthored with Bloom and Van Reenen, she documents that firms located in areas with high levels of trust tend to be systematically more decentralized than those in areas with low levels of trust.
Sweden and Portugal, for example, seem to be on opposite ends of the trust spectrum. "There's huge cross country heterogeneity in the way even apparently similar firms decide how to allocate decision rights within the firm," Sadun says. "Take Swedish manufacturing companies, for example. You see that they are completely decentralized, and the middle manager is basically a mini-CEO with loads of decision-making power. And then you take a firm that produces exactly the same good, but instead of in Sweden, it's in Portugal. And there, the middle manager doesn't decide anything and is completely dependent on the authority of the CEO.
"In our research," she continues, "we argue that different levels of trust are a key determinant of these differences. If a CEO can trust his senior managers, he will be more willing to decentralize decision-making. For example, there might be a lower concern about the fact that managers will use their power to pursue their personal interests instead of those of the firm."

Carmen Nobel is senior editor of HBS Working Knowledge.

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Information Technology in Business

Information technology in business for better reliability, profitability and higher growth

Information technology has crucial impact on the overall performance of a business, its reputation in the economy, performance of the employees, profitability over the years, firm’s growth rate and so on. To draw conclusion on the impact of information technology in business these factors need to be evaluated. If all the financial statements like balance sheet, cash flow statement, profit and loss account and retained earning s are evaluated, then it can be found that the performance, now-a-days, largely depends on the effective use of information technology in business.

Analysis of the impact of information technology is very important for all the professionals, investors as well as for the company to understand the reasons behind success or failure of a business. There is no doubt, that effective uses of information technology, in the leading business enterprises, play a vital role in their successes. With the help of information technology, a business entity would be able to serve more customer efficiently than before. Financial statements would be rapidly available, internal control would be more effective and processing time would be minimum because of it. Still, the accuracy would be maintained because of keeping information in details, leading to more customer satisfaction for a business.

Now the world is considered as a ‘global village’ and information technology has made communication not only cheaper but also quicker. The information technology industry is growing at a rapid pace and it is playing an ever increasing role in supporting business transformation and strategies. Information technology is a vital part of today’s global economy and it is expected to increase in importance in days to come. Because of the presence of information technology in business, the start up cost has become minimal and the time management has become more effective. It seems information technology has given business enterprises, the opportunity to control the business with fingertips.

All computers be it desktops,laptops,pdas are still a smart supply of income if you are an IT consultant. You wish to be the voice of authority when it comes to the IT spending habits of your purchasers. You would like to create sure that your shoppers spend all of their technology budgets throughout a given year with you and invest wisely. If you supply the proper coming up with as an it consultant, your purchasers would like not incur a lot of service and maintenace prices when spending their budget and increasing their hardware. A terribly basic laptop will be a great approach to place together a second, third, or fourth computer, these are perfectly sensible enough for document writing and surfing the internet.Information technoligy in business.

Information Technology

What is IT?

It is the study, design, creation, utilization, support, and management of computer-based information systems, especially software applications and computer hardware. IT is not limited solely to computers though. With technologies quickly developing in the fields of cell phones, PDAs and other handheld devices, the field of IT is quickly moving from compartmentalized computer-focused areas to other forms of mobile technology.

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