Kevin Doyle INTRODUCTION TO

Lecture 1 INFORMATION SYSTEMS IN

BUSINESS
Why Study Information Systems?
• Information technology can help all kinds of
businesses improve the efficiency and
effectiveness of their business processes,
managerial decision making, and workgroup
collaboration, thus strengthening their
competitive positions in a rapidly changing
marketplace.
Why Study Information Systems?
• Internet-based systems have become a necessary
ingredient for business success in today’s dynamic
global environment.

• Information technologies are playing an expanding

role in business.
What is an Information System?
Any organized combination of people, hardware,
software, communications networks, and data
resources that stores, retrieves, transforms, and
disseminates information in an organization.
Information Systems vs.
Information Technology
• Information Systems (IS) – all components and
resources necessary to deliver information and
information processing functions to the
organization

• Information Technology (IT) – various hardware

components necessary for the system to operate
Types of Information Technologies

• Computer Hardware Technologies

Including microcomputers, midsize servers, and
large mainframe systems, and the input, output,
and storage devices that support them

• Computer Software Technologies

Including operating system software, Web
browsers, software productivity suites, and
software for business applications like customer
relationship management and supply chain
management
Types of Information Technologies
• Telecommunications Network Technologies
Including the telecommunications media,
processors, and software needed to provide wire-
based and wireless access and support for the
Internet and private Internet-based networks

• Data Resource Management Technologies

Including database management system software
for the development, access, and maintenance of
the databases of an organization
The Pace of IS Change is Phenomenal
Earth is 4 Billion years old
• Animals appeared 800 million years ago
• The great dying occurred about 252 million years ago, with up to
95% of all animal species becoming extinct
• Dinosaurs lived for 160 million years, then disappeared about 66
million years ago in the Cretaceous–Tertiary (K/T) extinction
event along with about 80% of all other animal species of that
time
• Humans appeared about 2 million years ago
• Homo Sapiens about 250,000 years ago

Computers have been around for 80 years

• The Information Age began in the 50’s
• was noticed in the 70’s
• and was widely accepted in the 80’s
• The new bio-economy will begin c2020’s
 ‘Technology Push’ is Hard to Predict
• "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of
communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." --Western Union internal
memo, 1876.
• "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." --Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society,
1895.
• "Everything that can be invented has been invented." --Charles H. Duel, Commissioner of
the US patent Office, 1899
• “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a
message sent to nobody in particular?" --David Sarnoff's associates in response to his
urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.
• "Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." -- Popular Mechanics,
forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
• "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." --Thomas Watson, chairman of
IBM, 1943
• "I have travelled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people,
and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year." --The editor
in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957
• "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." --Ken Olson, president,
chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
• "640K ought to be enough for anybody." --Bill Gates, 1981
The Harvard Mark 1 (1944-1959)

$500,00 IBM R&D project (Howard Aikin)

60 sets of 24 (420) hand set switches

could store 72 - 23 digit numbers
15m long by 2.5m high
750,000 parts held together by 800km of wire
‘Programming’ the Harvard Mark 1
Performance
• The Harvard Mark 1 was only capable of doing three
additions or subtractions per second and the machine
took six seconds to do a single multiplication.

• Logarithms and trigonometric calculations took over a

minute each.
China’s Tianhe-2
Performance
• Tianhe-2 runs at 33.86 PETAFLOPS

• That is 33,860,000,000,000,000 or roughly 34 thousand,

million, million FLOPS
• (maybe a million times as fast as your laptop)
• and 2 million, million, million times as fast as the Harvard Mark1

• Peta: 1015 Tera: 1012 Giga: 109 Mega: 106

China’s Sunway-TaihuLight
Performance
• Sunway-TaihuLight – Chinese supercomputer Sunway-
TaihuLight is currently one of the fastest supercomputers
in the world, operating at 93 petaflops. That means it's
able to perform 93 quadrillion (93 million billion)
calculations per second.
And There’s Moore…
The fastest supercomputers ever made
Hardware Costs

In 1965 Intel founder Gordon Moore coined Moore’s law

The number of transistors per chip doubles about every two years

e.g. in the 50 years between 1965 and 2015 we saw a 3,500 times improvement in
processor performance and became 90,000 times more energy efficient, at 60,000 times
lower cost.
Size of Data
• Data stored growing at an exponential rate
• predicted that in 2020, there will be 5,200 gigabytes of data on every
person in the world
• Walmart processes one million customer transactions per hour
• In 2017 Amazon sold 600 items per second
• An average of 200 billion emails are sent each day
• MasterCard processes 74 billion transactions per year
• 3000 BC to 2014 AD produced same amount of data as 2017
• IDC est. amount of data in the world doubles every 1.5 years
• 50 Billion smart devices connected to internet in 2020
Size of Data
45 trillion
Blu-ray discs

All data
recorded in
2011

All info
generated up
55-storey to 2003
high stack
of DVDs
6 million
books
2 Hour
Music Film
File
1 Page 5 MB
of Text

1 Byte Kilobyte Megabyte Gigabyte Terabyte Petabyte Exabyte Zettabyte Yottabyte

1000 Bytes 1000 KB 1000 MB 1000 GB 1000 TB 1000 PB 1000 EB 1000 ZB
Data Storage

• Data types
– unstructured, plain text, PDFs, word

– structured e.g. JSON, XML, database

– semi-structured mixture of the two

– video / image / sound

Data Storage

• In files

• In databases
• relational and non-relational

• In data warehouses

• In the cloud
Value of Data
• Lot of data captured

• Not so much currently has value

• about 0.5% of data captured is analysed
• 37% of data can be analysed (currently)

• Huge area for future development

Conceptual Framework of IS Knowledge
Roles of IS in Business
Environmental Information Sources
Information Characteristics by Mgt Level
Trends in Information Systems
What is E-Business?
Definition:
• The use of Internet technologies to work and empower
business processes, electronic commerce, and
enterprise collaboration within a company and with its
customers, suppliers, and other business stakeholders.

• An online exchange of value.

E-Business Information Technology
Infrastructure
Types of Information Systems
Operational & Managerial IS
• Expert Systems – provide expert advice for operational
chores or managerial decisions

• Knowledge Management Systems – support the

creation, organization, and dissemination of business
knowledge to employees and managers
Measures of Success
• Efficiency
• Minimize costs
• Minimize time
• Minimize the use of information resources

• Effectiveness
• Support an organization’s business strategies
• Enable its business processes
• Enhance its organizational structure and culture
• Increase the customer business value of the
enterprise
Developing IS Solutions
IT Career Trends
• Rising labor costs have resulting in large-scale
movement to outsource programming functions to
India, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific countries.

• More new and exciting jobs emerge each day as

organizations continue to expand their wide-scale use of
IT.

• Frequent shortages of qualified information systems

personnel.

• Constantly changing job requirements due to dynamic

developments in business and IT ensure long-term job
outlook in IT remains positive and exciting.
The IS Function represents…
• A major functional area of business equally as important
to business success as the functions of accounting,
finance, operations management, marketing, and
human resource management.

• An important contributor to operational efficiency,

employee productivity and morale, and customer
service and satisfaction.
What is a System?
Definition:
A group of interrelated components, with a clearly
defined boundary, working together toward a common
goal by accepting inputs and producing outputs in an
organized transformation process.
System Components
• Input – capturing and assembling elements that enter
the system to be processed

• Processing – transformation steps that convert input

into output

• Output – transferring elements that have been

produced by a transformation process to their ultimate
destination
Cybernetic Systems
Definition:
A self-monitoring, self-regulating system.

• Feedback – data about the performance of a system

• Control – monitoring and evaluating feedback to

determine whether a system is moving toward the
achievement of its goal
Example of a Cybernetic System
A Business System
IS Resources & Activities
Data vs. Information
• Data – raw facts or observations typically about
physical phenomena or business transactions

• Information – data that have been converted into a

meaningful and useful context for specific end users
Recognizing Information Systems
Fundamental Components of IS

• People, hardware, software, data and network resources

used

• Types of information products produced

• Input, processing, output, storage and control activities

performed
Summary
• There is no longer a distinction between an IT project
and a business initiative.

• Information systems are an important contributor to

operational efficiency, employee productivity and
morale, and customer service and satisfaction.