Week 2 Discussion Comments

You made some very good points this week. I also appreciate the examples you included from work environments. My comments on each discussion follow.

W2D1 Does IT Matter article

Google and Dominican are different: I believe that there is a distinction between IT companies and other companies. In IT companies, there is the "normal IT" (back office systems, accounting systems, internal e-mail etc.). The same rules that apply to "normal" companies apply to these systems. IT companies also produce systems for direct delivery to customers such as the Apple iOS operating system in the iPhone, Google apps and Google search for direct use by customers, and Microsoft Azure (Cloud services). Most of these are or were strategic investments in new product development and not just "IT Investments".

 

Training for new systems: Some postings talked about IT investments being wasted. Employees must be trained in new systems in order for the investment in the system to be most effective. I agree. When you are in a management role, you will need to deal with the trade-off of temporarily reducing capacity and output in your department in order to provide your team with training. When faced with this trade-off, you can remember this Discussion.

Is the IT Build out finished? I think we are just at the beginning of "The Internet of Things" where snow plows, refrigerators, and cars will be loaded with digital technology and communicating with the Internet. This will give rise to significant new applications for businesses.

Is the IT Build out finished? The build out of data centers at non-tech companies may have peaked. For example, Dominican is running Canvas on servers in Utah instead of at Dominican. Student e-mail is no longer handled on servers at Dominican. Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, HP and others are building huge data centers which, in my opinion, will take over work currently done at individual companies. As an analogy, individual companies used to generate their own electricity before this work was taken over by electric utilities. Think of the big cloud companies like Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and HP as the new information technology utilities. Note: There are always changes in the on-site / off-site balance. Some people are now installing solar panels so not all electicity generation is being done centrally.

Cost of technology It is now possible to start a business without making a major up-front technology investment (data center, servers, software licenses). A startup can get as much infrastructure as is required by making pay-as-you go arrangements with an information technology utility (cloud provider).

The only way to support Carr's claim that IT management is boring is if you only consider the routine management of technology infrastructure such as the PCs in Dominican's classrooms and the routine operation of Dominican's administrative systems (registration, grading,...). Deciding where to apply technology next and how to change business practices because of the availability of new technology is far from boring.

One thing the article had right in 2003 is that the IT buildout in corporate data centers was almost over. Much of the growth is now occurring in the cloud. For example, Dominican has moved learning management (Canvas) and student email from its own data center to the Cloud (Microsoft and Instructure)

What matters is WHAT you spend the IT dollars for.

 

W2D2 - Netflix and iTunes

Netflix in gthe news: When

Data is no longer unlimited: When you think about watching Netflix "anyplace" on your cell phone, Consider that Verizon LTE allows you to download about 5 movies in about 90 minutes over your 4G cell phone. Unfortunately, this will exhaust a 5GB monthly limit and future downloads will cost around $10-$20 per GB.

Not everything is about IT: Both Netflix and iTunes license content from others and the licensors can impose restrictions as to what countries and what devices are covered by the license. An interesting question that I think will be answered in the next five years is "Who has the power -- the content provider or the content distributor?" One of the major reasons for iTunes' initial success was the license agreement(s) that Apple negotiated with the content providers. This was at least as important as the technology infrastructure underlying iTunes. In fact, Netflix does not have that much infrastructure. Netflix runs on Amazon Web Services -- just like Canvas does. See http://www.networkworld.com/article/3037428/cloud-computing/netflix-is-not-really-all-in-on-amazon-s-cloud.html (2016)

 

IT Investment is an issue in any business: Why Discuss Apple and Netflix when they were not mentioned in Carr's article? As a graduate business student, you should be able to determine how what you have learned in text books and readings apply to any given company. You can learn about any public company through public sources like Yahoo Finance and the Wall Street Journal.

Monthly subscriptions: A number of businesses get revenue through a subscription model. Cable Companies, Internet Service Providers, Netflix, and some web sites charge monthly fees. Controlling monthly subscription costs can be important to your financial health over the long term.

 

 

W2D3 - Dominican and IT.

Trade offs: Many of you recognized that setting a level of investment in IT involves trade offs and limits. Over investment in storage, bandwidth, and computer hardware will cause tuition to rise and make Dominican less competitive. Under investment can also make Dominican less competitive.

W2D3 Dominican IT

Dominican has a Strategic IT Plan. You can find a copy here

Jill-Albin Hill, Dominican's Chief Information Officer is willing to answer our questions. She will run our Discussion in Week 4. One of the Discussion Groups talked about the Dominican Support Center. You can also raise questions about the support center to our CIO next week.

There is very good faculty training in Canvas. Also, the Dominican Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence (CTLE) conducts workshops for faculty each term. I must admit that making better use of technology at Dominican such as the video equipment in the classrooms depends more on individual professors than the level of training available.

Dominican makes very good use of standard software such as Salesforce, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Exchange, Canvas, and Jenzabar (for registration, grades, student accounts etc.).