IS & IT Internal Exam # 2 with Solutions 6th September 2013 Section 1: Attempt any 6 questions for 5 marks each.

. Section 2: Attempt 10 questions for 2 mark each. Time: 1 hour 10 mins Section 1 1. Montecarlo Limited (MCL) is one of the largest private sector construction companies of India that specializes in large scale civil construction and energy networks by formulating new age construction technologies. Having established its presence at pan India level, the company is a diversified conglomerate offering services in high value infrastructure projects like Highways, Roads, Irrigation, Water Supply, Mining, Power Transmission & Distribution, Building and Urban Infrastructures. The company is first in Gujarat and among the first five construction companies of India, who have successfully implemented SAP (ERP) System to all its project locations across India, which gives a competitive advantage over its competitors in the industry. Reduction in cost is always a challenege for the CIO of the company. Discuss how cloud computing can provide value to the business of Montecarlo. Cloud computing allows a company to purchase computing capacity from remote, large-scale data processing centers during peak demand periods. A company can purchase only the capacity or service necessary to provide scalability. The companies offering cloud computing services can also provide new technologies that a business may not be able to provide for itself. 2. Discuss the business value of open-source software. Open-source software provides business value by lowering the cost of purchasing software. Open-source software is based on the premise that it is superior to commercially produced proprietary software because thousands of programmers around the world working for no pay can read, perfect, distribute, and modify the source code much faster, and with more reliable results than small teams of programmers working for a single software company. 3. Big Design, an architecture company has been doing fairly well for itself over the years. Year on year sales have increase 40% on an average. The CEO, Mr. Sabharwal is unsure of the costs of setting up a modern computer system. Cost considerations are important. Your task is to describe how network economics, declining communication costs, and technology standards affect IT infrastructure. Network economics: Metcalfes Law helps explain the mushrooming use of computers by showing that a networks value to participants grows exponentially as the network takes on more members. As the number of members in a network grows linearly, the value of the entire system grows exponentially and theoretically continues to grow forever as members increase.

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IS & IT Internal Exam # 2 with Solutions 6th September 2013 Declining communication costs: Rapid decline in communication costs and the exponential growth in the size of the Internet is a driving force that affects the IT infrastructure. As communication costs fall toward a very small number and approach zero, utilization of communication and computing facilities explodes. Technology standards: Growing agreement in the technology industry to use computing and communication standards that define specifications that establish the compatibility of products and the ability to communicate in a network. Technology standards unleash powerful economies of scale and result in price declines as manufacturers focus on the products built to a single standard. Without economies of scale, computing of any sort would be far more expensive than is currently the case. 4. Why are RFID and wireless sensor networks (WSNs) valuable for business? Define RFID, explain how it works and describe how it provides value to businesses. Mobile wireless technology facilitates supply chain management by capturing data on the movement of goods as these events take place and by providing detailed, immediate information as goods move among supply chain partners. Radio frequency identification (RFID) systems provide a microchip that contains data about an item and its location. The tags transmit radio signals over a short distance to special RFID readers. The RFID readers then pass the data over a network to a computer for processing. RFID gives businesses an opportunity to further automate their supply chain networks. The technology allows more data on an RFID chip than typical barcodes. RFID systems track each pallet, lot, or unit item in a shipment. The technology helps companies improve receiving and storage operations by improving their ability to see exactly what stock is stored in warehouses or on retail store shelves. 5. Name and describe the principal network topologies. The principal network topologies include: Star topology: All devices on the network connect to a single hub and all network traffic flows through the hub. Bus topology: One station transmits signals, which travel in both directions along a single transmission segment. All of the signals are broadcast in both directions to the entire network, with special software to identify which components receive each message. Ring topology: Connects network components in a closed loop. Messages pass from computer to computer in only one direction around the loop and only one station at a time may tansmit. 6. Define business process management and describe the steps required to carry it out.

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IS & IT Internal Exam # 2 with Solutions 6th September 2013 Business process management: Companies manage incremental process changes that are required simultaneously in many areas. Organizations need to revise and optimize numerous internal business processes and BPM provides the methodologies and tools necessary to be successful. BPM is more about continual improvements to business processes and using processes as building blocks in information systems. Steps required for effective BPM: Identify processes for change: A business first needs to understand what business processes need improvement. Improving the wrong processes simply allows a business to continue doing what it shouldnt do in the first place. Analyze existing processes: An organization must understand and measure the performance of existing processes as a baseline including inputs, outputs, resources, and the sequence of activities. The process design team identifies redundant steps, paper-intensive tasks, bottlenecks, and other inefficiencies. Otherwise, the effectiveness of the changes can t be determined. Design the new process: The process design team tries to improve the process by designing a new one that can be documented and modeled for comparison with the old process. The new process design needs to be justified by showing how much it reduces time and costs or enhances customer service and value. Implement the new process: Translate the new process into a new set of procedures and work rules. As employees begin using the new process problems are uncovered and addressed and employees may recommend improvements. Continuous measurements: The new process must be continually measured because it may deteriorate over time as employees fall back on old methods or the business experiences other changes. 7. Describe the role of programming, conversion, production, and maintenance in systems development. Programming: Specifications that were prepared during the design stage are translated into software program code. Conversion: The process of changing from the old system to the new system. Production: The operation of the system once it has been installed and conversion is complete. The system will be reviewed during production by both users and technical specialists to determine how well it has met its original objectives and to decide whether any revisions or modifications are needed. Maintenance: Modifications to hardware, software, documentation, or procedures to a production system to correct errors, meet new requirements, and improve processing efficiency.

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IS & IT Internal Exam # 2 with Solutions 6th September 2013

8. Define information system prototyping. Describe its benefits and limitations. List and describe the steps in the prototyping process. Information system prototyping is an explicitly interactive system design methodology that builds an experimental model of a system as a means of determining information requirements. Prototyping builds an experimental system quickly and inexpensively for demonstration and evaluation so that users can better determine information requirements. A preliminary model of a system or important parts of the system is built rapidly for users to experiment with. The prototype is modified and refined until it conforms precisely to what users want. Information requirements and design are determined dynamically as users interact with and evaluate the prototype. Prototyping is most valuable when requirements are uncertain and cannot be entirely pre-specified or when the appropriate design solution is unclear. Prototyping is especially helpful for designing end-user interfaces (screens and reports) and for determining elusive requirements of decision-support type applications. Prototyping can help reduce implementation costs by capturing requirements more accurately at an earlier point in the implementation process. It is not so useful for very structured, well-understood, or routine problems. It is best suited for smaller applications oriented toward simple data manipulation. Large systems with complex processing may only be able to have limited features prototyped. The prototype may be built so rapidly that design is not well thought out or must be reworked for a production environment. The problem arises when the prototype is adopted as the production version of the system without careful analysis and validation. Prototypes are built so rapidly that documentation and testing are glossed over. The system is so easily changed that documentation may not be kept up-to-date. The steps in prototyping include identifying the users basic requirements; developing a working prototype of the system outlined in the basic requirements, using the prototype, and revising and enhancing the prototype based on the users reaction. The third and fourth steps are repeated until users are satisfied with the prototype. 9. Why is it so important to understand how a business process works when trying to develop a new information system? Business process management provides a variety of tools and methodologies to analyze existing processes, design new processes, and optimize those processes. Businesses must decide not just how to use computers to improve business processes, but rather understand what business processes need improvement. Computerizing the wrong business model or business process makes the firm more efficient at doing what it should not do. That makes the business more vulnerable Page 4 of 8

IS & IT Internal Exam # 2 with Solutions 6th September 2013 to competitors who may have discovered the right business model. Deciding which processes have the most impact on overall performance and revenue ensures the business gets the most return on its investment of time, money, and resources. 10. Describe the four components of a star schema in detail. Facts Numeric measurements (values) that represent a specific business aspect or activity Stored in a fact table at the center of the star scheme Contains facts that are linked through their dimensions Can be computed or derived at run time Updated periodically with data from operational databases Dimensions Qualifying characteristics that provide additional perspectives to a given fact DSS data is almost always viewed in relation to other data Dimensions are normally stored in dimension tables Attributes Dimension Tables contain Attributes Attributes are used to search, filter, or classify facts Dimensions provide descriptive characteristics about the facts through their attributed Must define common business attributes that will be used to narrow a search, group information, or describe dimensions. (ex.: Time / Location / Product) No mathematical limit to the number of dimensions (3-D makes it easy to model) Attribute hierarchies Provides a Top-Down data organization Aggregation Drill-down / Roll-Up data analysis Attributes from different dimensions can be grouped to form a hierarchy 11. What are the rules governing a data warehouse schema? Data Warehouse and Operational Environments are Separated Data is integrated Contains historical data over a long period of time Data is a snapshot data captured at a given point in time Data is subject-oriented

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IS & IT Internal Exam # 2 with Solutions 6th September 2013 Mainly read-only with periodic batch updates Development Life Cycle has a data driven approach versus the traditional process-driven approach Data contains several levels of detail Current, Old, Lightly Summarized, Highly Summarized Environment is characterized by Read-only transactions to very large data sets System that traces data sources, transformations, and storage Metadata is a critical component Source, transformation, integration, storage, relationships, history, etc Contains a chargeback mechanism for resource usage that enforces optimal use of data by end users

Section 2 1. IT infrastructure technology is purely a set of physical devices and software applications that are required to operate the entire enterprise. (T/F) False (Page Ref 165) 2. Client/server computing is a widely used form of centralized processing. (T/F) False (Page Ref 168) 3. In green computing, reducing computer power consumption is a top priority. (T/F) True (Page Ref 184) 4. N-tier computing is a multi-tier, load-balancing scheme for Web-based applications in which significant parts of Web site content, logic, and processing are performed by smaller, less expensive servers located nearby the user. (T/F) True (Page Ref 169) 5. Which of the following is NOT an IT infrastructure service component? A. operating system software B. computing platforms to provide a coherent digital environment C. physical facility management to manage the facilities housing physical components D. IT management services to plan and develop the infrastructure and provide project management A Page Ref 165-166 6. Place the following eras of IT infrastructure evolution in order, from earliest to

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IS & IT Internal Exam # 2 with Solutions 6th September 2013 most recent: (1) Cloud Computing Era (2) Client/Server, (3) Enterprise Era, (4) Personal Computer, and (5) Mainframe and Minicomputer. A. 4, 5, 3, 2, 1 B. 5, 4, 2, 3, 1 C. 4, 5, 2, 3, 1 D. 5, 4, 2, 1, 3 B 7. Interpretations of Moore's law assert that A. computing power doubles every 18 months. B. transistors decrease in size 50% every two years. C. data storage costs decrease by 50% every 18 months. D. none of the above. A 8. The business case for using grid computing involves all of the following EXCEPT A. cost savings. B. increased accuracy. C. speed of computation. D. agility. B 9. The business case for using grid computing involves all of the following EXCEPT E. cost savings. F. increased accuracy. G. speed of computation. H. agility. B 10. The method of slicing digital messages into parcels, transmitting them along different communication paths, and reassembling them at their destinations is called A) multiplexing. B) packet switching. C) packet routing. D) ATM. B 11. What are the four layers of the TCP/IP reference model? A) physical, application, transport, and network interface B) physical, application, Internet, and network interface Page 7 of 8

IS & IT Internal Exam # 2 with Solutions 6th September 2013 C) application, transport, Internet, and network interface D) application, hardware, Internet, and network interface C 12. Which of the following would you be most likely to use RFID technology for? E) tracking inventory F) enabling CRM systems G) lowering network costs H) enabling client communication E 13. The oldest method for building information systems is prototyping (T/F) False 14. End-user-developed systems can be completed more rapidly than those developed through the conventional systems lifecycle. (T/F) True 15. Systems development activities always take place in sequential order. (T/F) False

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