The value of information is not easy to document in comparison to physical resources. Through the use of information technologies, the value added to data can only be determined by those who use the resulting information to achieve results. Some common organizational goals may include: creating greater adaptability and flexibility, maximizing revenue, minimizing costs, increasing market share, avoiding losses, and improving the quality of goods and services. To be considered a value added resource, information must have benefits above and beyond that of raw data. Quality, relevance, quantity, and timeliness of data are commonly interrelated criteria that are used to assess the value of information by. The quality of information is described as how accurate the information is compared with reality. Information is high in quality if the information is accurate. Businesses have come to expect a high quality of information to keep the business running. Bad information could lead to catastrophic losses within an organization.
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Information must be relevant to directly assist in the decision making process. The quantity of information is also important. The quantity is the amount of information that is available when people need it. People can sometimes be overloaded with information if it is not relevant to the decisions being made. Because information costs time and money, an information overload can have a negative impact on effectiveness. While e-mail is an effective communication tool, it can also be a gateway to a plethora of irrelevant information. When sending e-mail, it is easy for someone to distribute worthless information to everyone on their distribution list. Information must be received in a timely fashion to ensure that it is received before it become useless for decision making purposes. Businesses have come to rely on information that can be retrieved quickly so that planning, scheduling, and shipping can be executed to meet the needs of their customers.
As information technologies continue to improve, they become less expensive, more powerful and much more effective. Experts forecast that the cost-performance relationship for these technologies will improve by 15 percent or more annually. There are several interrelated information technologies being used today to support managerial functions. The technologies being discussed are Intranet, extranet, and intranet. These technologies are an integral factor in the modern business. They rely on a series of routers, network switches and miles of communication cables that link PC’s, Servers, and mainframe computers together to form a data communication network.
The internet consists of a rapidly growing network of thousands of computers, educational, corporate, private, and research networks around the globe. The internet has had a
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dramatic impact on many organizational strategies, processes and functions around the world. The Internet is often referred to as the Information Superhighway. Any person with a computer and a network card and a modem can access the internet. Internet access makes possible, the four basic functions: e-mail, telnet, FTP, and the World Wide Web. E-mail allows users to write letters and send memos to anyone who has an e-mail account. Telnet allows users to access remote systems to configure and interact with them. File transfer protocol allows users to migrate files and data from one computer to another. User can download everything from small documents to large programs. The World Wide Web allows users to input and access video, text, sound, and images over the internet using a web browser. Users can also use a web search tool called a search engine, which allows a user to find exactly what he or she is looking for on the internet.
An extranet is similar to the intranet, however, it is not to be accessed by the general public. The extranet is a wide area network that connects members of an organization, suppliers, and customers together over a network to meet a business need. Online publishing, Ecommerce, product development, employee communications, and directory services are few functions of an extranet. To keep the information on extranet private, administrators install what is called a Firewall. A firewall is a set of related programs, located at a network gateway server that protects the resources of a private network from users from other networks. Without a firewall, an extranet can be vulnerable to any person who wants to maliciously compromise the internal computer based system.
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An intranet is a private network that is contained within an enterprise. It may consist of many interlinked local area networks and also use leased lines in the Wide Area Network. Typically, an intranet includes connections through one or more gateway computers to the outside Internet. The main purpose of an intranet is to share company information and computing resources among employees. An intranet can also be used to facilitate working in groups and for teleconferences. Typically, larger enterprises allow users within their intranet to access the public Internet through firewall servers that have the ability to screen messages in both directions so that company security is maintained.
On the Internet, privacy is a major concern of users and managers in the information technology industry. Privacy can be divided into three concerns: (1) What personal information can be shared with whom, (2) Whether messages can be exchanged without anyone else seeing them, (3) and whether and how one can send messages anonymously. Most Web users want to understand that personal information they share will not be shared with anyone else without their permission. An annual survey conducted by the Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center of the Georgia Institute of Technology showed that 70% of the Web users surveyed cited concerns about privacy as the main reason for not registering information with Web sites. 86% indicated that they wanted to be able to control their personal information. A study by TRUSTe revealed that 78% of users surveyed would be more likely to provide information to sites that offered privacy assurance.
The World Wide Web Consortium's Platform for Personal Privacy Project (P3P) offers specific recommendations for practices that will let users define and share personal information
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with Web sites that they agree to share it with. The P3P incorporates a number of industry proposals, including the Open Profiling Standard using software that adheres to the P3P recommendations, users will be able to create a personal profile, all or parts of which can be made accessible to a Web site as the user directs. A tool that will help a user decide whether to trust a given Web site with personal information is a Statement of Privacy Policy that a Web site can post. In an open network such as the Internet, message privacy, particularly for e-commerce transactions, requires encryption. The most common approach on the Web is through a public key infrastructure. For e-mail, many people use Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), which lets an individual encrypt a message or simply send a digital signature that can be used to verify that the message was not tampered with en route.
Although this form of privacy is not usually needed or wanted, there are occasions when a user may want anonymity (for example, to report a crime). The need is sometimes met through the use of a site called a remailer that reposts a message from its own address, thus disguising the originator of the message.
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The implementations of such information systems have dramatically changed the world of business and management. Companies have formed a dependency on such systems to the point in which they cannot compete without them. I see the success of an information system to be directly related to having quality components and excellent systems management. Disaster recovery procedures must be in place along with having the right resources and documentation in the case of such an event. Backup procedures and redundancy is the key to having a failsafe information system. People take these systems for granted when being used on a day to day basis, and do not understand the value until the system is inaccessible. There is endless work
involved in creating, configuring, securing, and maintaining these systems and they are constantly being changed and updated. A knowledgeable support staff is also crucial to the success of an information system.
Keeping up with the latest and greatest technology systems in the business world can prove to be quite costly. I think that the cost associated with the support and maintenance of modern information system is well worth the money. Costs are being reduced in other areas by the simplification of every day tasks by these information systems. I think that the internet along with company intranets and extranets are the best way for companies to share information, maximize productivity, and deliver results. While there are some issues pertaining to security and privacy, new technologies and the appropriate technology management principles will provide innovative ways to resolve these and other problems as they arise
