as time is changing so is the market trends in computer hardware and software technology and the future of computer hardware looks to be more unpredictable the reason behind the cause is the troubles between the hardware and software engineers and so we can say in future the hardware may be declining as the software market is growing and is getting edge over it. But at the same time we should know that the hardware market can not be completely eliminated .The market demands for hardware are changing continuously because it requires new faster ,better and more compatible hardware and another changing trend in this market can be seen that there are more jobs in computer software market compare to hardware technology and the reason behind the fact is that there is more space available in advancement of software technology compare to hardware. But at the same time hardware technology is and will continue to bring new applications to make business and life easier. There is a new and more applicable type of technology which is being used in common hardware technology now a days is known as the cots. The cots stands for commercial of the self products and it has proven to be more trustable and dependable in changing computer technology. Cots is helping the computer software developers to make new products and hardware platform for adding the custom hardware for example USB which has proven to be precedence as the leader in external hardware transfers and cots also helping in the advancements such as XML PROTOCOL and new wireless advances(low risk cots 2005)

another computer hardware technology which is commonly used is known as the microcontroller unit (mcu)which is being commonly used in automobiles and smart card industry. the 16 bit and 32 bit +mcu are key products are key products in high end consumer products. Automotive applications and industrial control hardware and mcus board application and wide range of embedded memory are helping to generate good revenue and on the other side mcus will continue to see their application in products other then in home computers which is giving a vision to hardware developers for innovations in this field .as the trends in computer hardware and software technology are changing which demands that the engineers of both field should work together and improve their communication to achieve theirs specified goals. With the increase of cpus capacity the software created will continually take up more than enough room which allows continues growth of cpus industry.(sauer2004)

trends in computer hardware by Mathew nelson

published october21,2008

ANSWER QUESTION 2

PRINCIPAL TOOLS FOR BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AND THEIR IMPORTANCE IN BUSINESS

The most commonly used business tools which are being used now days increase the cost, functionality of the business. they increase the business intelligence complexity and decrease the total no of the customers. These tools are categorised as

Excel

Reporting tool

Olap tool

Data mining tool

Excel

The most commonly used tool in business intelligence now days is excel and its not surprising because it has certain reason behind this which are

It’s very economical

Its widely used its user friendly for example you can send an excel sheet to anyone without any problem whether the recipient knows how to read the nos .

It has a lot of functions which enables the users to display data

And in real its has been so much liked by the users that all third party reporting/olap tools have an export to excel functionality even for home built solutions the ability of excel exporting numbers needs to be built.

In short we can say that excel is the best tool in business intelligence for its operations reporting and goals tracking.

Reporting tool

We can divide this tool into two groups one is the custom built reporting tools and the second is the commercial reporting tools and they help the users to make schedule and their reports and help them to implement and thus providing them some flexibility. Reporting tool selection plays important role in the selection of olap tool so we have to discuss a little more about the reporting tool selection criteria

REPORTING TOOL SELECTIO

BUY VS BUILD

To buy or build reporting tool for any business intelligence is dependant on its requirements.which can be categorised as

Number of reports because higher the numbers of reports there will be more requirement of buying a reporting tool because it will not only help to make the new reports but also will hep to report management systems and will make the business maintenance and support functions easier.

Desired report distribution mode helps to access the reports through the variety of channels which would make sense to invest in a third party reporting tool that already comes packaged with these distribution modes.

If the users need to create their own ad hoc reports than it would be a good idea to purchase reporting tool.

REPORTING TOOL FUCTIONALILITIES

Data is useless unless if its not transmitted effectively and its stays in data warehouse so presentation layer is of very high importance. So evaluation of reporting tools depends on the following points which are

Data source connection capabilities

Scheduling and distribution capabilities

Security features

Customization

Export capabilities

Integration with Microsoft office environment

Popular tools

Business objects

Cognos

Actuate

OLAP Tools

This tool is mostly used by the advanced users and it helps out to look data from multiple dimensions and it is used for multidimensional analysis. Now there are some basic factors we should keep in mind to select this tool which are

Buy vs build

Olap tools help to sort out data by slicing or dicing which requires strong metadata layer along with much complex flexibility which are very difficult features to have in any home built systems so if there is any need to go for olap analysis so its better to go for existing one rather than building a new from scratch.

Olap tool functionalities

There are two types of olap tool one is known as molap the other one is rolap and they function differently

Molap in this type of olap tool data travels in the form of cube when its received from the data ware house it aggregates in the form of cube and when we request report molap tool generate it quickly because it is stored already in the cube.

Rolap is the type of olap tool which acts as a smart SQL generator and it mostly comes with a designer piece where data warehouse administrator can specify relationships between the relation tables as well as how dimensions attributes map to the underlying database tables.

Now a days there is convergence in traditional molap and rolap vendors because rolap vendors know that customers want their reports fast so they use molap functionalities in their tools while molap know that most of time it becomes impossible for them to deliver detail data because of their cube formation and size problems.

Criteria for evaluating vendors are

Ability to leverage parallelism supplied by rdbms and hardware

Performance

Customization efforts

Security features

Metadata support

Popular tools

Cogon

Business objects

Hyperion

Microsoft analysis services

Pentaho

Palo olap server

Data mining tool

This is a very rarely used tool in business intelligence only few specialized users use it. It is basically used for finding correlation among different factors.

Ref/http://www.ikeydata.com/datawarehousing/business-intelligence-tools.php

ANSWER QUESTION 3

Information systems at different levels of management in an organization

DEFINATION

Information system of an organization is a computer base system that provides up to date data of company performance for example company inventory and sale. This system is connected normally with a computer network in which different computers are being connected in order to share data and resources. The role of information system in an organization is to store, retrieve,transmitt and manipulate data or information which is used in different processes of an organization. these information systems take out the information which is useable at all levels of organization ,strategic, tactical and operational.

The information systems which normally deal with the general management functions is known as management information system or (MIS).A good example of an MIS is the corporate annual report of stakeholders which is also known as the schedule report.there are some iother information systems are being at different level of organization for example enterprise resource planning (ERP) and executive information systems(EIS) which provide packaged modules of programs taht perform the same function but with greater functionality ,flexibility and integrated capabilities.there are different information systems are being used in an organization at different levels for example TPS,ESS,and DSS.

TPS

TPS or also known as transactional processing systems is a type of information systems which collects modifies retrieves and store the data transaction of an enterprise. A transaction is a process in which data is modified before storage in information system.TPS Plays a vital role in commercial organization success because it makes sure that all orders are being delivered in time and payments between the suppliers and partners are made in time so tps has become a vital part of effective business management led by such organizations such as association of work processing improvement and transaction processing performance council.TPS ensures the speedy transfer of data and progression of processes throughout the enterprise.TPS has different characteristics.

Rapid processing

Reliability

Standardisation

Controlled access

Atomicity

Isolation

Durability

http://www.bestpricecomputers.co.uk/glossary/transaction-processing-systems.htm

ESS (EXECUTIVE SUPPORT SYSTEM)

This system help the senior management to take some important decions and mostly rely on the external data rather than the data available internally and decisions are being made on the basis of the world changing outside the organization which is a very delicate issue so it is necessary for this system to be flexible and easy to manipulate because the problems and situations which the senior management face most of the time is always changing. Executives face problems in making decisions in ESS because the information they get through it most of the time its overloaded and to make important decisions its necessary to drill down the maximum information to make it right. as with the advancements of technology ESS is being able to link up internal data to external data to make it more useful for the executives to make important organizational decisions and many executives are turning to the web to provide flexibility they need .ESS only provides the information not the decisions now its the management who have to use its experience ,education and knowledge and business environment to make their decisions.

DSS (DECISIONS SUPPORT SYSTEM)

The dcsion support system educates the students in design implementation and use of computerised systems which support business mangers in decision making decisions support is different from MIS and IS because it not only provides the users the information ,data or reports but it also provides the answers of its customers quries in other words decisionsor we can say DSS help out managers to make decisions .DSS is the system which encompasses various mathmetical models and it has different segments to study for example information systems,data base management,networks and telecommunication security,DSS implementation and development, visual interface design, as well as various mathematical modelling techniques specific computer languages skills c++ ,visual basic and java.DSS is a well demanding field in the market and its graduates always find good job prospects. Over 100 companies and government organizations interview the dss professional for bit seniors DSS typical obtain job in information technology. Job titles are mostly system developer, system analyst,programmer analyst,data base developer,network administrator etc. The largest single type of employer of DSS option graduates is typically consulting firms such as Accenture, KPMG, CGI, Deloitte & Touché, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Booz Allen Hamilton, among many others. However, numerous other types of companies and organizations hire DSS graduates to work in various IT-related jobs.

http://www.bit.vt.edu/academics/dss_index.html