Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Assignment #6

If you were hired by the university president as an IT consultant, what would you suggest (technology, infrastructure, innovations, steps, processes, etc) in order for the internet connectivity be improved? (3000words)

If I were hired by the University President as an IT consultant, I would suggest innovation in order for the internet connectivity be improved since Internet connection is an important factor for communication. It is really relevant to the students and also for all the people inside the campus. It is the fastest way to communicate, send files, and work within the campus. So why I would suggest innovation? Innovation refers to a new way of doing something. It may refer to incremental and emergent or radical and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations.

Working online nowadays has a far wider meaning than just surfing to while away your time. There are a lot more reasons to log on to the internet and be in touch with the rest of the world. This stresses the importance of good connectivity all the more. It is important to compare broadband deals which are available so as to obtain the most suitable deal with the best connectivity to suit your needs. The necessity of being net-savvy has grown manifold in the past years. People of every country all over the world have started to expand their horizons by connecting to the internet. To keep track of all such developments in the world of technology, it is important that you too keep in touch too. Getting cable or DSL connections for the net can be a task which involves many hassles.
The best way to be net savvy now is to obtain broadband internet which provides you superb bandwidth and great downloading speed too. By comparing all the deals that are available, you can make sure that only the best deal is secured by you. This will help you get the best connection to log on to the net with good speed and bandwidth and that too at the lowest of prices. Compare broadband deals on the internet itself and choose the one which suits you the best. With the increase in the provision of broadband services that it becomes all the more necessary to compare broadband deals which are available. Internet, phone and television connections are made available by the same provider and the cost too is low. It does not mean that a cheap cost service provider will get you the best of connectivity. This is what the consumers have to compare before taking up the broadband deal and make sure only the services of the best in the industry are obtained. Compare broadband deals online and only then make a decision of the service provider for internet. The right choice of the service provider will make it easier for you to always keep in touch.

Broadband Internet access, often shortened to just broadband, is a high data rate Internet access—typically contrasted with dial-up access using a 56k modem.Dial-up modems are limited to a bitrate of less than 56 kbit/s (kilobits per second) and require the full use of a telephone line—whereas broadband technologies supply more than double this rate and generally without disrupting telephone use.Although various minimum bandwidths have been used in definitions of broadband, ranging up from 64 kbit/s up to 2.0 Mbit/s, the 2006 OECD report is typical by defining broadband as having download data transfer rates equal to or faster than 256 kbit/s, while the United States (US) Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as of 2009, defines "Basic Broadband" as data transmission speeds exceeding 768 kilobits per second (Kbps), or 768,000 bits per second, in at least one direction: downstream (from the Internet to the user’s computer) or upstream (from the user’s computer to the Internet). The trend is to raise the threshold of the broadband definition as the marketplace rolls out faster services.
Programs of organizational innovation are typically tightly linked to organizational goals and objectives, to the business plan, and to market competitive positioning.
For example, one driver for innovation programs in corporations is to achieve growth objectives. As Davila et al. (2006) note, "Companies cannot grow through cost reduction and reengineering alone . . . Innovation is the key element in providing aggressive top-line growth, and for increasing bottom-line results"

In general, business organisations spend a significant amount of their turnover on innovation i.e. making changes to their established products, processes and services. The amount of investment can vary from as low as a half a percent of turnover for organisations with a low rate of change to anything over twenty percent of turnover for organisations with a high rate of change.
The average investment across all types of organizations is four percent. For an organisation with a turnover of say one billion currency units, this represents an investment of forty million units. This budget will typically be spread across various functions including marketing, product design, information systems, manufacturing systems and quality assurance.
The investment may vary by industry and by market positioning.

One survey across a large number of manufacturing and services organisations found, ranked in decreasing order of popularity that systematic programs of organizational innovation are most frequently driven by:

-Improved quality
-Creation of new markets
-Extension of the product range
-Reduced labor costs
-Improved production processes
-Reduced materials
-Reduced environmental damage
-Replacement of products/services
-Reduced energy consumption
-Conformance to regulations

These goals vary between improvements to products, processes and services and dispel a popular myth that innovation deals mainly with new product development. Most of the goals could apply to any organisation be it a manufacturing facility, marketing firm, hospital or local government.

There are two fundamentally different types of measures for innovation: the organizational level and the political level. The measure of innovation at the organizational level relates to individuals, team-level assessments, private companies from the smallest to the largest. Measure of innovation for organizations can be conducted by surveys, workshops, consultants or internal benchmarking. There is today no established general way to measure organizational innovation. Corporate measurements are generally structured around balanced scorecards which cover several aspects of innovation such as business measures related to finances, innovation process efficiency, employees' contribution and motivation, as well benefits for customers. Measured values will vary widely between businesses, covering for example new product revenue, spending in R&D, time to market, customer and employee perception & satisfaction, number of patents, additional sales resulting from past innovations. For the political level, measures of innovation are more focussing on a country or region competitive advantage through innovation. In this context, organizational capabilities can be evaluated through various evaluation frameworks, such as those of the European Foundation for Quality Management. The OECD Oslo Manual (1995) suggests standard guidelines on measuring technological product and process innovation. Some people consider the Oslo Manual complementary to the Frascati Manual from 1963. The new Oslo manual from 2005 takes a wider perspective to innovation, and includes marketing and organizational innovation. These standards are used for example in the European Community Innovation Surveys.

Other ways of measuring innovation have traditionally been expenditure, for example, investment in R&D (Research and Development) as percentage of GNP (Gross National Product). Whether this is a good measurement of Innovation has been widely discussed and the Oslo Manual has incorporated some of the critique against earlier methods of measuring. This being said, the traditional methods of measuring still inform many policy decisions. The EU Lisbon Strategy has set as a goal that their average expenditure on R&D should be 3 % of GNP.
The Oslo Manual is focused on North America, Europe, and other rich economies. In 2001 for Latin America and the Caribbean countries it was created the
Bogota Manual

Many scholars claim that there is a great bias towards the "science and technology mode" (S&T-mode or STI-mode), while the "learning by doing, using and interacting mode" (DUI-mode) is widely ignored. For an example, that means you can have the better high tech or software, but there are also crucial learning tasks important for innovation. But these measurements and research are rarely done.

A common industry view (unsupported by empirical evidence) is that comparative cost-effectiveness research (CER) is a form of price control which, by reducing returns to industry, limits R&D expenditure, stifles future innovation and compromises new products access to markets Some academics claim the CER is a valuable value-based measure of innovation which accords truly significant advances in therapy (those that provide 'health gain') higher prices than free market mechanisms. Such value-based pricing has been viewed as a means of indicating to industry the type of innovation that should be rewarded from the public purse. The Australian academic Thomas Alured Faunce has developed the case that national comparative cost-effectiveness assessment systems should be viewed as measuring 'health innovation' as an evidence-based concept distinct from valuing innovation through the operation of competitive markets (a method which requires strong anti-trust laws to be effective) on the basis that both methods of assessing innovation in pharmaceuticals are mentioned in annex 2C.1 of the AUSFTA.

I also suggest that the university will use high end computer devices to perform the task faster. Upgrade the speed of the internet, or change the internet connection to a better one.

The Internet is a worldwide network comprising government, academic, commercial, military and corporate networks. The Internet was originally used by the US military, before becoming widely used for academic and commercial research. Users accessing the Internet can read and download data from almost anywhere in the world. You can communicate across the Internet using Internet e-mail.In order to connect to the Internet, use e-mail and access the World Wide Web you must obtain and set up a modem. This allows the PC to access the Internet over a telephone line, or obtain a LAN Modem to provide WAN access to several people simultaneously on your LAN. This will allow several PCs to share a single connection to the Internet. Obtain an Internet account from an Internet Service Provider or ISP. An ISP is a company that can provide access to the Internet and give you an Internet e-mail address. You then access the Internet by using your modem to dial into the ISP server. Obtain and install a web browser. This allows you to view web pages as well as send and receive e-mail.For High speed internet connection the university must subscribe a net connection in form of broadband, DSL type of connection with the highest speed feature. Broadband is the transmission capacity with sufficient bandwidth to permit combined provision of voice, data and video. According to ITU report, it refers to DSL and cable modem services with band width greater than 128kbps in at least one direction. In determining the speed connection we should determine the bandwidth of internet type subscribe by the university. Bandwidth is the range of frequencies available to be occupied by signals. In analogue systems it is measured in terms of Hertz (Hz) and in digital systems in bit/s per second (bit/s), the higher the bandwidth, the greater the amount of information that can be transmitted in a given time. High bandwidth channels are referred to as broadband which typically means 1.5/2.0 Mbit/s or higher. So if the connections int the laboratories increases more bandwidth is needed.

The first versions of Ethernet used coaxial cable to connect computers in a bus topology. Each computer was directly connected to the backbone. These early versions of Ethernet were known as Thicknet, (10BASE5) and Thinnet (10BASE2).10BASE5, or Thicknet, used a thick coaxial that allowed for cabling distances of up to 500 meters before the signal required a repeater. 10BASE2, or Thinnet, used a thin coaxial cable that was smaller in diameter and more flexible than Thicknet and allowed for cabling distances of 185 meters.The ability to migrate the original implementation of Ethernet to current and future Ethernet implementations is based on the practically unchanged structure of the Layer 2 frame. Physical media, media access, and media control have all evolved and continue to do so. But the Ethernet frame header and trailer have essentially remained constant. The early implementations of Ethernet were deployed in a low-bandwidth LAN environment where access to the shared media was managed by CSMA, and later CSMA/CD. In additional to being a logical bus topology at the Data Link layer, Ethernet also used a physical bus topology. This topology became more problematic as LANs grew larger and LAN services made increasing demands on the infrastructure.The original thick coaxial and thin coaxial physical media were replaced by early categories of UTP cables. Compared to the coaxial cables, the UTP cables were easier to work with, lightweight, and less expensive. The physical topology was also changed to a star topology using hubs. Hubs concentrate connections. In other words, they take a group of nodes and allow the network to see them as a single unit. When a frame arrives at one port, it is copied to the other ports so that all the segments on the LAN receive the frame. Using the hub in this bus topology increased network reliability by allowing any single cable to fail without disrupting the entire network. However, repeating the frame to all other ports did not solve the issue of collisions. Later in this chapter, you will see how issues with collisions in Ethernet networks are managed with the introduction of switches into the network. By the way, Ethernet was invented by Xerox Corporation and developed jointly by Xerox, Intel, and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and is a widely used LAN technology.
To innovate the LAN Technology is also a great help for the University...

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