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182. Regina Williams works for Findabuck Finance Company, but she seldom sees the inside
of Findabuck's offices. Instead, she does most of her work on a computer located in the spare
bedroom of her home. The computer is linked to Findabuck's office, so her work is distributed as
quickly and efficiently as if she were at the office. Regina is one of the increasing number of
workers who:
Mini-Case
Cy Burspace first began working for Qwikbilt Enterprises in the mid-1970s as a business
technology specialist. Today, he is the department head for the company's information systems
department. Cy is well known and respected by everyone in the company, and his coworkers
recently threw a party to honor his 30th year with Qwikbilt. Cy did a lot of reminiscing at the party,
telling the newer employees how things were done in the "old days," and comparing them to
newer methods.
"I'm still amazed at how things have changed. When I first came to Qwikbilt, we had a central
computer to handle everything. It took up a whole room, but all it really did was generate financial
reports for management," said Cy. "Today, most employees have their own personal computer,
and all these PCs are hooked up to a network. All of this connectivity has led to big improvements
in our operations. For example, if a production worker wants to find out how many units of a
particular component we have in inventory, or wants the name and address of a particular
supplier who sells us that component, he or she can get the information in the blink of an eye. In
fact, we have even given our suppliers and customers access to our network so that we can
share information and provide them with better service. That change has really helped us
compete against the bigger firms."
"Now," Cy continued, "Most of the workers in my department don't even have to be at the office
to be connected. We have cellular phones, laptop computers, PDAs with Wi-Fi technology, and
pagers so we can do much of our work from home or while we are on the road."
A new employee asked Cy if he was ready to retire. "No way," he said. "I'm in the middle of a
major project right now. We're trying to design a single entry point for people to use when logging
on to the Qwikbilt network. We want to set it up so that the log-on procedure identifies different
types of users and automatically gives them access to the types of resources they need. For
example, customers who logged on would be allowed to place orders, check on the status of
previous orders, and interact with our technical support staff, but would not have access to other,
more proprietary parts of our network. We think this approach will be more convenient for
everyone. And," he continued, "once I finish that project, the marketing department has asked me
to work on developing better ways to store and analyze the vast amounts of data we collect. So
my work is cut out for me for quite a while yet."
183. When Cy first came to work for Qwikbilt, the application of business technology was
called:
184. Cy is excited about the ability of customers to obtain access to information on Qwikbilt's
network so that the company can provide them with better service. This suggests that Qwikbilt is
making use of a(n):
185. Cy's new project to provide a single entry point to his company's network that identifies
users and allows them access to the areas of the network they need indicates that he is working
on a(n):
186. People in marketing want Cy's help because they are convinced that many hidden
patterns and unexpected relationships could be found in the mountains of data the company
accumulates. They think that discovering these relationships might help them develop new
marketing strategies. This suggests that Cy's next project will be concerned with:
187. What is the key difference between an intranet and an extranet? Why might a firm use a
virtual private network instead of an extranet?
188. What are the four characteristics of useful information?
189. Identify and describe the major security issues confronting information managers.
