1. Identify and briefly describe the various classes of nonportable single-user
ID: 3685152 • Letter: 1
Question
1. Identify and briefly describe the various classes of nonportable single-user computers.
2. What is Software as a Service (SaaS)? What advantages does it provide for meeting an organization’s software needs?
3. What are the two basic types of software? Briefly describe the role of each.
4. What is cloud computing? What are the pros and cons of cloud computing?
5. What is an application service provider? What issues arise in considering the use of one?
6. What does the acronym API stand for? What is the role of an API?
7. Describe the term enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. What functions does such a system perform?
Explanation / Answer
Non portable single- user computers include the client ,desktop net top and work station computers .a thin client is a low cost centrally managed computer with essential but limited capabilities and no extra drivers or expansion slots a desk top computer is small in expensive single user computer . a net top computer is in expensive desktop computer designed to be smaller ,lighter and consumes less power than traditional computer
Three recent operating systems are windows 12 ,chrome os and snow lepord
SAAS: THE PAYOFF
SaaS customers have no hardware or software to buy, install, maintain, or update. Access to applications is easy: You just need an Internet connection.
SaaS Characteristics
A good way to understand the SaaS model is by thinking of a bank, which protects the privacy of each customer while providing service that is reliable and secure—on a massive scale. A bank’s customers all use the same financial systems and technology without worrying about anyone accessing their personal information without authorisation.
A “bank” meets the key characteristics of the SaaS model:
To help organisations understand why they should choose SaaS solutions over traditional software, we have summarised a list of 10 Software as a Service (SaaS) benefits.
Unlike traditional software, SaaS is usually sold on a subscription basis that includes upgrades, maintenance and a degree of customer support. SaaS subscription models usually operate on a monthly subscription basis and hence there are no large up-front costs.
With SaaS solutions, all you need is a web browser and internet access, and you're ready to go. Whereas traditional software can take weeks or even months to deploy, SaaS solutions don't require any software to be installed and so you are able to access your new software immediately.
When delivering business applications via SaaS, the complexity of the underlying IT infrastructure is all handled by your SaaS vendor. Users do not need to worry about the maintenance of hardware, or which operating system version supports which database - your SaaS vendor will take care of all of this for you, so you don't have to.
Your SaaS provider will manage software updates and upgrades for you, eliminating the need to install or download patches. At any one time, you can be assured that you will always have the most up to date software.
With most traditional software, you are not given a guarantee on how well it will perform, with SaaS you are. At Workbooks for instance, we guarantee your applications will be available 99.5% of the time. In the event we don't deliver, which has not happened to date, there are penalties to be paid by us.
If you are familiar with traditional software, you will know that unless a costly automated solution has been implemented, the process of backing up your data on a weekly basis can be laborious at the best of times. SaaS solutions eradicate this painstaking task, instigating automatic backups without user intervention and thus ensuring the integrity of your data.
Providing there is an internet connection, SaaS solutions can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Users are able to access their data and work more effficiently from anywhere, making life easier for home-workers or for those people that work across multiple sites.
In many instances, an organisations' business information is more secure in a SaaS solution, than in traditional software. At Workbooks for instance, we run two geographically separate datacenters which contact the I.T infrastructure to deliver our applications. In the unfortunate event that a disaster occurs in one of the centers, the second datacenter can continue delivering the Workbooks service.
As SaaS solutions are delivered over the internet, there is virtually no learning curve involved with adopting a new solution as employees tend to already be used to working on the internet
MULTITENANT ARCHITECTURE
A multitenant architecture, in which all users and applications share a single, common infrastructure and code base that is centrally maintained. Because SaaS vendor clients are all on the same infrastructure and code base, vendors can innovate more quickly and save the valuable development time previously spent on maintaining numerous versions of outdated code.
EASY CUSTOMISATION
The ability for each user to easily customise applications to fit their business processes without affecting the common infrastructure. Because of the way SaaS is architected, these customisations are unique to each company or user and are always preserved through upgrades. That means SaaS providers can make upgrades more often, with less customer risk and much lower adoption cost.
BETTER ACCESS
Improved access to data from any networked device while making it easier to manage privileges, monitor data use, and ensure everyone sees the same information at the same time.
SAAS HARNESSES THE CONSUMER WEB
Anyone familiar with Amazon.com or My Yahoo! will be familiar with the Web interface of typical SaaS applications. With the SaaS model, you can customise with point-and-click ease, making the weeks or months it takes to update traditional business software seem hopelessly old fashioned.
SAAS TRENDS
Organisations are now developing SaaS integration platforms (or SIPs) for building additional SaaS applications. The consulting firm Saugatuck Technology calls this the “third wave” in software adoption: when SaaS moves beyond standalone software functionality to become a platform for mission-critical applications.
Presentation software is a type of computer application that allows the user to present information using text, images, audio and video content. The information is arranged in a slide show, which can be set to advance frames by clicking a mouse or to run automatically by timer.
Presentation software is used in both educational and business settings to allow presenters to keep their audience focused on the message being delivered by using a format that appeals to different learning styles. There are both free and paid versions of presentation software available, with both OpenOffice and Microsoft Office containing particularly robust presentation applications
System software and application software are two types of computer software. System software governs how a computer and its related devices operate, while application software is more specified toward user-oriented tasks, such as Web browsing and word processing.
Operating systems, device drivers and utility programs are included in system software, whereas the spans of application software is practically infinite.
Malicious software, or malware, is software designed to disrupt or compromise computers. Examples of malware include viruses, Trojan horses, rootkits and backdoors. Malware designed to gather information or spy on a user is often very difficult to detect. A significant amount of malware takes advantage of inherent weaknesses or oversights in other types of software.
The two main types of computer software are the system software and the application software. The system software provides the platform for users to install and run application software, and it's made up of multiple programs needed to run a computer system smoothly. Application programs are designed to perform specific tasks, such as word processing, video editing, spreadsheets and web browsers.
Any application program is dependent on a computer's system software to deliver specific functionality to a user. There are several minor application programs, called utilities programs, that are integrated into an operating system to manage the computer's hardware resources, such as the hard drive, memory modules, graphics and audio cards.
There are several major types of standalone operating systems. Some of these are Microsoft Windows, Apple's Mac OS and Linux.
Microsoft Windows has been in the market since the early 1980s and has evolved into numerous advanced versions over the years. Mac OS is designed specifically for use with Apple brand computers. Linux is an open-source, freely distributable operating system.
Cloud computing is a type of computing that relies on sharing computing resources rather than having local servers or personaldevices to handle applications. Cloud computing is comparable togrid computing, a type of computing where unused processing cycles of all computers in a network are harnesses to solve problems too intensive for any stand-alone machine.
In cloud computing, the word cloud (also phrased as "the cloud") is used as a metaphor for "the Internet," so the phrase cloud computing means "a type of Internet-based computing," where different services — such as servers, storage and applications —are delivered to an organization's computers and devices through the Internet.
How Cloud Computing Works
The goal of cloud computing is to apply traditional supercomputing, or high-performance computing power, normally used by military and research facilities, to perform tens of trillions of computations per second, in consumer-oriented applications such as financial portfolios, to deliver personalized information, to provide data storage or to power large, immersive online computer games.
To do this, cloud computing uses networks of large groups of servers typically running low-cost consumer PC technology with specialized connections to spread data-processing chores across them. This shared ITinfrastructure contains large pools of systems that are linked together. Often, virtualization techniques are used to maximize the power of cloud computing.
Cloud Computing Standards
The standards for connecting the computer systems and the software needed to make cloud computing work are not fully defined at present time, leaving many companies to define their own cloud computing technologies. Cloud computing systems offered by companies, like IBM's "Blue Cloud" technologies for example, are based on open standards and open source software which link together computers that are used to to deliver Web 2.0capabilities like mash-ups or mobile commerce.
Cloud Computing in the Data Center and for Small Business
Cloud computing has started to obtain mass appeal in corporate data centers as it enables the data center to operate like the Internet through the process of enabling computing resources to be accessed and shared as virtual resources in a secure and scalable manner.
For a small and medium size business (SMB), the benefits of cloud computing is currently driving adoption. In the SMB sector there is often a lack of time and financial resources to purchase, deploy and maintain an infrastructure (e.g. the software, server and storage).
In cloud computing, small businesses can access these resources and expand or shrink services as business needs change. The common pay-as-you-go subscription model is designed to let SMBs easily add or remove services and you typically will only pay for what you do use.
What is an application service provider
an application service provider (ASP) is a company that offers individuals or enterprises access over the Internet to applications and related services that would otherwise have to be located in their own personal or enterprise computers. Sometimes referred to as "apps-on-tap," ASP services are expected to become an important alternative, not only for smaller companies with low budgets for information technology, but also for larger companies as a form of outsourcing and for many services for individuals as well. Early applications include:
· An off-premises local area network to which mobile users can be connected, with a common file server
· Specialized applications that would be expensive to install and maintain within your own company or on your own computer
Hewlett-Packard, SAP, and Qwest have formed one of the first major alliances for providing ASP services. They plan to make SAP's popularR/3 applications available at "cybercenters" that will serve the applications to other companies. Microsoft is allowing some companies to offer its BackOffice products, including SQL Server, Exchange and Windows NT Server on a rental, pay-as-you-use basis.
While ASPs are forecast to provide applications and services to small enterprises and individuals on a pay-per-use or yearly license basis, larger corporations are essentially providing their own ASP service in-house, moving applications off personal computers and putting them on a special kind of application server that is designed to handle the stripped-down kind of thin client workstation. This allows an enterprise to reassert the central control over application cost and usage that corporations formerly had in the period prior to the advent of the PC. Microsoft's Terminal Server product and Citrix's products are leading thin-client application server products.
acronym API stand for
API (application program interface) is a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications. The API specifies how software components should interact and APIs are used when programming graphical user interface (GUI) components. A good API makes it easier to develop a program by providing all the building blocks. A programmer then puts the blocks together.
Types of APIs
There are many different types of APIs for operating systems, applications or websites. Windows, for example, has many API setsthat are used by system hardware and applications — when you copy and paste text from one application to another, it is the API that allows that to work.
Most operating environments, such as MS-Windows, provide an API so that programmers can write applications consistent with the operating environment. Today, APIs are also specified by websites. For example, Amazon or eBay APIs allow developers to use the existing retail infrastructure to create specialized web stores. Third-party software developers also use Web APIs to create software solutions for end-users.
Popular API Examples
Programmable Web, a site that tracks more than 13,000 APIs, lists Google Maps, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Amazon Product Advertising as some of the the most popular APIs. The following list contains several examples of popular APIs:
1. Google Maps API: Google Maps APIs lets developers embed Google Maps on webpages using a JavaScript or Flash interface. The Google Maps API is designed to work on mobile devices and desktop browsers.
2. YouTube APIs: YouTube API: Google's APIs lets developers integrate YouTube videos and functionality into websites or applications. YouTube APIs include the YouTube Analytics API, YouTube Data API, YouTube Live Streaming API, YouTube Player APIs and others.
3. Flickr API: The Flickr API is used by developers to access the Flick photo sharing community data. The Flickr API consists of a set of callable methods, and some API endpoints.
4. Twitter APIs: Twitter offers two APIs. The REST API allows developers to access core Twitter data and the Search API provides methods for developers to interact with Twitter Search and trends data.
5. Amazon Product Advertising API: Amazon's Product Advertising API gives developers access to Amazon's product selection and discovery functionality to advertise Amazon products to monetize a website.
Describe the term enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. What functions does such a system perform?
An important goal oF ERP is to facilitate the flow of information so business decisions can be data-driven. ERP software suites are built to collect and organize data from various levels of an organization to provide management with insight into key performance indicators (KPIs) in real time.
ERP software modules can help an organization's administrators monitor and manage supply chain, procurement, inventory,finance, product lifecycle, projects, human resources and other mission-critical components of a business through a series of interconnected executive dashboards. In order for an ERP software deployment to be useful, however, it needs to be integrated with other software systems the organization uses. For this reason, deployment of a new ERP system in-house can involve considerable business process reengineering, employee retraining and back-end information technology (IT) support for database integration, data analytics and ad hoc reporting.
Legacy ERP systems tend to be architected as large, complex homogeneous systems which do not lend themselves easily to a software-as-a-service (SaaS ERP) delivery model. As more companys begin to store data in the cloud, however, ERP vendors are responding withcloud-based services to perform some functions of ERP -- particularly those relied upon by mobile users. An ERP implementation that uses both on-premises ERP software and cloud ERP services is called two-tiered ERP.
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