MIS 3534 – Prof. Min-Seok Pang

Week 05 – Cost of IT (I)

Online discussion questions – Feb 9

  • On Page 58, it reads “we’ve run closer to 5 to 6 percent of sales on IT spending. Which, by the way, Davies thought wasn’t enough to keep IT assets from degrading over time..” Why does Mr. Davies mean by degrading?
  • What are the cases in which IT systems need to be maintained?
  • What are the cases in which news IT systems need to be developed?
  • What are the examples of IT systems that have high strategic impacts but not operational dependency?
  • What are the examples of IT systems that have high operational dependence but not strategic impacts?

In-class discussion questions for Feb 11

We will discuss these questions in-class on Wed, Feb 11. Do not post comments on this.

  • When would you buy your own home instead of renting? What are the advantages and disadvantages of buying a house?
  • What is a cloud computing?
  • Why did we just discuss about buying vs. renting?
  • When does it make sense to go to cloud?
  • Why would a company like to use IaaS such as Amazon Web Services? Why would be the reasons not to use IaaS?
  • Is Open Source Software really free?
  • Will the quality of OSS be better than proprietary software?
  • Which is more secure – open-source or proprietary software?

In-class discussion questions for Feb 9

We will discuss these questions in-class on Mon, Feb 9. Do not post comments on this.

  • Why does an IT system need maintenance? It does not become rusty!
  • On Page 58 of the textbook, it reads “we’ve run closer to 5 to 6 percent of sales on IT spending. Which, by the way, Davies thought wasn’t enough to keep IT assets from degrading over time..” Why does Mr. Davies mean by degrading?
  • If it needs to spend money in maintaining IT systems, how much does a company need to spend on it?
  • What happens with too little spending in maintenance? What happens with too much?
  • Spending in IT maintenance should depend on what?

Week 5 – IT Adventures Ch. 4 and 5 – Brief Guideline

Read IT Adventures Chapter 4 and 5 and write ONE reading brief (NOT two) up to 200 words that includes both chapters.

  • What is the funding mechanism for IT at IVK? What is a chargeback? (Ch. 4)
  • How have IT portfolio and spending at IVK evolved for the last several years? (Ch. 4)
  • Describe the concepts of “Competes vs. Qualifiers” and IT Strategic Grid (Ch. 5)