Information Technology & Management
Section A: Objective Type & Short Questions (30 Marks)
„h This section consists of Multiple Choice & Short Note type questions
„h Answer all the questions.
„h Part one carries 1 mark each & Part two carries 5 marks each.
Part One:
Multiple Choices:
1. It means data that have been processed in a form that is meaningful and useful to the user.
a. Data
b. Information
c. System
d. None of the above
2. BCR stands for____________
a. Bar code reader
b. Basic code reader
c. Business code reader
d. None of the above
3. Which of the following comes under output devices?
a. Printer
b. Speaker
c. Both (a) & (b)
d. None
4. A trackball is a stationary device related to the_______
a. Keyboard
b. Joystick
c. Mouse
d. All of the above
5. ___________is a volatile memory and everything disappears if power goes off or is turned off
abruptly in the middle of work.
a. RAM
b. ROM
c. CDROM
d. None of the above
6. IC stands for____________
a. Integrated Circuit
b. Information Circuit
Examination Paper of Information Technology
2
IIBM Institute of Business Management
c. Interrelated Circuit
d. None of the above
7. DSS stands for____________
a. Decision Support System
b. Direction Support System
c. Both (a) & (b)
d. None of the above
8. How many characters uses the MICR system?
a. 15 characters
b. 18 characters
c. 24 characters
d. 14 characters
9. One Megabyte contains:
a. 1000 KB
b. 1000 Bytes
c. 1000 MB
d. None of the above
10. The smallest element of data is called_______
a. Byte
b. Bit
c. Giga byte
d. None of the above
Part Two:
1. Write a note on .Cache Memory..
2. List the different types of information systems.
3. Write a short note on .Value Chain Analysis.
4. Discuss peer- to - peer model in distributed computing system.
Section B: Caselets (40 marks)
„h This section consists of Caselets.
„h Answer all the questions.
„h Each caselet carries 20 marks.
„h Detailed information should form the part of your answer (Word limit 200 to 250 words).
Caselet 1
END OF SECTIONA
Examination Paper of Information Technology
3
IIBM Institute of Business Management
It began as a trading site for nerds, the newly jobless, home-bound housewives, and bored retirees to
sell subprime goods: collectibles and attic trash. But eBay (
www.ebay.com) quickly grew into a
teeming marketplace of 30 million, with its own laws and norms, such as a feedback system in
which buyers and sellers rate each other on each transaction. When that wasn.t quite enough, eBay
formed its own police force to patrol the listings for fraud and kick out offenders. The company even
has something akin to a bank: Its Paypal payment-processing unit allows buyers to make electronic
payments to eBay sellers who can.t afford a merchant credit card account. ¡§eBay is creating a
second, virtual economy,¡¨ says W. Brian Arthur, an economist at think tank Santa Fe Institute. ¡§It.s
opening up a whole new medium of exchange.¡¨ eBay.s powerful vortex is drawing diverse
products and players into its profitable economy, driving its sellers into the heart of traditional
retailing, a $2 trillion market. Among eBay.s 12 million daily listings are products from giants such
as Sears Roebuck, Home Depot, Walt Disney, and even IBM. More than a quarter of the offerings
are listed at fixed prices. The result, says Bernard H. Tenenbaum, president of a retail buyout firm, is
¡§They.re coming right for the mainstream of the retail business.¡¨ So what started out as a pure
consumer auction market-place is now also becoming a big time business-to-consumer and even
business-to-business bazaar that is earning record profits for eBay.s stockholders. And as the eBay
economy expands, CEO Meg Whitman and her team may find that managing it could get a lot
tougher, especially because eBay.s millions of passionate and clamorous users demand a voice in all
major decisions. This process is clear in one of eBay.s most cherished institutions: the voice of the
Customer program. Every couple of months, the executives of eBay bring in as many as a dozen
sellers and buyers, especially its high selling ¡§Power Sellers,¡¨ to ask them questions about how they
work and what else eBay needs to do. And at least twice a week, it holds hour-long teleconferences
to poll users on almost every new feature or policy, no matter how small. The result is that users
feel like owners, and they take the initiative to expand the eBay economy ¡V often beyond
management.s wildest dreams. Stung by an aerospace down-turn, for instance, machine-tool shop
Reliable Tools Inc., tried listing a few items on eBay in late 1998. Some were huge, hulking chunks
of metal, such as a $7,000 2,300-pound milling machine. Yet they sold like ice cream in August.
Since then, says Reliable.s auction manager, Richard Smith, the company.s eBay business has
¡§turned into a monster.¡¨ Now the Irwindale (California) shop.s $1 million in monthly eBay sales
constitutes 75% of its overall business. Pioneers such as Reliable promoted eBay to set up an
industrial products marketplace in January that.s on track to top $500 million in gross sales this
year.Then there is eBay Motors. When eBay manager Simon Rothman first recognized a market for
cars on cars on eBay in early 1999, he quickly realized that such high-ticket items would require a
different strategy than simply opening a new category. To jump-start its supply of cars and
customers, eBay immediately bought a collector-car auction company, Kruse International, for $150
million in stock, and later did a deal to include listings from online classifieds site, AutoTrader.com.
Rothman also arranged insurance and warranty plans, an escrow service, and shipping and
inspection services.This approach worked wonder. Sales of cars and car parts, at a $5 billion-plus
annual clip, are eBay's single largest market. That has catapulted eBay in front of No. 1 U.S. auto
dealer AutoNation in number of used cars sold. About half of the sellers are brick-and-mortar dealers
who now have a much larger audience than their local area. ¡§eBay is by far one of my better sources
for buyers,¡¨ says Bradley Bonifacius, Internet sales director at Dean Stallings Ford in Oak Ridge,
Tennessee. And for now, the big corporations, which still account for under 5 percent of eBay.s
gross sales, seem to be bringing in more customers then they steal. Motorola Inc., for example,
helped kick off a new wholesale business for eBay last year, selling excess and returned cell phones
in large lots. Thanks to the initiative of established companies such as Motorola, eBay.s wholesale
business jumped ninefold, to $23 million, in the first quarter.As businesses on eBay grow larger,
they spur the creation of even more businesses. A new army of merchants, for example, is making a
business out of selling on eBay for other people. From almost none a couple of years ago, these so
called Trading Assistants now number nearly 23,000. This kind of organic growth makes it
Examination Paper of Information Technology
4
IIBM Institute of Business Management
exceedingly though to predict how far the eBay economy can go. Whitman professes not to know.
¡§We don.t actually control this,¡¨ she admits. ¡§We are not building this company by ourselves. We
have a unique partner ¡V million of people.¡¨
Questions:
1. Why has eBay become such a successful and diverse online marketplace? Visit the eBay website
to help you answer, and check out their many trading categories, specialty sites, international
sites, and other features.
2. Why do you think eBay has become the largest online/offline seller of used cars, and the largest
online seller of certain other products, like computers and photographic equipment?
Caselet 2
It.s no secret that somewhere in a back room in the typical Fortune 500 company, there.s a team of
analytical wizards running sophisticated data mining queries that mine for gems such as data about
about the company.s best customers ¡V those top 20 percent of clients that produce 80 percent of the
company.s profits. These jewels can be a business.s most valuable intellectual property, which
makes them very valuable to competitors. What.s to prevent that data set from walking out the door
or falling into the wrong hands? Sometimes, not much. Many companies lack the internal controls to
prevent that information from leaking. The problem is that such data is as hard to protect as it is to
find. Owens & Minor Inc. (
www.ownes-minor.com), a $4 billion medical supplies distributor,
counts some of the nation.s largest health care organizations among its customers. In late 1996, it
started mining data internally using business intelligence software from Business Objects SA. ¡§From
the beginning, we were aware of security issues around this strategic information about our
operations,¡¨ says Don Stoller, senior director of information systems at Owens & Minor. ¡§For
example, a sales executive in Dallas should only have access to analyses from his region.¡¨ It is
always possible that someone who has legitimate access will abuse that trust, but companies can
minimize that potential by strictly limiting access to only those who need it. thus, Owens & Minor
uses role-level security functions that clearly define who has access to which data. ¡§This meant we
had to build a separate security table in our Oracle database,¡¨ says Stoller. A few years later, when
the company wanted to open its systems to suppliers and customers, security became even more
important. In 1998, Owens & Minor moved quickly to take advantage of Web-intelligence software
from Business Objects that.s designed to Web-enable business intelligence systems. The result was
Wisdom, an extranet Web portal that lets Owens & Minor.s suppliers and customers access their
own transactional data and generate sophisticated analyses and reports from it.¡§It business-tobusiness
transactions, security is key,¡¨ says Stoller. ¡§We had to make absolutely sure that Jhonson &
Jhonson, for example, could not see any 3M.s information. This meant we had to set up specific
customer and supplier security tables, and we had to maintain new, secured database views using the
Oracle DBMS and Business Objects.¡¨Wisdom was such a success that Owens & Minor decided to
go into the intelligence business with the launch of wisdom2 in the spring of 2000. ¡§We capture data
out of a hospital.s materials management system and load it into our data warehouse,¡¨ Stoller
explains. A hospital can then make full use of its business-intelligence software to mine and analyze
purchasing data. Owens & Minor receives a licensing and maintenance fee for the services.Layers of
security and encryption require a considerable amount of overhead data for systems administration.
Both Stoller and Michael Rasmussen, an analyst at Giga Information Group, say that.s the main
reason security concerns about business intelligence are often swept under the carpet. The issues of
authentication (identifying the user) and authorization (what things the user is allowed to do) must
be addressed, usually across different applications, Rasmussen says, adding, ¡§Systems
Examination Paper of Information Technology
5
IIBM Institute of Business Management
administration can be a real nightmare.¡¨¡§We are going through some of this,¡¨ says David Merager,
director of Web services and corporate applications at Vivendi Universal Games Inc.
(
www.vugames.com). ¡§Our business intelligence needs more security attention.¡¨ Business
intelligence reports come from two systems: an Oracle-based for budgets on a Microsoft SQL Server
database. The heart of the business intelligence system consists of Microsoft.s OLAP application
and software from Comshare Inc. that provides the Web-based front end for the analytics. ¡§Our
budget teams use these reports to do real-time analyses,¡¨ says Merager. Rodger Sayles, manager
of data warehousing at Vivendi Universal, says one way to secure such a system is to assign roles to
all users within the Microsoft application. Roles determine precisely what a user is allowed to see
and do and are usually managed within a directory. If your computing architecture is amenable to a
single, centralized directory that supports roles, this may be an attractive solution. ¡§The problem is
that once you have over 40 distinct roles, you run into performance issues, and we have identified
about 70 user roles,¡¨ Sayles explains. He says there.s way around this difficulty. ¡§I think we are
going to use a combination of Web portals and user roles. A user would sign on through a particular
Web portal, which would effectively place the user in a role category. This reduces the overhead
burden on the application,¡¨ says Sayles.
Questions:
1. Why have developments in IT helped to increase the value of the data resources of many
companies?
2. How can companies use IT to meet the challenges of data resources security?
Section C: Applied Theory (30 marks)
„h This section consists of Long Questions.
„h Answer all the questions.
„h Each question carries 15 marks.
„h Detailed information should form the part of your answer (Word limit 150 to 200 words).
1. Explain distributed systems. What are the advantages and disadvantages of distributed systems?
2. What do you mean by database? List the different types of database model.
END OF SECTION B
END OF SECTIONC
