Q1 - An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is an enterprise-wide information system that integrates and controls all the business processes in the entire organization. Its purpose is to integrate and optimize the business processes and transactions in a corporation. According to Uwizevemungu and Raymond (2004), an successful ERP implementation has certain characteristics as listed:
Intergration: Interaction between the various processes
Completeness (generic function): Wide range of functions, applicable to various types of firms, and connectivity with the outside.
Homogenisation: Unique data referential, uniformity of human-machine interfaces, and unicity of the system's administration
Real-time: Rea-time update and consultation
Adaptability: Capability to follow rule and organization changes
Openness: Modularity and Portability
Transversality: System designed in regard to the business processes necessary to achieve objectives. Focus on value rather than authority flows
Best Practices: System imbeds best practices in the field
Simulation: Business processes can be simulated
Some common functions of an ERP are financial accounting, Human resources, manufacturing, order processing, supply chain management, project management, and customer relationship management. These areas of ERP are connected to real-time data and transaction in a variety of ways. These connectivity to plant floor information are Direct integration, Database integration, Enterprise Appliance, Transaction Modules, and Custom-integration solutions. There are many benefits to implementing an ERP, but the bottom line is that it gives the organization industry advantages such as sales forecasting, order and revenue tracking, and centralizing business data.
References:
Addo-Tenkoran, R. & Helo, P. (2011). Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): A Review Literature Report. Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering and Computer Science Vol II
Uwizeyemungu, S. & Ramond, L. (2004). Essential Characteristics of an ERP System: Conceptualization and Operationalization. Sixth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, Porto, Portugal
Q2 - Social Computing is the evolved computer technology that allows people to share information and be social across the Internet. Sharing ideas, emails, pictures, instant messaging, emotions, video conferencing, traffic issues, blogs, restaurant reviews, and even where new graffiti has occurred are just a few examples of how people use social computing. For many, social computing resources have become an integrated way of our lives. We check Facebook and email, monitor traffic through Google or Waze, read and write reviews on our favorite shopping website, use apps like Epicurious or Yelp to assist with dinner plans, and we can't forget our online class resource.
Wikipedia is usually not the best resource to site for a class, but in this instance it is one of the best-known examples for the segment of social computing known as wiki pages. Wiki pages are an online collaboration resource that can be private or public to share and provide information. On the Wiki page for social media I found this diagram of social medias.
Q3 - Cognitive Computing is an interesting topic. As pointed out by Kelly, "cognitive computing refers to systems that learn at scale, reason with purpose and interact with humans naturally" (Kelly, 2015). One of the great points Kelly makes in his article is that, as often happens to technical issues that organizations such as Hollywood latch on to, misconceptions around what cognitive computing is are everywhere. There are countless movies and books that explore scenarios around a self-aware Artificial Intelligence. Many of these books and movies do not "end well" for humans, no doubt because such dire plots make for great books and movies. I highly doubt people would want to go see a movie about a cognitive computer that made an account's life easier by catching journal entry errors....something tells me that would not make for as an exciting movie as one about a cognitive machine that break nuclear missile codes and destroys the planet, or one that creates other "cool looking" machines with laser guns that destroy everything.
The above creates a challenge for the professionals who are in the trenches trying to make this a reality; this is similar to what happened in the legal system when the CSI Effect changed how people looked at the world to a large enough degree that what was purely fiction influenced reality and expectations: https://www.nij.gov/journals/259/pages/csi-effect.aspx. For those of us in the trenches of IT, we need to be aware of both the reality of cognitive computer (what it can do for our organizations) as well as the public perceptions (what is the CEO going to think about if we present a recommendation to look into cognitive computing.
As pointed out by Kelly, cognitive computers "rather than being explicitly programmed, they learn and reason from their interactions with us and from their experiences with their environment" (Kelly, 2015). This means that instead of programming cognitive computers using detailed requirements documents to break business rules into "yes or no" workflows, cognitive computers will be able to learn as they go. This does not mean that cognitive computers will solve all our problems, or becoming highly intelligent overnight, rather, as pointed out by Kelly "cognitive systems are probabilistic, meaning they are designed to adapt and make sense of the complexity and unpredictability of unstructured information. They can "read" text, "see" images and "hear" natural speech" (Kelly, 2015).
The value of these systems is, contrary to what Hollywood portraits, that cognitive machines could absorb much of the mundane data-crunching humans currently perform. Instead of spending hours doing spelling / grammar /syntax / MLA formatting checks, a cognitive machine could, in theory, "read" my paper and do these checks for me, make recommendations as to how well I answered the questions, if I used sources appropriately, if it was structure properly, etc.
While there is a great deal about cognitive computing that is unknown, I think it will have a huge impact. The impacts that modern computers have had on our life are staggering, and most IT professionals in the 1960's had no way to predict how invasive computers now are in our lives. Similarly, it is very difficult for us to predict how cognitive computing will shape the next half-century.
References: Kelly, J. (2015, October) Computing, cognition and the future of knowing. Retrieved from https://www.research.ibm.com/software/IBMResearch/multimedia/Computing_Cognition_WhitePaper.pdf
Q4 - The essence of cloud computing is a virtual pool of IT resources/solutions, that can scale dynamically - based on need. This is contrary to a physical data-center which often features physical machines, staff, and limited ability to scale in response to demand. Instead of having N number of computers, each with N number of CPUs featuring N number of cores, and N amount of RAM - a cloud computing environment will allocate a set amount of memory and processing power in a virtual instance, and provide as little or as many instances as necessary. In a cloud environment, consumers access resources via the network (Internet or Intranet), and these resources are often abstracted from the organization.
Q5 - Open Source Software is a concept in software development where the developers of the program have posted their source code, the code that makes the software function, publically for review and perhaps modification by others not necessarily involved in the development. This is in contrast to closed source or proprietary software, where the source code of the program or application is hidden and not publically available.
One common misconception is that open source software equals free software. This is not true. Most open source software is free for use, and companies get money by providing paid support contracts, but there are examples where an application with an open source is available but you pay for the software. SugarCRM offers paid versions of its open source software. Additionally, there are proprietary applications and programs that are free but the source is not open, or publically available.
A more thorough description of open source software can be found at https://opensource.com/resources/what-open-source.