Defining IT KPI, SaaS, Business Continuity, And Virtualization, And Analyzing FinCEN's IT Problems

Key Terminologies

1.Define and Explain the  terminologies:

2.Suggest a list of Information technology (IT) Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and outline the Advantages and Disadvantages associated with IT KPI.

3.What is SaaS and outline its Benefit and Disadvantages. Explain your answer.

4.Study "Business Continuity with Virtualization"  in your text book [Chapter 2, IT at Work 2.3] and answer the following questions:

A.What business risks had Liberty Wines faced?.

B.How does Liberty Wines’ IT infrastructure impact its competitive advantage?

C.How did server virtualisation benefit Liberty Wines and the environment?

5.Study "CASE 2 BUSINESS CASE: Financial Intelligence Fights Fraud" in your text book [Chapter 3] and answer the following questions

A.What data and IT problems were limiting FinCEN’s ability to fight financial crime?

B.Describe the IT upgrades and capabilities needed by FinCEN in order to achieve its mission.

C.On what does financial intelligence depend?

D.Why is the ability to identify patterns and relationships critical to national security?

E.Research recent financial crimes that FinCEN has detected and disrupted. Explain the role of data analytics in crime detection.

1.Business intelligence (BI) is a term that describes infrastructure, applications, and practices used to access and analyze information to improve decision making process and optimize performance (Chen, 2012).

IT Agility is a metric used to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the IT infrastructure in responding to threats or opportunities in the market.

SWOT analysis is a framework used to analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats faced by an organization (Helms, 2010).

Strategic planning is the process of an organization in defining its strategy and making decisions on allocating resources available to implement the strategy (Steiner, 2010).

Enterprise architecture is a blueprint that defines the operations and structure of a business and determines how an organization can achieve its short-term and long-term objectives (Bernard, 2012).

Management information systems is a group of systems that collect data from various sources, compile it, and present it as comprehensive information that can be used to make decisions in an organization.

MIS and DSS is an abbreviation for Management Information Systems and Decision Support Systems which are systems that facilitate communication in an organization and provide innovative vision to senior management respectively.

Cloud infrastructure is a virtual infrastructure delivered via the internet or network that includes services or products delivered to users via Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) (Mell, 2009).

Data and text mining is process of discovering patterns by analyzing large data sets or data in natural language text (Feldman, 2007).

IT Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

DMS is a system used to monitor, manage, and store documents.

Big data are large data sets that are analyzed computationally to identify patterns and trends particularly those related to human behavior (McAfee, 2012).

2.Some of IT Key Performance Indicators include Average date center availability and web server availability. Average data center availability is a KPI for measuring the degree to which data center is operational and accessible (Barroso, 2010). The metric considers all the factors affecting availability. However, it doesn’t translate well to data center availability. Webserver availability measures the extent to which web servers are accessible when they are used. The metric is effective in defining the amount of time the web server will be unavailable. However, it does not consider various reliability factors such as power loss that can affect availability of web servers.

3.Software as a service (SaaS) is a category of cloud computing in which applications are hosted and made available to users over internet (Dubey, 2007). For businesses, SaaS has many potential benefits. SaaS model saves costs incurred in installing and maintaining on-premises applications. SaaS subscription enables companies to use various applications hosted on the cloud. The model is scalable and can support business growth. Companies only have to adjust SaaS subscription instead of investing in new IT equipment. SaaS is accessible via internet hence is available on a wide range of devices including PC and smartphones. It eliminates the workload of dealing with hardware and software updates and the need for an in-house IT department. Since the IT infrastructure, the company’s data and applications are safeguarded from disasters that may occur (Bhardwaj, 2010).

SaaS has various pitfalls which can adversely affect a business. Security is a major concern in SaaS as companies have to consider the cloud service provider entrusted with data and business processes and the issue of access management has to be addressed (Benlian, 2011). Despite the service offered, outages occurs due to various issues such as human error. Downtime can be disastrous for business operations particularly if an organization uses mission-critical applications. A web browser accessing applications hosted in remote data centers can have performance issues when compared to application running on the company’s machines. SaaS market has many startups and many will fail which poses a risk to the data of business organizations using them as cloud service providers (Vaquero, 2008). SaaS model also have integration issues in cases where companies seek to connect cloud applications with on-premises applications.

Benefits and Disadvantages of SaaS

4.AAs Liberty Wines expanded its business operations, its IT facility could not handle the increasing data workload. The company’s IT systems had poor performance and required a lot of maintenance. This lead to a reduction in employee productivity and output which affected the company’s business processes such as inventory management. 

BThe company’s IT infrastructure lacks scalability which adversely affects the company’s competitive edge. Without enough IT capacity, the company is not able to provide quality service which leads to loss of customers as orders are not processes on time.

CServer virtualization enabled the company to reduce power use by 60% and the carbon footprint of its operations. Replacement costs for hardware was reduced and the company’s applications had higher performance which enabled the company to provide better customer service and improved productivity. Additionally, the company’s backup server enhanced reliability and the new virtual environment provided scalability which allowed business growth.

5.A.When analyzing data, FinCEN was limited to using small datasets which hampered the effectiveness of the analysis process. The bureau could not analyze large datasets and lacked IT capabilities to predict trends and maintain proactive analysis. It used multiple offline systems to report data to agencies which had to be cleaned and transformed hence delaying user access. Additionally, analytics and reporting gaps made it difficult for the bureau to detect emerging threats and assist in responding to criminal agents.

B.FinCen has to upgrade its query and data analytics capabilities. An emphasis should be placed on upgrading IT infrastructures to handle the data analysis process. A robust database should be implement to store massive datasets. Upgrade its analytics capabilities can enabled the bureau to effectively collect and analyze data from a range of sources and provide them to agencies.

C.Financial intelligence on IT capabilities such as data analytics, databases, and query capabilities that are essential in gathering information from various sources, analyzing it, and understanding its context.

DThe ability to identity patterns and relationships in a dataset is a critical skill that enables intelligent decision making required in national security. Such ability enables agencies to predict events that can happen in the future such as terrorist attacks. The ability to discover patterns implies that the government has the capability of identifying criminal agents before they perpetrate a crime. For example, terror plots can be discovered and stopped hence improve national security.

E.Data analytics is a key aspect of crime detection that enables agencies to discover anomalies in datasets. With data analytics, agencies can analyze data and identify patterns associated with criminal activities. For example, data analytics in the financial industry enable banks to detect fraud based on the patterns observed. Data analytics gives agencies the capability to scan for various criminal activities

References

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Benlian, A., & Hess, T. (2011). Opportunities and risks of software-as-a-service: Findings from a survey of IT executives. Decision Support Systems, 52(1), 232-246.

Bernard, S. A. (2012). An introduction to enterprise architecture. AuthorHouse.

Bhardwaj, S., Jain, L., & Jain, S. (2010). Cloud computing: A study of infrastructure as a service (IAAS). International Journal of engineering and information Technology, 2(1), 60-63.

Chen, H., Chiang, R. H., & Storey, V. C. (2012). Business intelligence and analytics: From big data to big impact. MIS quarterly, 36(4), 1165-1188.

Dubey, A., & Wagle, D. (2007). Delivering software as a service. The McKinsey Quarterly, 6(2007), 2007.

Feldman, R., & Sanger, J. (2007). The text mining handbook: advanced approaches in analyzing unstructured data. Cambridge university press.

Helms, M. M., & Nixon, J. (2010). Exploring SWOT analysis–where are we now? A review of academic research from the last decade. Journal of strategy and management, 3(3), 215-251.

McAfee, A., Brynjolfsson, E., Davenport, T. H., Patil, D. J., & Barton, D. (2012). Big data. The management revolution. Harvard Bus Rev, 90(10), 61-67.

Mell, P., & Grance, T. (2009). The NIST definition of cloud computing. National Institute of Standards and Technology, 53(6), 50.

Steiner, G. A. (2010). Strategic planning. Simon and Schuster.

Vaquero, L. M., Rodero-Merino, L., Caceres, J., & Lindner, M. (2008). A break in the clouds: towards a cloud definition. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 39(1), 50-55.