IT-414 – MIS – Case 3
Aviall Inc.: From Failure to Success
with Information Technology
Joseph Lacik, Jr., doesn’t try to measure the return on investment
of his company’s e-business website. The fact
that Dallas-based Aviall Inc. (www.aviall.com) was saved
from financial disaster by a controversial multimillion-dollar
IT project that included developing the website as one key
element is all the return he needs to see. That investment, in
the words of Larry DeBoever, chief strategy officer at the IT
consulting firm Experio Solutions Corp. in Dallas, “turned
Aviall from a catalog business into a full-scale logistics business”
that hundreds of aviation parts manufacturers and
airlines large and small depend on for ordering, inventory
control, and demand forecasting. He says the new approach
ties Aviall more tightly to customers such as Rolls-Royce
PLC. “Aviall is now the logistics back end for the aviation
firms,” says DeBoever, whose company was retained to help
with portions of Aviall’s systems integration work. “And they
did it even though the airline industry shrank over the last
three years.”
In early 2000, with quarterly sales dropping and Aviall
on the ropes, “We invested $30 million to $40 million to
build this infrastructure,” says Lacik, vice president of information
services at Aviall Services, a unit of Aviall. “Our
competitors thought we were insane. Some investors asked
for my resignation.” But the results of the project have
been extremely successful and represent a huge comeback
from Aviall’s recent business/IT problems, which sprang
from a failed enterprise resource planning (ERP) system
that had been designed to automate and integrate the
company’s order processing, inventory control, financial
accounting, and human resources business systems. However,
there were major problems in implementing the new
ERP system that resulted in Aviall’s inventory getting out
of control.
Lacik joined the company in early 2000. “You couldn’t
properly order or ship things. My job was to bring back
operational stability,” he says. To do so, he implemented
the CEO’s vision of transforming Aviall into a provider of
supply chain management services through the integration
of a range of Web-enabled e-business software systems.
Aviall bought and installed a BroadVision online purchasing
system, Siebel Systems sales force automation and order entry
software, a Lawson Software financial system, a Catalyst
Manufacturing Services inventory control and warehouse
management system, and Xelus product allocation, inventory
management, and purchasing forecasting software. All
of these systems were integrated by using common business
databases managed by database software from Sybase, Inc.
Of course, even with planning, some of the systems integration
was more difficult than expected. One major reason
was the sheer size of the project. The new combined
system has to properly access and deal with customized
pricing charts for 17,000 customers who receive various
types of discounts, and it has to deal with an inventory of
380,000 different aerospace parts.
The development of Aviall.com was one of the least expensive
parts of the project, at a cost of about $3 million,
Lacik says. But it provides big benefits. When customers order
products on the Aviall website, it costs the company
about 39 cents per order, compared with $9 per transaction
if an Aviall employee takes the order over the phone. New
supply chain functions are also possible, such as the ability
for customers to transfer their orders from an Excel spreadsheet
directly to the website. Customers can also receive
price and availability information on aerospace parts in less
than five seconds—a real-time feature that hadn’t been available
before the BroadVision system was installed, Lacik says.
The process also frees the company’s sales force from
routine order taking and follow-up, thus allowing them to
spend more time developing relationships with customers.
What’s more, the website helps Aviall build relationships
with suppliers by providing them with customer ordering
data that enables them to better match production with
demand. The website now generates $60 million of the
company’s $800 million in annual revenue, or 7.5 percent,
up from less than 2 percent a year ago. “Over the next three
to five years, it could become more than 30 percent.”
Lacik says.
Case Study Questions
1. Why do you think that Aviall failed in their implementation
of an enterprise resource planning system? What
could they have done differently?
2. How has information technology brought new business
success to Aviall? How did IT change Aviall’s business
model?
3. How could other companies use Aviall’s approach to
the use of IT to improve their business success? Give
several examples.
Source: Adapted from Steve Alexander, “Website Adds Inventory
Control and Forecasting,” Computerworld, February 24, 2003,
p. 45. Copyright © 2003 by Computerworld, Inc., Framingham,
MA 01701. All rights reserved.
IT – 414 Case 1
Chapter 1 / Foundations of Information Systems in Business ? 5
Claude Philipps, program director of major events at
Atos Origin, the lead IT contractor for the Olympic
Games, likes to be prepared. “We were ready before
August, but we were still testing, because we wanted to be sure
that every stupid thing that can happen was planned for,”
Philipps said. “In a normal IT project, we could have delivered
the application to the customer almost eight months earlier.”
But the Olympic Games was far from a normal IT project.
The deadline was nonnegotiable, and there were no second
chances: Everything must work, from the opening ceremony
on August 13 right to the end, said Philipps, whose previous
experience includes developing the control system for the
world’s first computerized nuclear power plant.
With all that pressure, Philipps’s team was doing its utmost
to ensure that the network would not fail. They were
building multiple layers of security and redundancy, using
reliable technology, and then testing it rigorously.
In the weeks before the games, the team went through
two technical rehearsals in which 30 Atos Origin staffers put
the network through its paces. The team spent a full week
simulating the busiest days of the games, Philipps said, dealing
with “crazy scenarios of what might happen in every
area: a network problem, staff stopped in a traffic jam, a
security attack . . . everything that might happen.”
The rehearsals were intended to test people and procedures
as much as the hardware and software. That was important
because the IT operating organization Philipps built for
the Athens Olympics grew from nothing to a staff of 3,400 in
less than three years.
The two major components of the software that were
run over the Olympic network were Atos Origin’s GMS
(Games Management System), a customized suite of applications
that act as kind of ERP for the Olympics, and the IDS
(Information Diffusion System).
GMS ran on Windows 2000 servers in Athens, an upgrade
from the Windows NT 4 used at the Salt Lake City
games in 2002. “We’re not using sexy technology,” Philipps
said. “The main goal for us was to reduce the amount of risk.”
Together, GMS and IDS imposed exacting requirements
on the network. GMS was, among other things, used to
manage access accreditations for the games, so security was
vital. Speed, too, was important: Philipps’s goal was to have
the results on commentators’ screens 0.3 seconds after the
athletes had crossed the line, complete with rankings, statistics,
and biographies—everything that helps commentators
during a live broadcast.
Yan Noblot, information security manager at Atos Origin,
said the key to that was to build in redundancy—and lots of it.
“We doubled everything, because we needed 100 percent
availability at games time,” he said.
And when he said everything, he meant it. There was
backup redundancy for the routers and switches at each site,
the datacenters that processed the results, and even the PCs
on the desks in the control room.
To keep things orderly, Atos designed three different
LAN configurations: one for the largest venues, including
the Olympic stadium and the water sports center; another
for midsize venues such as the equestrian center; and one for
the many smaller venues.
Atos used VLANs both to simplify troubleshooting and
to limit damage if anyone managed to break into the network.
There were separate VLANs for the commentator information
system, information diffusion applications, and
the game management system. Technical services, directories,
management and monitoring, and the on-venue results
system each had their own VLANs too, sometimes several
per venue for the same function.
“The purpose was to segment the traffic so we could
monitor it and contain potential issues,” Noblot said. “If
someone brought in a virus, it would be contained on systems
on the same VLAN and could not spread to other
VLANs.”
Event results and data from the games management system
were stored in two physically distant data centers hosted
by OTE, which also supplied the SDH network. The primary
data center was located near OTE’s headquarters in
Marousi, just across the main highway from the Olympic stadium;
the other was another several hundred miles away, still
in Greece but in a different earthquake zone.
What makes the Olympic Games a unique project is that
the athletes aren’t going to stop running just because the
server does. As Philipps said, “When we speak about fixing
something, it might be a work-around or a decrease of functionality,
but the key thing is that the show must go on.”
Case Study Questions
1. Could the 2004 Athens Olympics have been a success
without all of the networks and backup technologies?
2. The 2004 Olympics is a global business. Can a business
today succeed without information technology? Why
or why not?
3. Claude Philipps said dealing with “crazy scenarios of
what might happen in every area: a network problem,
staff stopped in a traffic jam, a security attack . . . everything
that might happen,” was the reason for so much
testing. Can you think of other businesses that would
require “crazy scenario” testing? Explain.
Source: Adapted from Peter Sayer, “The Olympics Network:
Faster, Stronger—and Redundant,” Infoworld, July 9, 2004. Copyright
© 2004 by Computerworld, Inc., Framingham, MA 01701.
All rights reserved.
Data Security: Professional Ethics and Responsibilities
A Gift of Fire
Third edition
Sara Baase
Chapter 9: Professional Ethics and Responsibilities
What We Will Cover
• What is Professional Ethics?
• Ethical Guidelines for Computer Professionals
• Scenarios
What is “Professional Ethics”?
• Professional ethics includes relationships with and responsibilities toward customers, clients, coworkers, employees, employers, others who use one’s products and services, and others whom they affect
• A professional has a responsibility to act ethically. Many professions have a code of ethics that professionals are expected to abide by
– Medical doctors
– Lawyers and judges
– Accountants
What is “Professional Ethics”? (cont.)
• There are special aspects to making ethical decisions in a professional context
• Honesty is one of the most fundamental ethical values; however, many ethical problems are more subtle than the choice of being honest or dishonest
• Some ethical issues are controversial
Ethical Guidelines for Computer Professionals
Guidelines and Professional Responsibilities:
• Understand what success means
• Include users (such as medical staff, technicians, pilots, office workers) in the design and testing stages to provide safe and useful systems
• Do a thorough, careful job when planning and scheduling a project and when writing bids or contracts
• Design for real users
Ethical Guidelines for Computer . . . (cont.)
Guidelines and Professional Responsibilities (cont.):
• Don’t assume existing software is safe or correct; review and test it
• Be open and honest about capabilities, safety, and limitations of software
• Require a convincing case for safety
• Pay attention to defaults
• Develop communication skills
Scenarios
Methodology:
• Brainstorming phase:
– List all the people and organizations affected (the stakeholders)
– List risks, issues, problems, and consequences
– List benefits. Identify who gets each benefit
– In cases where there is no simple yes or no decision, but rather one has to choose some action, list possible actions
Scenarios (cont.)
Methodology:
• Analysis phase
– Identify responsibilities of the decision maker
– Identify rights of stakeholders
– Consider the impact of the options on the stakeholders (consequences, risks, benefits, harms, costs)
– Categorize each potential action as ethically obligatory, prohibited, or acceptable
– When there are multiple options, select one, considering the ethical merits of each, courtesy to others, practicality, self-interest, personal preferences, etc.
Scenarios
Scenario 1:
• Your company is developing a free e-mail service that will include targeted advertising based on the content of the e-mail messages (similar to Google’s Gmail). You are part of the team designing the system. What are your ethical responsibilities?
Scenarios
Scenario 2:
• You are a relatively junior programmer working on modules that collect data from loan application forms and convert them to formats required by the parts of the program that evaluate the applications. You find that some demographic data are missing from some forms, particularly race and age. What should your program do? What should you do?
Scenarios
Scenario 3:
• Your company has 25 licenses for a computer program, but you discover that it has been copied onto 80 computers.
Scenarios
Scenario 4:
• Suppose you are a member of a team working on a computer-controlled crash avoidance system for automobiles. You think the system has a flaw that could endanger people. The project manager does not seem concerned and expects to announce completion of the project soon. Do you have an ethical obligation to do something?
Scenarios
Scenario 5:
• You work for the IRS, the Social Security Administration, a movie-rental company, or an Internet service provider. Someone asks you to get a copy of records about a particular person. He will pay you $500.
Scenarios
Scenario 6:
• You have a small consulting business. The CyberStuff company plans to buy software to run a new collaborative content-sharing Web site. CyberStuff wants to hire you to evaluate bids from vendors. Your spouse works for NetWorkx and did most of the work in writing the bid that NetWorkx plans to submit. You read the bid while your spouse was working on it and you think it is excellent. Do you tell CyberStuff about your spouse’s connection with NetWorkx?
Scenarios
Scenario 7:
• A team of programmers is developing a communications system for firefighters to use when fighting a fire. Firefighters will be able to communicate with each other, with supervisors near the scene, and with other emergency personnel. The programmers will test the system in a field near the company office.
Scenarios
Scenario 8:
• You are the computer system administrator for a mid-sized company. You can monitor the company network from home, and you frequently work from home. Your niece, a college student, is visiting for a week. She asks to use your computer to check her e-mail. Sure, you say. You are being a gracious host. What is the ethical problem?
Links: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/giftfire/
Bleach Manga Episodes Download Links
Bleach 320
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IT-325 Computer Networking References
——————————————————————————–
Textbook
1. Cisco Networking Academy Program : CCNA 1 and CCNA 2 Companion Guide, 3rd
Edition, Cisco Press
2. Cisco Networking Academy Program : CCNA 1 Curriculum Version 3.1
3. Business data communications and networking ./ Raymond R. Panko., Prentice Hall
4. Networking : a beginner’s guide. / Bruce Hallberg. McGraw Hill 2000
5. Guide to Networking Essentials Latest Edition / Ed Tittel, Course Technology,
Business Data Communications and Networking by Raymond R. Panko>>> business-and-data-communication-and-networking
Visual Basic 6.0 Tutorial Site
try dis sites its useful>>> http://www.vbtutor.net/
Database Query Commands
These commands work on Microsoft Access 2000/2003/2007
try it on other database system if you have time!
Also Try http://www.sql-tutorial.net for other commands.
SELECT gender AS SEX, AVG(age) AS AVERAGE_AGE
FROM Student
GROUP BY gender;
Select Commands
SELECT studNumber, studlastname, studfirstname
FROM Student;
——————
SELECT [tribe], studFirstname, studLastName
FROM Student
WHERE tribe=’cebuano’;
——————
SELECT [religion], studFirstname, studLastName
FROM Student
WHERE religion=’roman catholic’;
——————
SELECT [religion], studFirstname, studLastName
FROM Student
WHERE religion=’islam’;
——————
Join Command
SELECT student.studNumber, student.studLastname, student.studFirstname, subject.subject, subject.unit
FROM student, subject;
——————
Insert Command
INSERT INTO Student ( studlastname, studfirstname, studnumber )
VALUES (“Villasor”, “Jayson”, “1980″);
—————–
Delete Command
DELETE *
FROM Student
WHERE studLastname=’Villasor’;
—————-
Update Command
UPDATE Student SET studNumber = ’1981′
WHERE studLastname=”villasor”;
