The final exam consists of two parts.  Part A and Part B.  Part A is an online multiple choice exam, similar to the online quizzes you have taken each week.  Part B is a short answer/short essay exam.  You will be required to complete BOTH Part A and Part B of the final exam.

The list of possible exam topics has been narrowed to the following:

What is meant by “IT”?

Five factors to consider when assessing the impact of IT now and in the next decade:

• Technology convergence – to what does this refer?
• Transformation of the enterprise has resulted in organization flattening and location independence.  Why has this become possible?
• Globalization – competition in a global market

What role do IT and IS play in globalization?

• Rise of the Information Economy – what is meant by this phrase?

How have economies shifted? 

Roles of knowledge & information workers?

• Emergence of the Digital Firm – what is meant by the term “digital firm”?
• Integration of business processes and links with business partners
• Management of corporate assets
• Advantages of digital firms over competitors

How are business models changing due to technology and the Internet?

What are the three primary levels of management and what types of decisions are made at

            each level?

Classification of Information Systems – based on level of management supported

• Executive Support Systems (ESS)

Which level of personnel/management do they generally support?

                        Kinds of decision-making supported by these systems

                        Typical data requirements

                        Graphic/GUI requirements

• TP Systems  -- what are they?

                        Which level of personnel/management do they generally support?

                        List of typical transaction processing systems found in organizations

• Decision Support Systems (DSS) 

Which level of personnel/management do they generally support?

                        Kinds of decision-making supported by these systems

                        Typical data requirements

What is an ERP system?  What does it typically do?

SCM system – what is it?  What does it typically do?

CRM system – what is it?  What does it typically do?

Impacts of technological change – why resisted? Why is this a management issue?

Types of impact IS/IT has on organizations

• Economic impacts of IT/IS on an organization?
• Organizational & behavioral impacts of IT/IS on an organization?

How can IT be leveraged to improve a business’ value chain?

What is JIT?  How does IT make JIT possible?

What is e-commerce?

How has the Web diminished information asymmetry?

What is B2C e-commerce?

What is B2B e-commerce?

What is clickstream tracking in an e-marketing sense?

What is collaborative filtering in an e-marketing sense?

What is spyware?       How is it used in a positive sense from an organization’s perspective?

How is it used in a negative sense from a person’s perspective?

What are the differences and similarities between virus and Trojan malware?

What is intellectual property?

How has IT increased the threat to intellectual property rights?

What is Moore’s Law?  What does this mean for business?  What does it mean for future business models?

What is a cookie?  What is its purpose?

If a computer has 2GB of RAM, what does this mean?

If a computer has 2 MB of RAM, what does this mean?

What is SOx?

What is a relational database?

From the hands-on exercises in Access, how would you describe a database record? 

a field?  the purpose of a field? 

How would you describe a table?

What is SQL?  What is the reason for the popularity of SQL in data management?

What is data mining?  Why is it important? 

What is an intelligent system?  What makes it intelligent?

What is an expert system?  Why are expert systems prevalent in business?

What exactly is systems development?  What are the activities involved in the systems

            development process and what is essentially involved in each activity/step?

What is business process re-engineering?  What role does IT play in this re-engineering?

How are business processes identified as critical for IT focused efforts such as system

 development efforts?

What is project management?

What are the capital budgeting methods of payback and ROI  used for IT project evaluation? 

            What does the ROI method measure or calculate?

            What does the payback method measure or calculate?

May require internet research which you are allowed to do during the exam:

Describe a recent outage at a cloud computer such as the recent lightning stike in Ireland or the Research In Motion outage in Asia. Note: Example of cloud computing vendors are Microsoft, Amazon, Rackspace.com, Salesforce.com, Google, ...

1. What caused the outage?

2. How long did it take to get customers back into normal operation?

3. Did any of the customers have to do anything to get back into normal operation or was the cloud computing vendor able to handle everything?

4. If you were a cloud computing customer, what steps would you take to minimize disruption to your operations that could be caused by a outage at your cloud computing vendor.