application essay essays

application essay essays Life is an adventure. When I was four years old I heard Yo-Yo Ma in Shanghai and immediately knew that was what I wanted to do with my life. I began private lessons and then enrolled in the Shanghai Conservatory where I completed my schooling. Then, to fulfil my dream of being a fine cellist, I moved to Calgary, Canada and spent the next year studying English and cello at Mount Royal College. Since 2000, I have been attending North Park University in Chicago, under full scholarship, and have been studying cello with Professor Hans Jensen at Northwestern University. I am now a senior at North Park University and so am considering how best to pursue advanced musical studies as my dream is still to become a professional musician. I have been searching for an institution that would help make that dream a reality. Juilliard is, of course, a wonderful music school and attracts a very high calibre of students and instructors. I believe it would be a great experience to have the opportunity of being able to work with them. I just performed a student recital at North Park University with Midori and she strongly suggested that I should seek out opportunities to work with highly skilled musicians. As well, I am obviously attracted to the extraordinary depth and range of cultural institutions in New York City, including the New York Philharmonic, the world-renowned musicians who perform at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, and both the Metropolitan Opera and New York City Opera Companies. I am sure that being exposed to all this would add depth and understanding to my development as a musician. Access to these and associated musical opportunities is of great value to any serious student of music. My studies under Prof. Jensen have helped a great deal with my musical development but I believe that I am at the stage where I can greatly benefit from a focused, conservatory-like music school. Also, I believe I would be particularly comfort...

Business Performance Measures

Business Performance Measures Introduction The world has become very competitive in almost all aspects of human life that has necessitated the need to boost performance in order for businesses to continue with their daily operations. Governments, non governmental organizations and individual firms have had to devise cost effective ways of ensuring their business operations are viable despite the high rate of inflation that seems to run out of control.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Business Performance Measures specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More It is common knowledge that modernization has brought stiff competition in the quality and quantity of goods and services produced and those firms that meet the required production standards remain in operations. While some companies have taken to monopolization others have merged under different banners in order to increase efficiency in their delivery of services. Regardless of the approach taken by a co mpany to boost its performance there are various measures it must put in place in order to assess its performance. This essay outlines some of the performance measures a company may adopt, benefits such measures bring to the company and the actions it can take with regard to the outcomes of these measures. Performance is a common term used in business to refer to the value of business out put that is used to assess the viability of any business venture in terms of profits or losses. It is measured in two ways in terms of the volume of goods and services produced and profits or losses generated from the sales made. A measure is any approach taken towards realization of any goal by a business (Cokins 2009). Therefore, performance measures are steps taken by a business organization in the attempt of seeking to identify its position as far as business operations are concerned. This discussion covers the human resource and product and service measures as essential tools of evaluating the performance of any business. Human resource plays a very important role in the daily running of business operations in all organizations. Therefore, it forms an important aspect that can not be isolated from performance.Advertising Looking for essay on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More This is due to the fact that human beings constitute a grater percentage of sources of labor in all operations and in areas where machines are used human beings are in charge of controlling them. Performance measures in terms of human resource has various dimensions that include, performance evaluations, productivity reports, turnover, absenteeism and employee satisfaction surveys. Performance evaluations are important measures that businesses undertake in order to assess the levels of production of its workers. Performance is evaluated on the basis of worker’s academic qualifications, experience, interests a nd skills that are essential in ensuring workers deliver quality work (Luecke 2006). Any worker who does not have the required skills is more likely to deliver poor quality work while an experienced person stands high chances of better performance. This is an essential tool of evaluation as it enables the management to identify the worker’s potentials and this helps them in allocation of duties and responsibilities according to the worker’s abilities to perform. A business may decide to train its employees further in order to increase their skills and knowledge by sponsoring their part time education programs and giving them more off duty allowances in order to attend their classes. Timely and accurate information regarding employee’s performance will help the management identify its weak performance areas and plan on how to develop them in order to ensure all workers do their best. Worker’s productivity reports may be prepared by the management as measur es towards assessing business performance. It should be noted that every employee plays an important role in determining the productivity of a business regardless of the person’s position in a company. All positions in a business are created with a view of boosting performance and there is no department or position that should be treated as inferior to others. The business is like a body while workers are like the organs that make the body to function properly and be healthy. Worker’s productivity reports help management identify the specific abilities of every worker and avoid generalization of workers performance (Cokins 2009). Employees who consistently perform below the company’s expectations should be given essential advice and warned in advance but if they seem not to improve they should be laid off and other people with prospects of better performance hired. This measure helps management plan on future expansions of the company in terms of its work force and production.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Business Performance Measures specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More All workers are supposed to spend quality time at their work place in order to boost production and efficiency. It should be noted that time is a very important factor in the process of production and should be spent wisely (Luecke 2006).Therefore, employees should ensure they do constructive activities when at work. Work attendance records will help the management assess their employees in terms of the number of hours they dedicate to work. Those frequently absent from duty should be sacked immediately as this shows laxity and lack of interest and personal initiatives by employees. This measure helps to identify the amount of work an individual is capable of doing in a given time. More time spent at work means more service or goods will be produced and vise versa. The company is able to plan a head with re gard to production of its services or goods. A company may also conduct turnover surveys to identify its ability to produce goods and services within a given time frame. This survey helps the company to identify its potentials and assess whether it is performing according to its expectations. This measure will help the company identify areas that are productive and those that are dormant. It gives management an insight into future planning in terms of budgetary allocation to various departments to boost their efficiency in production. The second approach of measuring performance is through the use of product and service measures. The first step in this approach is conducting surveys on the levels of customer satisfaction with regard to the quality and quantity of goods and services offered by a company (Cokins 2009). This may be done through questionnaires or through conducting interviews that aim to establish the levels of satisfaction their clients attain with regard to the compan y’s services. This measure helps the company to identify weaknesses of a product or service and correct them as soon as possible. It helps a company in planning on how to avoid the occurrence of such errors in future. It enables the business to know the tastes preferred by clients. Rates of returns help businesses asses their performance as it offers an insight to the level the product or service has penetrated the market. Through conducting this survey the management will identify the various marketing strategies that will enable it deliver its services to almost all regions accessible by it. Timely awareness of the problems arising from this survey will help a business change its marketing strategies or use different strategies to market their products.Advertising Looking for essay on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More A company may choose to asses its performance through surveying the product rates of failure that will enable it identify the effectiveness of its services. This will enable the company to know the reasons why the products are failing and analyze whether it is as a result of poor quality or lack of information on the use of the product and thus address the issues as soon as possible (Cokins 2009). Products’ rates of failure helps to eliminate future assumptions by correcting the client’s current perceptions regarding the quality of services offered. The number of clients served within a particular period of time is an essential step in measuring the performance of any business. This measure offers relevant information regarding the volume of sales made in a given time. This survey measure will enable a company to assess whether the price of goods, timing of their sales, efficiency of employers or the volume of goods produced determine the number of clients served (Luec ke 2006). Timely and accurate information obtained through this survey will help the management plan ahead and decide whether to increase the number of workers to eliminate long queues of clients waiting to be served or extend the time of operations in order to serve many clients within the shortest time possible. Conclusion All business investments are founded on the basis of utilizing all opportunities to make profits and at the same time offer quality goods and services to their clients. If essential steps are not taken early to monitor the performance of a business huge losses may be incurred leading to termination of its operations. Therefore, it is important that businesses conduct performance surveys to determine their viability. References Cokins, G. (2009). Performance Management: Integrating Strategy Execution, Methodologies, Risk and Analytics (Wiley and SAS Business Series). New York: Wiley Publishers. Luecke, R. (2006). Harvard Business Essentials: Performance Managemen t: Measure and Improve the Effectiveness of your Employees. Boston: Harvard Business Review.

Computer literacy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Computer literacy - Essay Example These make of computers are expensive and mainly used for specific operations and applications that need huge amount of information and calculations. They are used in weather forecasting among many other places where supercomputers are needed such as nuclear energy research, geological data analysis, and electronic design. Mainframe computers- it is a powerful computer used by several users thus referred to as a multi-user computer. These computers got their names after the small â€Å"minicomputers† emerged in the early 1970s. Today, the mainframe computers are very large. They are very expensive since they can support several hundreds of users at the same time. In different ways, it can be said that mainframe computers exhibit superior characteristics compared to supercomputers since they can support several programs simultaneously. On the other hand, supercomputers have the advantage of executing single programs at a faster rate compared to mainframe computers. Minicomputers- these are midsize computers used for applications. Their main uses includes engineering, desktop publishing, development of software and many other applications that needs moderate amount of power to compute. Personal computers-they first came to existence in 1970s. They are small, inexpensive and designed to be used by individual users. The first types of personal computers to come to the market were the Apple II. Personal computers are categorized depending on size and chassis. The chassis is also referred to as the metal frame, which serves as the structural support for electronic components. Personal computers evolved to a point where small portable computers came to being. There are different types of personal computers including Tower model-in this computer, the mass storage, motherboard and the power supply are on top of one another in a cabinet. This is opposite of what exists in the desktop models where these computer components are in a compact set of box. Tower

American Government poli science 10 exam question Essay

American Government poli science 10 exam question - Essay Example Several generations of political philosophy, scientific empiricism, and intellectual theory culminated in the Revolutionary War that sought the transformation of these abstract ideas into reality for a new society (Fiske, 2012). Antiquity and England itself were the principal inspirations for the ideas about independence, liberty, and the form envisioned by the Founders for their new government. Republicanism derived from several inspirations, notably the ancient Greek and Rome societies where all citizens (except slaves, who were not accorded citizenship) subordinated their private interests voluntarily to the common good. The republics predicated their authority and stability based on citizenry and their resistance to tyranny and corruption. For republicans in the eighteenth century, a person with virtue had a high sense of morality, owned property, and was ready to subordinate his or her interests for the sake of the community (Fiske, 2012). Such are the kind of people Benjamin Franklin and other Founding Fathers thought capable of freedom. The Constitution Framers were visionaries. They designed the Constitution to last. They sought both to address the challenges facing America during their lifetimes and to establish foundational principles that would guide and sustain the new nation into a future that was uncertain (Levy, 2000). Their vision is reflected in the wording of the Constitution. The document defines the fundamental freedoms of Americans in general terms: â€Å"due process of law,† â€Å"freedom of speech,† â€Å"equal protection of laws,† â€Å"free exercise of religion,† â€Å"cruel and unusual punishment† among others. It also sets forth the powers of the government in general terms: the President will ensure that laws are faithfully executed, Congress may regulate commerce in several states, the courts have authority to decide on cases and

Marketing Approaches for Overcoming Increased Competition in the UK Assignment

Marketing Approaches for Overcoming Increased Competition in the UK Hotel Industry - Assignment Example However, in practice, problems are likely to appear when having to apply the market principles related to competition. The challenges set can be many, mostly related to the lack of effective marketing policies for ensuring the equal promotion of firms within each one of the market’s industries. At this point, the identification of the characteristics of the marketing environment is considered as critical in order to understand the needs of industries and organizations and to develop valid assumptions regarding the measures required for protecting competition. In accordance with Dibb and Simkin (2001) the marketing environment can be characterized as ‘those external trading forces that directly or indirectly influence and organization’s acquisitions of inputs and generation of outputs’ (Dibb and Simkin 2001, p.199). The marketing approaches appropriate for managing the increasing competition in a specific sector, the hotel industry, of the UK market, are rev iewed in this paper. Reference is made to the characteristics of the marketing environment, as described above, but also to the differentiation of competition, compared to the past, as mostly resulted by the high development of technology worldwide. The current status of the hotel industry in UK is also described aiming to show the ways in which marketing could help the industry’s firms to face competition, which seems to be continuously increased. It is made clear that marketing can highly support firms in the hotel industry against competition. However, it is necessary for the relevant plans to be designed and promoted using particular criteria, which are analytically presented below. 2. Hotel industry in UK 2.1 Characteristics and trends Hotel industry is one of the most important sectors of UK market. In accordance with Seaton and Bennett (1996) the strength of the industry can be related to its flexibility, meaning the availability of a wide range of rooms covering the n eeds of all visitors. It is also noted that ‘short – stay bookings’ (Seaton and Bennett 1996, p.315) which result to an important part of the industry’s profits, are carefully planned in hotels across UK ensuring that short-term visitors, which are most visitors in UK, are fully satisfied with the accommodation services provided across UK. In terms of marketing, reference should be made to the different approaches used by managers of hotels in UK in order to promote their enterprise. In this context, hotel groups are likely to emphasize on ‘brand through brochures’ (Seaton and Bennett 1996, p.315); on the other hand, ‘independent hoteliers tend to use price and market destination techniques’ (Seaton and Bennett 1996, p.315). The performance of the industry can be characterized as rather disappointing. In accordance with a recent report, in 2009, firms in the particular industry had ‘to freeze recruitment at a percentage of 2 5%’ (Prospects 2009); another 24% of firms in this industry have ‘cancelled their plans to employee new staff’ (Prospects 2009). The performance of the UK hotels from 2003 up to 2009 is presented in Graph 1, Appendix. Despite the market pressures, ‘106 new hotels (with a capacity of 11,800 rooms) opened in 2011’

Business Network Transformation

Business Network Transformation It is nearly impossible to imagine any company in this global economy that operates isolated and does not interact with suppliers, partners and vendors at some stage. This global ecosystem is remoulding relationships between companies in new and often uncomfortable ways. Companies are organizing collaborative partnerships globally to support their business operations locally. That extends their business value and gain competitive advantage. These enterprises are seeing beyond conventional business boundaries to lower costs, increase profit and improve quality of service they provide by tapping into applications, personnel, and infrastructure irrespective of where they reside. So, companies are looking to gain competitive advantage by leveraging these novel opportunities arose from intercompany interactions. Though Business Network Transformation is not a new concept, this idea had been kept apart from action due to IT limitations. Companies traditionally focused on customers, internal processes and cost cutting to differentiate their business in this ecosystem. But IT has changed this perception recently. Enhanced IT capabilities for communication, collaboration and information sharing caused increasing global competition. Companies realised a new way of doing business working together while working for others. Examining their value chains and understanding this competitive weapon resulted in formation of Business Networks. This paper contains the following topics; Business Network transformation explained with example How IT helps business networks and role of IT in business network transformation Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) explained with 3 success stories Relating Service Oriented Architecture to Enterprise Resource Planning packages Conclusion Business Network Transformation According to Philip Lay and Geoffrey Moore, Business Networks are groups of companies that work together toward a specific objective for mutual financial benefit. The example below helps to understand Business Network Transformation. Business network of Cellular Phone Company: Partners: Mobile handset makers, Chipset provider, Network switching manufacturer, Contract manufacturers, Wireless carriers, Routing Vendors, Application enablers, Service providers voicemail, email, mobile search, banking, video streaming etc., Advertisers banks, pharmaceuticals, CPG companies etc., Consumers mobile phone owners, dealers enterprises etc. Strategic Objective: A multi channel marketing strategy to transit from manufacturing handsets and equipment to a software service provider. Business process and IT implications: Demand data should be visible to ensure high level of retail stock through rapid supply chain response. This implies binding marketing programs and sell-out data to improve marketing return on investment. This example shows a company with collaborating partners in a business network and their strategic objective to transformation. As the definition of business networks has become known to everyone, the pace in which these networks are created and transformed and what IT resources are needed for this transition became a challenge. Role of IT in Business Network Transformation Potential to compete in this global market depends on businesss network of people and flexible processes. New technologies like Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Software as a Service (SaaS) enable these networks to amplify opportunities and flourish. Effective and efficient communication by sharing information across its ecosystem of suppliers, employees, customers and distributors is enabled by implementing such service oriented architecture and services. Utilising these capabilities, companies can provide improved customer experience due to improved intercompany interaction. These potentials also enable seamless interaction with intra company systems focusing on improving value chain. Taking full advantage of these global opportunities from business networks and becoming globally integrated enterprise demands high level of flexibility. Businesses need to merge newly acquired business potentials and technologies with legacy applications. Existing IT infrastructure must be adaptable to changes in business models and must be ready to accommodate them. Information is already being shared internally across departments within the business but now it has to be shared externally across business partners, across countries and continents. Business processes must be agile and consistent alignment between business and IT is critical. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA): Service oriented architecture (SOA) enables business organizations to achieve this agility needed to compete in global ecosystem. It divides the business into functional components that are easy to be drawn together quickly and economically. They are flexible enough to reuse in meaningful combinations to meet evolving business needs. These components are called Services. These combinations of services enable efficient collaboration and communication across company lines and unearth information buried within business processes. According to IBM, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is A business-centric IT architectural approach that supports integrating your business as linked, repeatable business tasks, or services. Service oriented architecture is essentially collection of services. These services are loosely coupled and implemented in standard ways. In other words, caller needs no knowledge of the technology or location of service provider. For example Create invoice as a service can be invoked by any other business unit or from any business application when invoice needs to be created. SAP defined Enterprise SOA as A blue print for an adaptable, flexible and open IT architecture for developing services-based, modular business solutions. Three features of an SOA: These three features provide value in a business by implementing SOA. Software reuse: Reusing components is one of the important advantages of SOA. Reusable components enable companies to avoid redundancy. For example a business has many functional silos and each silo usually needs information from other silo such as customer information or invoice. When these silos are using disparate technologies and are operating on different platforms, they need duplicate instances of this information in each silo. SOA creates single version of such services which can be shared across all functional silos. Composite applications: Composite applications are new cross-functional applications formed by combining functionality from many existing systems. For example, SOA enables companies to provide a single point access to a range of products through a self service portal for business partners. Usually this portal might be a combination of different processes with different technologies supported by IT services. Standard interface: Caller of a service does not need to have knowledge about services location or technology platform on which it was developed. Interface to services in SOA takes standard form. This facilitates a flexibility to run services where they are needed irrespective of location and technology with greater ease. It can also increase IT efficiency, improve quality of service and reduce costs. Coming to business partners, these loosely coupled, standard interfaced services provide extra benefits. Partner need not to be aware of progress of implementation of a service, as SOA provides transparency of location and technology. Standard interface enables partners to call a service having minimum information about the service. In essence, the below are the benefits fall into three business categories: Business Effectiveness: Business agility Greater speed in responsiveness to market Competitive advantage Improved business process efficiency Accuracy in deployment of resources according to business needs Cost factor: Maintenance costs are reduced Minimum skills and efforts needed for business change Optimized price due to choice of platform, technology and location Risk factor: Incremental deployment Enhanced IT quality Optimized payback times Enterprise Resource Planning and Service Oriented Architecture: A single system capable of accommodating business data which is centralised and accessible across all functional areas in the company was the basic concept of ERP. Before ERP era, data would flow across business units but not stored in one system. The single system was the selling point of all ERP vendors like SAP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle etc. ERP implementation requires no service work to integrate smaller components but ERP implementation normally required greater customization. Without customization, ERP software packages seldom matched business processes and getting to the ready to work status. Though implementing ERP results many advantages, it has few drawbacks in terms of cost, customization and timeline for implementation. So ERP implementation and support are expensive and time consuming. It is also costly in the area of upgrading because it is tightly coupled package. The evolution of Service oriented architecture concept focused on these pitfalls of ERP. The Enterprise appl ication vendors used client server technology in 1990s and web client technology in 2000s. Now they are transiting to Service oriented architecture approach to ERP. This blend of ERP based on SOA is the best of breed approach facilitating customers to have more options to select services from any vendor. SOA can be said as father of modern IT architectures. Due to this combination, ERP components became services in Service oriented architecture. The below two are leading ERP vendors who recently released their ERP package based on SOA, SAP Enterprise SOA: SAP NetWeaver is the new product based on SOA. SAP NetWeaver is a platform on which other components such as Finances, Human Resource, Business Intelligence, Business process outsourcing etc are implemented. It boasts the advantages based on its SOA features such as web connections, Business network transformation etc. Oracle Oracle Fusion Middleware: Fusion Middleware is Oracles product based on SOA. It is a family of products seamlessly integrated to run agile business applications. Business Intelligence, User Interface, Content management, SOA Process Management etc. are components in this package. IBM Smart SOA: Smart SOA is a set of guiding principles derived from solidified best practices and documented projects. They have created entry points to each of their products such as Business Intelligence, BPM etc. These entry points are undertaking well defined, focused and individual project to meet individual business need. The role of SOA in Business Network Transformation can be easily understood from the success stories below. Ergon takes oil business to the web Ergon is United States based Petroleum Company. It is a privately owned company with 2,500 employees. It specializes in petroleum products with up and downstream operations like refineries, sales and final trucking. Business need: Ergon wanted to integrate internal processes to improve access to the information and to deliver that information to its customer. The company wanted to introduce self service portals and automated workflows to accelerate budget approval processes. Solution: Ergon has more than 50 operations within the business and each of which is a distinguished profit centre that reports back to the headquarters. They implemented SAP business workflow on existing SAP infrastructure to support purchasing and to automate approval of requisitions. Ergon also implemented IBM TotalsStorage DS6800 and changed its databases to IBM D2 facilitating upgrade their ERP to SAP ECC 6.0 in future. Benefits: Enterprise wide: SAP standardized their business processes. SAP enabled Ergons employees to gain consolidated view of individual workflow and to make better deals with their vendors. SAP ECC 6.0 based on SAP NetWeaver fetches more options for Ergon in the future. Portals enabled users to view core functionality tailored close to business needs. SAP NetWeaver created single enterprise platform. They could successfully align their business needs with their SAP ERP solution with greater flexibility and helping Ergons transition to SOA. Business flow: Ergon implemented SAP business workflow to support purchasing process as part of its ongoing enhancements to internal efficiency. SAP workflow tool accelerated approval of requisition process. This saved lot of administrative time by generating automated routing and emails. SAP business workflow reduced administrative workload and accelerated purchasing. After successful implementation of workflow tool and gained benefits from it, Ergon is now looking to extend this tool into other functional areas such as human resources. Storage Performance: Information access rates were improved and they saved 10-12 hours per weekend on database maintenance. This enabled freeing technical staff and to achieve better throughput for live users. They could increase the access up to 17 times faster than before. DS 6800 made reports and transactions through SAP applications run much more quickly. Storage performance is increased with new storage systems DS6800 and DB2 for business critical SAP systems. Stability: SAP and IBM worked together and IBMs DB2 is constantly supporting SAP applications. As performance and availability have become important aspects in extending SAP applications to more functional areas, this combination of SAP applications and IBM DB2 on IBM hardware using AIX operating system is helping Ergon to deliver excellent response times. Bezeq setup SOA: Bezeq is Israel based leading telecommunications provider. It is a privately owned company with 7,700 employees and with revenue of US $ 1 Billion. Its product and services range includes, domestic, international and cellular phone services, internet and data communication services. Business need: Bezeq wanted to maintain focus on new vision that is customer facing. In the highly competitive industry they wanted to keep their market shares regulated tightly. Field technicians needed equipment with mobile capabilities such as to prepare electronic bills, or customer receipts etc. They also planned to architect a reusable set of web services. Their objectives were to avoid constraints of location with handheld mobile devices and to provide application developers with a reusable set of services. Solution: Bezeq implemented SAP NetWeaver technology platform including exchange infrastructure, enterprise portal components and Web Dynpro development environment for mobile computing. Benefits: Enterprise wide: End to end business process integration was made possible by implementing SAP NetWeaver. This platform also enabled real time monitoring of field repair procedures. As NetWeaver is based on SOA, Bezeq was able to achieve improvements in processes surrounding service calls. Bezeq achieved speed in service completion from assignment to invoice. It has time to focus on streamlining its core telecommunications processes. Avoiding constraints of physical location: Field technicians are given PDAs to receive service calls through which they can order replenishments which also updates central inventory and customer records. They can use these PDAs from their homes and even while travelling. They can even get work related messages and use their cars as local and mobile warehouse for receiving and distributing parts to customers. Reusable services: For mobile computing, team has chosen Web Dynpro development environment. It is actually to program technician PDAs to access directly SAP NetWeaver portal component. Access to back end functionality that calls to the back end SAP system was encapsulated as reusable we services. Reduction in costs and risk in terms of both time and money is ensured by this use of encapsulated web services that is also flexible and reusable. Business model evaluation: Equipment and supplies are optimally allocated and managed using tools that technicians use. Company eliminated hour long scheduling session and consequently saved significant amount of money. They started saving 3, 250 hours a week. Bezeq has also reduced average response times to service requests from 6 days to 2 working days that should help increase customer satisfaction. Wipro Technologies helps its customers to make it quick Wipro Technologies is a division of Wipro Limited, the first global IT services organization to be certified in PCMM level 5 and SEI CMM level 5 and with annual revenue is US $4.3 Billion and 99,965 employees. They are one of the largest product engineering and support service providers globally. They have comprehensive research and development and provide IT solutions and services like systems integration, information systems outsourcing, software application development, package implementation and maintenance services. Business need: Wipro wanted to improve business process agility so as to improve customer experience for large automotive manufacturer in North America to increase competitive advantage. They also wanted to avoid difficulties involved in service level agreements in the areas of service contracts, monitoring agreements and track design times by deploying IT management tools. Wipro planned to increase security level in exposing IT services of the auto manufacturer. Solution: Wipro implemented Oracle products and services including Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle SOA suit including web services manager and BPEL process manager. They also implemented Oracle Enterprise manager an ERP solution that includes Tuning pack, Diagnostics pack, Management pack for SOA and Configuration management pack. Benefits: Enterprise wide: Oracles customer, the automotive manufacturer could roll out new services quickly and leveraged existing IT infrastructure and investments. They could successfully manage the implementation including services by various stakeholders, business units and vendors. Business to consumer portal enabled Wipros customer to access information online. They also gained the ability to analyse their IT infrastructure, capacity planning and service planning. Oracle SOA Suite: As customer deployed Oracle SOA suite, it enabled them to roll out new services in fast pace while leveraging existing IT investments. Business to consumer portal developed using this suite allowed automotive manufacturer to access information such as vehicle service alerts, campaign information, recall information and credit card reward points online. They also built a composite application enabled by SOA suite to aggregate account information gathered from disparate functional units in the business. Earlier, this application development used J2EE and took over one year and now with SOA suite it took 90 days. As part of SOA suite, Web services Manager assure Oracles customer to have the appropriate authorisation to access services. Oracle Enterprise Manager: This product from Oracle enabled its customer to proactively analyse IT infrastructure, service performance and capacity planning. As part of Enterprise Manager, Diagnostic pack enabled the automotive manufacturer to view problem areas in a single view. These success stories reveal how SOA enables businesses to gain competitive advantage by strengthening their business network and internal capabilities. Conclusion: In this commoditizing global economy it is critical to have the ability to operate effectively in business networks and to sustain competitive advantage. This ability to operate business effectively is made easy by Best of Breed IT solution (SOA and ERP) enabling businesses to excel at global scale. But the businesses have a challenge to come out of the shell to invest on these technologies to stand at the top in their niche markets. They also gain advantage of auditing their current infrastructure, business processes and integrate them to achieve single view.

Little Green Men Or Just Little Microscopic Organisms? :: essays research papers fc

Little Green Men or Just Little Microscopic Organisms? The question of life on Mars is a puzzle that has plagued many minds throughout the world. Life on Mars, though, is a reality. When you think of Martians, you think of little green men who are planning to invade Earth and destroy all human life, right? Well, some do and some do not. Though believing that there are little green men on Mars is just a fantasy, or is it? The kind of life that may have lived there is the kind you would never consider of giving the name "Martian" to. They are small organisms such as microbes or bacteria. Proof of this was found in a meteorite containing the fossils of the microscopic organisms intact. Two highly regarded chemistry professors from Stanford, Claude Maechling and Richard Zare, dissected three meteorites that were about 2 to 8 millimeters long and found trace elements of a big mumbo jumbo word— polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. That pretty much means that there once was a warmer climate and maybe even lakes or oceans. Life on Mars is now a real idea. The climate of Mars about 3.8 billion years ago was much similar to the young Earth. Microbes and bacteria probably sprouted everywhere in the warm and wet climate. Although now we only see a cold red planet, which was probably due to a collision of an astroid that would have set back the evolution process of Mars, causing it to be a harsh planet. A Viking spacecraft which landed on Mars in 1976 found that the planet was bathed in ultraviolet radiation, "intense enough so it would probably fry any microbe we know on this planet,"says Jack Farmer, an Ames researcher who calls himself an "exopaleontologist"—a searcher for fossils on other worlds. The redness of Mars is due to the chemical assault known as oxidation, which turns iron compounds into rust, and it would surely kill anything that sticks its head up. "So why do you still believe that there is life on Mars?" you say. Life on Mars is not located on the ultraviolet radiation oxidized surface. The microbes are found below it, probably located in the boiling hot springs, or in frozen time capsules. Life here on Earth are located in some strange places so why wouldn't the Martian microbes be found in strange places if they were trying to survive? Scientists have found bacteria here on Earth that were living inside rocks where they got all of their nourishment from the rocks and from some water. Martians probably do the same thing.