Homework 10

Despite being part of the tech savvy generation, I was surprised by how much I learned in the MIS Course. There are so many different components and strategies involved with Management Information Systems, and the technologies that business create to improve how efficient businesses operate are changing at a rapid pace. In order to remain competitive in such a globalized economy, companies need to stay at the cutting edge of technologies to keep up with the competition and remain current. Just as companies need to be ate the forefront of technology, the employees who work within these organizations also need to remain up to date and knowledgeable about how this technology systems operate.

One of the most interesting topics that we covered in the class was the idea of cloud computing. Cloud computing is a technology not only used by business people but in the everyday lives of the consumer, through consumer products like the Amazon Cloud Drive, Apple Cloud systems, and Cloud systems utilized by many e-readers. "In cloud computing, tasks are performed by computers physically removed from the user and accessed over a network, in particular the Internet." (Rainer, 426). Remote server farms store the data remotely, and this information is then accessible over the internet. Adequate firewalls are in place to prevent malicious behavior and hacking into the system, and cloud computing is associated with much lower infrastructure costs. Cloud Computing would be especially useful in my career in Accounting as it allows you to access large quantities of information anywhere you have an internet connection. This would be especially useful when performing auditing functions remotely on site. Cloud computing software would enable auditing teams to access previous data about financial statements and past auditing opinions with great ease.

Cloud Computing technology is a rapidly growing technology, and there are a number of start-ups in the Boston area are based on developing cloud computing systems for businesses. A recent article in the Boston Business Journal profiled 6 of the "cloudiest" start-ups in the Boston area: http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/startups/2011/12/boston-cloud-startups-cloud-city.html Because they do not have to hire an IT department on site, cloud computing is a very tempting option for small business that do not have the necessary expenditures to hire a IT department to run their information systems. Cloud computing is the wave of the future, and is poised for tremendous amounts of growth in the near future and beyond.