Overview

In order to be a successful professional in modern business (whether in IT, Accounting, Marketing, etc.) you need to be able to work effectively as part of a team. And because of the relentless pace of technology evolution and its effect on ‘how work gets done’, you also need to be able to quickly research and master new technologies and new concepts. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you need to be able to clearly communicate the results of your work to your colleagues and management.

For our purposes this quarter, we will use research topics in IT/MIS to practice and build skills in all of the above. To that end we will divide the class into 3-4 person teams and each team will be responsible for researching a specific topic (see list below) and then presenting their findings to the class as a whole.

Deliverables

1. Each team will create a Team Project page which is accessible from the wetpaint BA370 wiki page. This page will hold your reading list as well as your final presentation. See the “Sample Team Project Team” page on our wiki under “Group Projects” to get more details on requirements for this deliverable.

2. The minutes of each team’s meetings/discussions should be sent to all team members and to me at: bob.miller@bus.oregonstate.edu Minutes should detail who was present, who was absent. What were the key topics discussed. Who is "owning" various parts of the project. This will give me visibility into how your team work / planning is going.

3. Each team needs to prepare / compile a list of required readings for the rest of the class about your research topic. At most these readings (internet articles) should take no longer than 60 minutes. I will require that the class read these articles before your team does it’s final report. The articles should give a sense of the salient points of your topic.

4. A powerpoint presentation to the class on your research topic. The presentation should take no more than 25 minutes and then we will have a Q&A with the class. You should structure the presentation so that all or most members of the team have some time to present. Dress requirements are “business casual”.

5. A “post-mortem” from your team members—a word document that recaps what you think went well or badly with both your team project work and your presentation—note, our greatest leaps forward as leaders and individuals usually comes from a frank analysis of what we didn’t do so well in particular circumstances. The post-mortem needs to be sent to me via email no later than 1 week after your presentation to the class.

OSU BA370 - Summer 2008
Team Research Topics

Note that in all of the topics below, I am interested not only in the team examining the technology implications of a topic, but also the business imperatives—specifically, who are the key competitors, how big is the market, what are the leading trends, why are corporations paying attention in these spaces, …. IT and MIS trends/ changes are “always” in support of getting/maintaining a competitive edge, increasing profitability, reducing costs/overhead, etc. It is “never” about how cool or interesting new technologies are.

1. Information Security: What are the key challenges that companies and governments are facing with respect to information and network security? What is the scale of the financial impact of viruses, spam, spyware? How are businesses responding to the threats caused by network attacks like DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service)? What are the leading products/technologies (and market size) of S/W and H/W meant to protect against security breaches and what kind of policies/procedures are companies putting in place to guard their assets and employees?
   
2. Business Intelligence (BI): Business Intelligence is the structured exploration or mining of business data in search of meaningful patterns. Provide an overview of the technologies that are used and their relevance in business and government settings. Who are the leading BI S/W solution providers? How large is the market? What are the long term trends? In your presentation, make sure that you discuss the concepts of a data warehouse and data marts.
   
   
3. ERP systems: What is ERP? Who are the major ERP suppliers? How much does their software cost to purchase and implement? What benefits does this kind of software provide ... what pitfalls might it have? If you can, speak to both initial implementation costs as well as ongoing maintenance, support, etc.
   
   
4. Overseas Corporate Job Outsourcing: Provide an overview of corporate overseas job 'outsourcing'. How big a phenomenon is this? Is it growing? Why? What IT technologies enable this? What trends can be observed? Where are jobs being outsourced to? What are the pros/cons associated with this trend?
   
   
5. XML: Provide an overview of the concepts, uses, and impacts of eXtensible Markup Language. What are problems with HTML, and how does XML address these problems? What role is XML playing in the information systems world? How does XML open up in the way of new web applications? Why are companies bothering to deal with XML?
   
   
6. DataBase Market: Who are the major players in the database market? At which sectors of the database market are their products targeted? Who is competing with whom? How big are these companies? Who owns them? What products do they offer? What role does database software play in their product portfolio? What are the typical installation and ongoing costs?
   
   
7. Open Source Business Models: Provide an overview of the various business models that have been developed around Open Source Software. How do companies create businesses based on something that is free and open? Are these business models sustainable? Do they falsify business models based on exclusion; e.g., businesses based on patents? Why would a corporation turn to unsupported, “free” S/W for any part of their business?
   
   
8. Protecting IP (intellectual property): How do trade secrets, trademarks, copyrights, and patents work? Discuss timing of when you can go public with new technology vs. when you have filed a patent disclosure. How much does it cost to prosecute a WW patent on any technology and how many “years” does it take to ‘get a patent’? What do companies do with respect to cross licensing IP? Have there been any “major” mistakes in cross licensing of IP?
   
   
9. Digital Rights Management (DRM): Who has the key IP in this space? What is the industry “story” on music over the web? What have movie studios done / reacted to with respect to DRM? What kind of industry bodies have been assembled to “control” the evolution of DRM? (hint: check out the CSS and the DVD CCA industry standard body) What role does Microsoft and Apple play in this area?
   
   
10. Web Services: What are they? Why are businesses utilizing them? What’s the business model that supports them? What are the key underlying technologies that make web services possible?
    
    
11. Disaster Prevention and Recovery: What is it? Who needs it? Who provides it and how much does it cost? Case studies would be good for this one. What's the difference between "Business Continuity Planning" and DRP?
    
    
12. Auto Archiving S/W: Give some insight into the companies that create/sell S/W that automatically creates copies / backups of corporate data (like email or the entire contents of employee’s PC’s). How big are these businesses (revenue, growth rates, …), what are the factors motivating corporations to purchase this s/w? What other characteristics are there that define this market (e.g., stickiness).
    
    
13. Content Delivery Networks: What are they, who needs them, what’s the business model, costs, etc.? Who are the leading CDN providers?
    
    
14. Web 2.0: What is it--exactly? What impact is it having/will it have on business? What are the business/economic drivers for adoption? Give examples of web 2.0 technology, solutions, business models.
    
    
    
15. Electronic Payment Systems: What is the role of electronic payment processors and payment gateway systems like CyberSource, or PayPal, etc. How do electronic credit card payments flow thru the banking system. What is the role of PCI DSS in ensuring security for credit card payments?
    
    
16. Virtual Collaboration: What are companies, universities doing to actively use or explore using virtual collaboration and co-location tools. What trends do you see in this space? What are some of the economics that are driving this?
    
    
17. Knowledge Management: What is KM? And what technologies and processes are large corporations using to actively manage and leverage the gestalt knowledge of their corporations. What are the economic drivers and what technologies facilitate the expansion and evolution of KM? Does KM work? If so, give examples, if not, why not?
    
    
18. Software Licensing and Compliance: What issues are both the creators of S/W and the corporate consumers of S/W facing. How do each deal with the challenges of licensing S/W? Talk about license servers. What is the typical “support” costs associated with major s/w purchases like Oracle? Contrast that with ‘almost’ freeware like Eclipse. What are the tensions between S/W corporations and their corporate customers? What are the tensions between S/W corporations and other countries? (e.g, like between Microsoft and China?)