3 Review(s)

The book comprehensively covers all aspects of information technology relevant to the business manager of today. It uses plenty of real-world case studies as well as analogies to make more complex technical details easy for a business manager to understand. It is divided conveniently into four sections allowing the reader to focus on any one or more of interest. It starts with an explanation of the fundamentals of information and technology-dotting the I's and crossing the T's. This includes topics like information theory, infonomics or the economics of information and leads the user to the idea of developing "technology intelligence", the ability to forecast technical innovations that are appropriate for the business. This precursor provides the reader a foundation to handle the more technical topics that follow. The next section deals with the details of technology covering data center facilities, hardware devices, networking and communications, systems and development software, data storage and management and different types of business application software such as ERP, SCM, CRM, E-commerce systems to name a few. This is followed by a discussion of information security and control with an introduction to various security standards. The next section is devoted to topics captured by the popular acronym SMAC or social media, mobile applications, analytics and AMP, big data and cloud computing. Instead of a pure technology treatment to these topics aspects of economics, psychology and sociology are used to explain what makes these technology trends tick, how they can be leveraged by a business and where they are headed. The final section focuses on developing an IT strategy using strategy maps and creating project portfolios to efficiently allocate capital with a risk-reward profile in mind. It shows how the project and systems development life cycles interact in planning, developing and deploying systems. The reader is introduced to Agile methods of development and to project management and risk management techniques for successfully delivering projects.