Tuesday, December 1, 2009

How will Software as a service impact organization?

Software as a service is a somewhat new business tool that it is changing the software industry in a rapid and increasingly way. Renting the software instead of own it has many advantages, for example: you do not need to install all the applications that come with the software into your computer, saving you space and giving you a high level of customization. With a little to invest and maintain, the SaaS model is one of the best options to a company that could be new to business in the web.

We believe that SaaS is going to have a major impact on the software industry, because software as a service will change the way people build, sell, buy, and use software. Hotmail is a good example that comes to mind when you think about SaaS, it meets all of the basic criteria: a vendor hosts all of the program logic and data, and provides end users with access to this data over the public Internet, through a Web-based user interface ( Frederick Chong and Gianpaolo Carraro, Microsoft Corporation, April 2006, Para 1).

    

Another example is, ford when their cars are out of warranty, and the vehicle needs an upgrade they charge about $50 to $95 dollars to install an upgrade on the cars computer and fix any issue that the car may have, in others words they are providing a software as a service, on a need bases. If they could offer this upgrade online, for a less rate, it would simplify the process, improved costumer trust in the brand and it would drive more costumers to the dealers to buy cars and to get help from professionals to fix their cars. Other examples are my complab, blackboard, avg back up, facebook, and oracle.


 

With the software-as-a-product model providing the context for the software market, the idea of software as a service can feel somewhat alien: instead of "owning" important software outright, customers are told, they can pay for a subscription to software running on someone else's servers, software that goes away if they stop subscribing. It is therefore especially important that the prospective customer understand how SaaS provides a direct and quantifiable economic benefit over the traditional model (Frederick Chong and Gianpaolo Carraro, Microsoft Corporation, April 2006, Para 21).

With this, the organizations can take advantage of SaaS and offer inexpensive alternative to costumers, opening a wide market opportunity. Using this model will prove more effective ways to reach users, offering a unique product, affordable, and ready to fit each user needs.


 


 


In a decentralized authentication system, the tenant deploys a federation service that interfaces with the tenant's own user directory service. When an end user attempts to access the application, the federation service authenticates the user locally and issues a security token, which the SaaS provider's authentication system accepts and allows the user to access the application( Frederick Chong and Gianpaolo Carraro, Microsoft Corporation, April 2006, Para 26).


 


 

Reference list:

Building Distributed Applications Architecture Strategies for Catching the Long Tail Frederick Chong and Gianpaolo Carraro, Microsoft Corporation, April 2006.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479069.aspx

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Punishment, law and justice.

Related to chapter 10 Werner, the FBI agent seeking for justice in the World Wide World, not with much success, Because of the lack of punishments by different countries, and the companies that are been attack has not much trust in the justice of the world. Alma comes to my mind when he is teaching his son Corianton about justice in Alma chapter 42. He explains:

"Now, repentance could not come unto men except there were a punishment, which also was eternal as the life of the soul should be, affixed opposite to the plan of happiness, which was as eternal also as the life of the soul. Now, how could a man repent except he should sin? How could he sin if there was no law? How could there be a law save there was a punishment? Now, there was a punishment affixed, and a just law given, which brought remorse of conscience unto man? Now, if there was no law given—if a man murdered he should die—would he be afraid he would die if he should murder. And also, if there was no law given against sin men would not be afraid to sin. And if there was no law given, if men sinned what could justice do, or mercy either, for they would have no claim upon the creature? But there is a law given, and a
punishment affixed, and a repentance granted; which repentance, mercy claimeth; otherwise, justice claimeth the creature and executeth the law, and the law inflicteth the punishment; if not so, the works of justice would be destroyed, and God would cease to be God… and the resurrection of the dead bringeth back men into the presence of God; and thus they are restored into his presence, to be judge according to their works, according to the law and justice.
If he has desired to do evil and has not repented in his days, behold, evil shall be done unto him, according to the restoration of God."

Therefore, we can see that without punishment, there is no law, without law, there is no justice, and without justice, God would cease to be God. At the same time each government needs to apply the punishments on all those that brake others laws. That way they can help Werner in this fight against those that are not afraid to break any laws. By doing these, the companies would have more trust in the justice of the world and would be less crime, because they would be afraid of the punishment that would come from breaking the law. In addition, like Alma said in the last verse: those that desire evil, evil will be done unto them. So even when there may be not law on the land, there is a higher law, that they will be punish for doing evil things.

Saturday, October 31, 2009


War Driving on October 30th 2009

Abraham and Qurdi.

We went on 4th West North of North Temple, and we found about 18 networks open which 16 of them had security and two were completely open. The two networks that were open (Family and Linksys) did not have any security whatsoever and anybody could connect directly to the network without any problems or consequences.

All of the other networks have WEP security encryption to prevent access to the net. The ones that the name sounds like a business have security. It is extremely important that even if you don't have a business, you still need to make your access points secure by having a good firewall, a hard password, that you can constantly change (every 2 or 3 moths),turn off the network when not in use, and updating your systems. This days security means not just having a loaded gun and strong locks, but to constantly revising and changing your network.


Friday, October 23, 2009

Thursday, October 15, 2009

E-commerce is not safe:


           There is a high risk when it comes to ecommerce, and affects both, costumers and companies. Increasingly fraud for both the costumer and the business make the internet a hard place to trust when it comes to do a business transaction. For this reason you need to be really carefully were you perform those transactions and if it’s even worth, to invest time and money on ecommerce.  

More and more, people are trying to make ecommerce secure, but there is other points to consider before a company embarks on ecommerce. 

I.            You cannot do everything online, not all the products on the market are made for the web. Example: Buying a couch from Furniture.com. Have limitations when it comes to delivery, if you are outside their delivery area, you will be refer to a partner site[1].  

II.            Easy target for lawsuits around the world. Example:  EBay had to pay 63 million dollars to Louis Vuitton on French Court, for letting user’s sale fake perfume[2].  

III.            Even though there are millions of products on the web, only few are meant for ecommerce. The perfect product needs to be lightweight, easy to ship, and frequent reordering, most of the time even having free shipping. Example: 1800 contacts[3]. 

IV.            According to Hacker Safe CEO, Ken Leonard, 75% of ecommerce sites are not secure or do not consider security when launching their ecommerce sites[4]. 

Any type of online process or system that is capable of taking payment via credit card is open to abuse by the more unscrupulous and devious elements that haunt the Internet. It is also important to remember that there are not only credit card transactions that are under threat. Hacking into systems, which hold personal information such as: bank account numbers, names, addresses, etc. Another area that has a vast income potential for those, who would use the information illegally[5].