Executive summary
Achieving automation between the various processes has always been an uphill task for many companies. Organizations have always been looking for cheaper options that will enable them to save. The integration of various entities which are working in varying environments has been boosted by the developments that are seen in the distributed computing.
Business trends are not there for any longer than technology. They come and go. Innovation is there to stay and. We have many innovations which have shaped many businesses in the world since time immemorial. In today’s world of business, if a business cannot keep up or jump into new innovations, then they have no future. Ideas, technology, and collaboration are the fuel that is pushing the innovation fast forward. Organizations which have made use of Web technology and learnt to empower their employees technologically have realized that the Internet has a lot of potential. The Internet has a lot of potential for opportunities that have not been utilized on the Internet. Web applications are fast moving toward Web technologies. Organizations are setting up systems to reap from the benefits of this new technology. The reason behind this surge in Web technologies adoption is that this technology has advantages now that there is Web 2.0 in place. It is a combination of technologies together with business trends. In addition, this technology is dynamic and comes with it features that allows users to communicate more interactively giving more user satisfaction. This is true since communication is a very vital aspect for the success of any company. Improvement of communication between employees in an organization brings with it the advantages of higher productivity. It has rich communication features like blogs, instant messages, and wiki. These tools are very interactive and bring more satisfaction to the users. Companies that began as Web 2.0 businesses will have the advantage since they don’t have the added task of transforming an old business model.
Company history
International Business Machines (IBM) is among the largest computer manufacturers in the world. This company has brought about many revolutions in the world in the computer industry. It has grown to be a common name in the computer industry which offers many services including server management services, outsourcing services, business intelligence services, and end user services (Smith, & Seifert, 2005).
This company was incorporated in the year 1911, then being a major producer of punch card tabulating machines. It is in the year 1930 that IBM used the technology of punch cards to build the first calculators, the 600s. In 1944, IBM did a research with Harvard University and came up with Mark 1 computers which had the ability of performing long calculations.
It was not until 1953 when IBM came up with its first commercial general purpose computer, the IBM 701; this was the most successful general-purpose computer. The reason for this success was because of the Korea War. Thomas Johnson Watson Junior (inventor of IBM), wanted to come up with a device that he referred to as defense calculator that would help in the United Nation’s policing of Korea. He had to convince his father, Thomas Johnson Senior (the CEO of IBM) that his new invention would not bring harm to the punch profitability.
It was in 1981 that IBM came up with IBM PC which became another milestone in the history of IBM Company. The rest, as they say, is history.
Goals and objectives
The main aim of the company is to have efficient and reliable communication and service delivery to their client. This, they hope, to have it solved by information technology. Other objectives include:
i. Implementation of cost-effective information systems for increased productivity
ii. Improved communication channels with clients
iii. A simplified way of getting metadata about product use
Takes/duties
There are various staff members who have been tasked with the implementation of the new technology. The following members have been appointed
Project manager – concerned with the overall project from start to completion
Finance officer – concerned with the financing of the project
Technology officer – will oversee the research of the technologies that will be adopted
Technology use in IBM
Web technology use in IBM
IBM is among the leading companies which have implemented the use of Internet technologies. IBM, like many other companies, has been the leading in the rolling out Web-based technologies. IBM has been in the fore-front in the adoption of Internet philosophies and approaches. IBM is not using Internet replacement or using any technologies which are new but it has redefined the business approaches by using new technologies and philosophies which are found in using Web 2.0 technologies. Web technologies have enabled IBM to create the customer value by tapping into the use of collective knowledge that is caught from the teams working in the various places around the globe. The use of the Internet has also enabled IBM to serve clients which have specific interests. Without the use of Internet, the company could have been forced to market their services to wide geographical areas. The Internet has helped the company bring the distributed niches to make a global market. This is seen in the way IBM has done its advertising. The global market has been made into a global village. This is making IBM to be effective in handling the customers; this is becoming easier in the sense that there is a portal which has a knowledge-base that is used to solve simple problems that can be diagnosed. This is becoming easier for the clients because online collaboration solves the presence issue. For simple problems, they can get outright solutions and for the complex problems, they can get chat services by getting in touch with the person who is on call working for IBM Company.
Category of technology used
Web applications are fast moving toward the use of the latest technologies that use Web 2.0 technologies. Companies, and specifically IBM, have started the setting up of systems to reap from the benefits of this new technology. The reason behind this surge in web 2.0 adoption is that this technology has advantages over its predecessor, web 1.0. This technology has a combination of many technologies that take advantage of the Internet. It is flexible and comes with it features that allows users to communicate more interactively giving more user satisfaction. This is true since communication is a very vital aspect for the success of any company. Improvement of communication between employees in an organization brings with it the advantages of higher productivity (Castells, 2003). This has been achieved greatly in web 2.0. It has rich communication features like blogs, instant messages, and wiki. These tools are very interactive and bring more satisfaction to the users. Companies that began as Web 2.0 businesses will have the advantage since they don’t have the added task of transforming an old business model. The implementation of Web 2.0 is simpler because its development and improvement is done in phases. This is because it is actually the users themselves who add to the system. They are considered as co-developers in the world of Web 2.0 (Brian, 1997).
Conclusion
IBM has had a lot of benefits in the use of Web 2.0. IBM’s use of the Internet has helped improve communication between people in an organization. The provision of many features and tools like blogs, text messages and short message services makes it a desirable tool of communication. The beauty of it is the fact that there are technologies which have been developed that enable the companies to integrate the mobile services to the desktop platform and thus clients can report their problems from their phones.
It is cheap to implement and maintain. Before IBM started the implementation of the customer services on the Internet, it incurred a lot of expenses in terms of having to reach to their clients which are distributed fat apart from each other. It used many tools added to the Web site to make it Web 2.0 enable are available for free. Most of the tools are open source and so the company will pay for programming alone.
The use of Internet has enabled IBM to harness collective intelligence. This is because users add content from other sites as they discover them. They link the site to these other sites. They also add new content to the site. The company website, www.ibm.com has been improved from the views of the clients who feel that there are some improvements that need to be done. The company website has since been used as a knowledge-base for the clients who are distributed world-wide (Graham, 1999).
The other advantage of Internet technology is that most of the technologies used are not platform specific. They are able to interoperate with other platforms. This gives them wider use because they can be deployed in a wide range of applications. This has helped the company to get some contributions from other sites like that of Google whose modules can interoperate with the platform of IBM. Most of the modules and tools are lightweight which gives the advantage that they can be mashed up together and used in the same application without bringing compatibility issues.
It also enables more management of data in the database which gets richer every day. The data in the database are added daily by the users. This is because users are given the freedom to add content to the database as they please.
Brian, T. (1997). The Internet: online tools and resources. London: Oxford University Press.
Castells, M. (2003). The galaxy of the internet: reflections on the Internet, business, and society. London: Oxford University Press.
Graham, G. (1999). The Internet: New York: Routledge.
Smith, S.M., & Seifert, W.J. (2005). The reality of the Internet: an overview of key technology policy issues affecting its use and growth. Nova Publishers.
