The intrinsic functionalities of Change Record Management System (CRMS) which have been discussed extensively in my previous blog posts make CRMS a unique and complete application for change record management. The uniqueness of CRMS is attributable to the marriage of four major applications it contains, the details of which have been discussed in previous blog posts, namely Change Record System (CRS) and Knowledgebase, Change Record Request System (CRRS) and Server Proactive Management System (SPMS). The inculcation of the four major applications in one software applications suite with so many functionalities that enable IT professionals to take control of all aspects of change record management on the network concretizes the concept that downtime can be reduced and prevented, thus saving organizations a tremendous amounts of revenue which would have been otherwise wasted in managing downtimes and continuous repair of non-network worthy components. In other words CRMS provides IT professionals with a comprehensive visibility of all changes, repairs and maintenance works performed on network objects and enables management to know when to remove non-serviceable equipment from the network. The question is will organizations and IT professionals adopt CRMS and how long will the technology adoption cycle (TAC) phases be?

The TAC phases include the following:

Innovators phase – the innovators phase is characterized by technology enthusiasts such as IT professionals who have been searching for an easy way of doing their work. This group is likely to be attracted by the advanced features of CRMS. Since CRMS is designed for ease of use with proven capability of reducing and preventing downtime; this group of IT professionals will be the orchestrators of the benefits of CRMS.

Early adopters phase – this group might be a pilot group setup by the innovators to put CRMS within the organizational context. In other words this group would put the CRMS to use in the production environment to ascertain its benefits in terms of strategic competitive advantage. The ability of CRMS to reduce and prevent downtime which potentially saves the organization a tremendous amount of revenue offers a strategic competitive advantage.

Early majority phase – in this phase, organizations and companies everywhere have become aware of the competitive advantage that CRMS offers and have jumped on the bandwagon in order to avail themselves of the benefits of CRMS. At this phase, market for CRMS grows tremendously.

Late majority phase – at this phase, market nears saturation, however CRMS is expected to continue to perform very well because of the competitive advantage it offers to organizations and companies of all sizes.

Laggers phase – at this phase the laggers are reeled in by the rich user friendly features of CRMS and the competitive advantage they offer. Also new versions of CRMS with new and improved features to keep up with emergent technologies will continue to be release to the market.

Human nature leans toward making life easy and less complicated. Therefore the powerful user friendly functionalities contained in CRMS that make change records management easy, with the surety of reducing and preventing downtime makes CRMS very enticing and easily adoptable by IT personnel everywhere. 

Change Record Management System (CRMS) is designed to reduce downtime and in most cases prevent downtime. However there are other computer and network threats that cause downtime which might be beyond the capabilities of CRMS to reduce or prevent unless additional measures are taken by the organization. Computer security threats include mostly adware, spyware, spam, malware, and viruses. Computer security threats can be prevented, found and destroyed with available software. However, network security threats encompass computer security threats as well as the following: intrusion, denial of service, IP spoofing, session hijacking, and destructive behavior etc. therefore in addition to change record management system, other measures must be taken to circumvent network threats that might lead to downtime. The following is a more detailed look at the network security threats:

Intrusion – also known as unauthorized access has been around for many years. It involves gaining access to the network without authorization. Intrusion can occur in the following ways:

Physical contact – an unscrupulous individual, possibly a disgruntled worker, may come in contact with a logged in computer and use it to wreak havoc.

Hacking – a hacker can use various hacking methods to gain unauthorized access into a network and wreak havoc.

Denial of service – a denial of service attack occurs when a hacker gains unauthorized access to a computer through the internet and runs a code that makes continuous fictitious requests to a server (web server for example) to which the server normally responds. If the hacker runs the same code on a handful of computers on the internet, the server will be too busy responding to the fictitious request and will not be able to respond to anything else until the network is inundated and overwhelmed.

IP Spoofing – this is used by hackers to confuse network objects such as routers by assuming an IP address on the routers access list and using it to gain access to the network and the host computer.

IP Session Hijacking – hackers use this to take control of a user’s session. Using IP session hijacking; a hacker can see everything a user under attack is doing including reading his or her email. The hacker can take over the session without the user knowing it. To the user, the session will appear dropped but the hacker continues with the session and can do a lot of damage with the session.

Data Diddling – this can be in the form of a code that a hacker runs once he gains access to a database or spreadsheet that makes malicious changes to existing data rendering them meaningless and useless. A hacker can also personally make changes to data once unauthorized access is gained to a database of spreadsheet.

Data Destruction – hackers mostly want to wreak as much havoc as possible. So in most cases; instead of data diddling they just destroy the whole database.

Viruses – these are codes maliciously written to destroy hardware, software, and data, and cause grief. There are thousands of know computer viruses and many more come out every day.

Securing the Network

In addition to many other network security conscious practices; the following will enhance network security:

Backups – backups are very important to ensure data security. Every organization should endeavor to perform weekly full backups and daily incremental backups.

Packet Filters – packet filtering enables the detection of fictitious packets which are used by hackers in various kinds of attacks including denial of service and session hijacking.

Server Threshold – Servers’ threshold should be set way below capacity so that the servers cannot be easily overwhelmed in case of a denial of service attack before the attack is discovered.

Security Patches and Service Packs – these should be kept up to date

Physical Server Access – allow only authorized personnel to have access to the servers

Firewall – implement firewall.

Proxy – use proxy servers for network access

NAT – implement network address translation (NAT) protocol.

ACL – implement access control list on the routers

DMZ – implement demilitarized zone (DMZ). A DMZ connects the trusted network to an un-trusted network. It prevents access to the network through the internet and any other outside location without authorization.

Callback – implement callback and high level handshake. Callback ensures that connection is not initiated from outside and that the outside location and computer are verified before connection can be initiated.

Cryptology – internet connections should be encrypted to ensure keystroke and password security.

VPN – encrypted VPN with VPN tokens should be implemented for remote and satellite offices

Antivirus Dat. Update – enterprise antivirus defense such as MacAfee’s ePolicy Orchestrator must be implemented with automatic DAT file updates.

Network security breaches have been attributed to billions of dollars in lost revenues by companies of all sizes every year. So the need to maintain optimum network security cannot be over emphasized. 

SPMS is one of the core applications in the Change Record Management System (CRMS) applications suite. It is designed to enable IS analysts to proactively manage and maintain servers to prevent downtime. Certain operations if routinely performed on servers can prevent downtime. Some of such operations include; checking hard drive free space, checking memory and processor usage, checking and clearing application, system and security logs, etc. Most of the applications that run on servers maintain logs. These application specific logs can grow exponentially to overwhelm a server. There are also locations in the hard drive where disused management entries are dumped which grows and takes unnecessary hard drive space. All these logs and entries if not checked and cleared might lead to all sorts of server performance issues such as slowness, nonresponsive, blue screen and other anomalies including “crash” and consequent loss of data. However many organizations do not have policies or procedures to check and clear these logs until the inevitable occurs which is downtime. SPMS enables IT managers and supervisors to schedule routine server maintenance services among the IT personnel. It also enables the managers and supervisors to ensure that scheduled server maintenance services are duly performed.

SPMS has, among other features, the following main features:

Scheduler – this feature is used to schedule proactive server maintenance among IT personnel. The scheduler has the capability to schedule; weekly, biweekly, monthly etc and among several persons for the same period.

Report – the report feature enables the managers and supervisors to ensure that the proactive maintenance schedule is diligently followed. In other words, the report command allows supervisors, managers and analysts to keep track of the performance of scheduled routine server maintenance.

Alerts – the alerts feature allows managers and supervisors to create thresholds for free hard drive space, memory usage, processor usage and performance level. However, while memory usage, processor usage and performance level might fluctuate depending on momentary server and network situations; hard drive free space is most critical because all the logs and entries are made on the hard drive. Therefore hard drive free space threshold is mostly used for alerts. When a predetermined hard drive free space is reached; SPMS sends alerts to designated IT personnel through email or pager. The alert feature is very important. It helps to forestall the inevitability of downtime and possible loss of data if the hard drive is allowed to fill up.

The Comment field – the comment field enable an IT personnel performing proactive server maintenance to input comments about anything regarding the server. This acts as a note to the IT personnel as well as a note for the managers and supervisors.

SPMS like the other core applications in the Change Record Management System (CMS) suite is very important in the fight to reduce and perhaps eradicate downtime and its financial havoc to the organizations.

I have read the theory of paradigms before. However this book has taken the theory of paradigms to a new level which I find very interesting. The categorization method adopted by Reynolds is an interesting way to discuss paradigms. Whereas conceptualization and orientation remain constant; the level of radicalism at which an existing paradigm is broken seems to differentiate the forms of paradigms described in the book. Most interesting to me is Paradigm Variations which is a work in progress kind of method. Paradigm variations starts off with a basic conceptualization which then goes through refinements that produce variations of the original conceptualization without fundamentally changing the conceptualization of the phenomena associated with the paradigm.

This is a very interesting, and insightful book. Like ‘The Craft of Research’ this book is also about research methodologies, what to expect from peers and how to convince your research community.

Innovations and breakthroughs in tools for data manipulation have become invaluable tools for decision making in today’s dynamic global economy. At the center of these innovations in tools for data manipulation is visual query interface. The good old text-based interface, although still useful in many ways as posited in the article, has obvious limitations that have impacted critical decision making over the years. Thus the need for a better way of manipulating the high volume of data generated in today’s dynamic business environment could not be over emphasized. The visual query interface provides the capabilities and functionalities needed for data manipulation and decision making in today’s high volume, high speed global economy.  

This is a good example of a paper that is reader oriented. The paper is well written, and well laid out with rich examples and illustrations. I enjoyed reading the paper. It is interesting to note that while most of the authors’ research findings are obvious, some are surprisingly intriguing. Conceptually, decision accuracy should be higher with visual querying whether task complexity is high or low. However according to the authors’ research findings; decision accuracy is actually higher with text-based querying than visual querying when task complexity is low.   

The hardest part of a research paper to me has always been the selection of a good research topic. The other hard part is to narrow the scope of the research topic to a manageable spectrum. However after reading The Craft of Research I realized that I had not been thinking in print. Maybe it is time to go back and take another look at all the papers I have written over the years to see how printable they are. Or maybe not, I should wait until I have finished reading the book and acquired the skills so well articulated in the book, so that when I look at the papers I should be able to ascertain their printability.

The book is awesome and so appropriate at this time of my academic endeavor. The book covers all the skills set necessary to writing a great research paper worthy of printing.

It is not a bad idea to create an organizational identity. In fact IS although nascent has come a long way. IS is the course of study that has advanced the world more that anything else within the past three decades. So the need to create an organizational identity cannot be over emphasized. IS permeates all aspects of any industry; private or public. In today’s dynamic global economy IS is playing a leadership role. So an organizational identity will go a long way to enhancing the image of IS and attracting more scholars to IS which consequently will lead to scholarly researches and innovations that will revolutionize the way business is transacted all over the world as well as improve other aspects of human life.    

To me IS and IT are the same. The difference in nomenclature notwithstanding, their core structure is similar. Therefore striving to find the fine line that demarcates IS and IT is a futile attempt to separate the inseparable; or better yet an attempt to create two of the same thing.

A well written research paper is reader oriented. The writer makes strong arguments that keep the reader engaged. Arguments must be defined, followed up with broad perspective; yet precise enough to keep the reader focused. Since almost every research attempts to answer a question that solves a problem the researcher must define the problem and make arguments to prove to the reader and the research community that the problem deserves attention and that a solution to the problem would make a difference.

It is important to know that when a reader is reading a research paper the researcher is usually not present to answer questions, so it is good practice in writing a research paper to write it from the perspective of the reader. In other words it is expedient to anticipate the readers’ questions and respond to them. This affords the writer the opportunity to answer questions such as; what is the problem? Why is it a problem? Why should I care and what is in it for me? This perspective also helps the writer to evaluate the strength of his arguments and maybe find alternative arguments, illustrations and evidences to support his claim. 

A research paper makes a claim that is supported with reason, evidences and warrants all of which are components of the researcher’s arguments. However it is important to avoid the pitfalls of warrants that are easily challenged such as warrants based on methodology and warrants based on articles of faith. Therefore the writer should test his warrants to ensure that they are strong, true and appropriate to the readers.

The book is well written with a lot of knowledge to impart. The authors did a great job. I have just one comment to make regarding the emphasis on ‘writing from the perspective of the reader’ which is commonsensical and very important. However it is important to realized that readers come from all works of life and with all kinds of personal experiences which include upbringing, education, culture, location, etc. So the usual general questions of ‘what is the problem, why it is a problem, why should I care and what is in it for me’ could be very provincial. Well, I guess it is part of the challenges that a writer faces, from which he acquires the ingenuity to write a paper that cuts across varied experiences and demography of readers.