Foundation of Information Systems

Question: Discuss about the Foundation of Information Systems. Answer: Introduction United States Pharma Corp., a New Jersey based pharmaceutical company that has research sites situated across various locations of the world. The organization is not only associated with the development and production of new medicinal drugs, but owns units that are associated with the production and sales of the so called generic drugs. The CIO of the organization is aimed at the development of a web portal for their employees, which would allow them to access the information required for conducting the research work with much ease. The primary objective of this research work is to provide an insight in to the proposed web portal: the design specifications of the portal would be discussed along with the importance of including business intelligence functionalities in the said portal. Discussions would be made on the role of the web portal in strengthening stakeholder relationship, besides highlighting the strategies could be used for the development and acquisition of the said portal. Last but not the least, the various strategies used for securing the web portal resources would be discussed in brief. The design specifications of the corporate knowledge Web portal Figure 1: Snapshot of the portal The corporate knowledge Web Portal 280 has the several design specifications such as the customer portal where the customers can make their necessary transactions whenever required. The portal is been personalized on the basis of user and role. The portal also has several components along with templates that are associated with the User Interface (Scharl et al., 2014). The services that are been provided are with transaction and contents. The portal has two servers for its execution of operations that includes SQL and Biztalk server. The applications which are external are the payment systems along with workflow engines that are been integrated externally (Zhang, Tian Miles, 2014). The admin section of the portal consists security of user, portal admin, user admin, content admin and the security that are based on role. The entire system has been developed in such way that it can be very much iterative and flexible to the user. The Accounts and Quality Management are the integral part of the architecture where the main functionalities include planning and envisioning, prototype and architecture, development of release along with the deployment (Tanrikulu, 2015). The overall design of the portal has aimed for managing the processes such as change, risk and project management. The portal has been developed on identification of the need of content and service along with quantification of the business values and defining architecture of high level. It also includes release planning and signing off of the customer (Propst et al., 2013). Overall, the portal is the building of common templates and services along with evolving of the architecture. The portal also makes the migration of the content along with supporting the customer in post-production level. Significance of the business intelligence in the proposed Web portal As the portal is prepared for processing of customer queries, the concept of business intelligence has been applied here in detailed manner. The concept has been implemented in such way it can provide the information as per the requirement of customer in detailed report format. The business intelligence makes the web portal to be more flexible so that it can provide the customers the integrated information that they require during urgency (Guerra-Garcia, Caballero Piattini, 2013). The importance of business intelligence is very much high as the user whenever makes the query for their research work, they can have the information in hand. The architecture used in this portal has the capability for providing the information that is too the point for the user. Like online analytical processing tools, Business Intelligence is an integrated theme in the portal where various types of reports are generated as per the user needs. Therefore, the web portal will be an utmost solution for the u ser who want to get information in proper structure. Role of the Web portal in developing strong stakeholder relationship It is a well-known fact that the access to valid data sets and conducting clinical test is essential for any pharmaceutical organization aimed at developing new drugs and obtaining FDA approvals for the same (Felix et al., 2014). Thus, researches associated with United States Pharma Corp would require to share their research data with several user groups, both inside and outside to the company. These user groups have been highlighted in the following stakeholder matrix, such that the role of the dashboard in serving them can be identified: Sl. No Stakeholder Role and responsibility in research work Role of web portal 1 The employees of United States Pharma Corp ( the researchers) The employees of United States Pharma Corp are actually be associated with the research work (Buchanan, 2014). The web portal being proposed would help in the researchers in gaining access to all the information required for conducting their studies. 2 The medical personnel Associated with the research process, along with the testing of the newly developed drugs. The clinical tests conducted with the aim of obtaining the FDA approvals. The medical personnel in consideration would be capable of accessing information from the FDA database, along with the information provided in other professional forums: such information would indeed facilitate their research work. 3 Researchers external to United States Pharma Corp (Kontogianni, Papageorgiou Tourkolias 2012). The research works conducted by the in-house researchers of the organization receive significant assistance from several experts conducting individual or independent research studies. Web based access to research materials facilitates the collaboration work. 4 The sponsors Responsible for funding the research works being conducted (Gilson et al. 2012). The web portal allows the sponsors to gain an insight into the progress made in the various research projects: this in turn encourages the generation of funds required for supporting the research works. Appropriate strategies for the development and acquisition of the Web Portal The strategies that are been developed for acquisition of the web portal include the strategies which make the portal an integrated web based software. The strategies will be developed in such manner that it will have a continuous system of data flow that will meet the user needs whenever it is required (Li et al., 2013). The developers should make such strategies which will make the portal to be of a good architecture along with a developed framework. The method of acquisition will develop the portal in such way that it will have a reflection of flexibility in terms of user satisfaction. A proper evaluation of the entire web portal should be done starting from testing the software functionalities along with the evaluation by the customers in nitty gritty (Almeida, Santos Monteiro, 2014). In the initial level of design, the customers should check the built prototype in detailed manner so that a proper modification of the portal should be made to make the entire web based package an optimal solution to its end users. Thus, through proper strategy, development, the customer will get a solution meeting their requirement. Appropriate strategies for securing the resources of the web portal The following technique need to be utilized for securing the resources of the web portal: Incorporation of technological tools: The incorporation of safety strategies like the following would be helpful in securing the resources of the proposed web portal: Limiting the number of inbound ports would definitely help in reducing the number of security risks to the portal: however, each ingress port should essentially be protected by firewalls. Filter should be used for protecting the outbound ports. Regular patch ups must be conducted so as maintain the portal server in an updated mode (Christopher, Payne Ballantyne, 2013). Hash or encrypted account passwords should be utilized for securing the portal. Role based security systems should be utilized to enhance the security of the proposed portals. User training: The web portal users (both internal and external to the United States Pharma Corp) should be provide with the basic training required for the safe and secured utilization of the proposed web portals. Disaster recovery: It is a well-known fact that there does not exist any such technological tool that can guarantee the security of any computer network (Paiola, Bolisani Scarso, 2013). Thus, the higher management of the United States Pharma Corps should essentially invest in the development of disaster recovery plans. The utilization of such plans would essentially speed up the process of recovering from any disaster that may so happen. It is needless to say that the said disaster recovery plan should be shared with all the users, such that immediate action can be taken in case of any security breach or disaster of any other type. Risk management: Researchers (Coombs Holladays, 2013)) are of the opinion that a large number of security risks are associated with the utilization of web portals and the identification of such factors is necessary for managing them. Thus, the higher management of United States Pharma Corps are being recommend to conduct the following steps for managing the risks associated with portal being designed: The identification of the risks associated with the web portal. The maintenance of a risk log that would facilitate the process of maintaining data records. The development of the plans required for mitigating the risks (in case they occur in practice). Deciding on the roles and responsibilities to be played by the stakeholders in mitigating the risk situations, besides sharing the same with the stakeholders in consideration. Conclusion The portal that has been developed has the aim to serve the purpose of its users in terms of providing their required information. The portal actually acts as a gateway in terms of providing information to them. The entire web based package has been developed to give a feasible solution to their users who will get a detailed information with proper presentation whenever needed. To build such web portal, the developers also require to follow the proper life cycle of software development that all the functionalities can be implemented as per the requirements of the customer in various dimensions. The portal thus developed will serve the purpose in multiple ways starting from transactional activities to information processing. Thus it will bridge the gap between the users and the vast repository of information which is been highly in need. Therefore, the portal should be launched in a way where it can cater the most attract of its target audience and can build a popularity among its end users. Such procedures if followed properly will lead the portal to be the ultimate point of solution in future. References Almeida, F., Santos, J. D., Monteiro, J. A. (2014). E-commerce business models in the context of web3. 0 paradigm.arXiv preprint arXiv:1401.6102. Christopher, M., Payne, A., Ballantyne, D. (2013).Relationship marketing. Taylor Francis. Coombs, W. T., Holladay, S. J. (2013).It's not just PR: Public relations in society. John Wiley Sons. Flix, C., Soares, C., Jorge, A., Vinagre, J. (2014). Monitoring recommender systems: A business intelligence approach. InComputational Science and Its ApplicationsICCSA 2014(pp. 277-288). Springer International Publishing. Guerra-Garca, C., Caballero, I., Piattini, M. 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