COMMDAP Experience.....

COMMDAP 2009

Computer Manufacturers Distributors and Dealers Association of the Philippines (COMDDAP) have stage their annual event in Apo View Hotel Davao last July 2 – 4, 2009. COMDDAP is an association of the country's top information technology businesses. Its primary objective is to promote the sustainable development of the of the country's information technology industry through voluntary collaboration of its member companies. It is the goal of COMDDAP to be able to provide its members general views and updates from different sectors - private and government, and highly regarded individuals to further uplift the morale and knowledge of its organization. The annual COMDDAP endeavor encourages its participants to launch their products and services, as well as hold seminars with a variety of topics in the areas of technology, trends, applications, and information management.

Actually, COMMDAP is not new to me anymore because we have already experienced going to their event two years ago during our second year in college. Honestly, it was really a remarkable experienced since it was held at the Davao Convention. Like this year, a lot of Computer Manufacturers and other industries have joined and presented their latest innovations. We also met a lot of people. Not just ordinary people, but big bosses of some companies.

This year I’ve been informed of COMMDAP by some streamers around the Quirino street of Davao City. But this time it will be held on one of the best hotel in the city, the Apo View Hotel Davao. At first thought, this event will be having an admission fee and obviously we cannot afford it. But later this month, Sir RSG have posted it in our group that we are encouraged to join the said event. A lot of us have been confused on how to register since the sessions had limited seats only. Eventually, all of us interested students, have successfully registered to our chosen schedules. I’ve chose to register on July 2, 2009 with the following sessions: The ERIC Dealer Management System - Jupiter Systems, Inc., The HP Thin Client - Nexus Technologies, Inc. and Open Source For Business Applications - Spinweb Productions, Inc.

July 2 came and all of us were very excited. It’s not just that about the COMMDAP, but some of us were enthuse for this is the first time they would enter the Apo View Hotel Davao. Funny but true. Anyways, when we arrived there, we went to the registration booth and given a student registered sticker. As I saw the Grand Ballroom, the place were filled with different latest technology. Various booths with their assorted offering to the public are all over the place. We have took pictures in every booths. Captured everything that presented to us for free. Almost USEPIANS are in the crowd, falling in line on some booths that giving away freebies. One of that is the sandbox.com.ph. where we registered ourselves and got free slings and bags.

When 1pm came, we headed toward the Vanda function room where the first session that afternoon will be held. But we still waited for a while since the speaker for the Tech Talk we have registered that time is not around. Around 1:30 pm The ERIC Dealer Management System - Jupiter Systems, Inc. Tech Talk started. The speaker have prepared a presentation where he imparted a lot of their management features and services. As he have said, The ERIC Dealer Management System(ERIC DMS) is an end-to-end software solution for automotive sales parts and service businesses. ERIC DMS covers full range of dealer activities for Customer prospecting and vehicle services. Honestly, I’m really sleepy with the first session. It’s not that the speaker doesn’t give us interesting inputs, but maybe because we cannot really relate ourselves to his presentation. On the first place, it talk about cars and we don’t have that now either. Though, we have learned new things and hoping that someday we could purchase some systems to their company and used it for our business someday.

After that, it was The HP Thin Client - Nexus Technologies, Inc have then stage their latest merchandise to us. We have been awaken since the speaker talk so fast and lively. Then he began presenting the HP Thin Client to us. Actually, it is my first time to know about HP Thin Client. As he introduces to us, HP Thin Client have definitely much advantages to the other computing models. As I remembered, HP Thin Client typically runs on Linux, Windows CE and Windows Xpe. HP Thin Client offers higher level on data security when it comes to the hardware and software. Also higher level of reliability. It is a computer device without a Hard Drives, CD-ROMs and floppy disks. With the HP thin client computing model, your vulnerability to virus attack on the thin client system is significantly less than a standard Windows PC. This means that thin client users will experience significantly less downtime due to security vulnerabilities than PC users. In addition, since no user data resides on a thin client, there is no risk of user data loss on the thin client. Finally, if a thin client’s image is compromised or corrupted, recovery time is typically measured in minutes instead of hours.

Additionally, the HP thin client computing model utilizes PC blades and/or servers located in a data center. You can protect and monitor centrally-managed, data center resources more easily with antivirus and firewall tools. You can correct and recover compromised thin client resources faster and cheaper than distributed PC resources. In the event of a virus attack or other security issue, the HP thin client computing model offers significantly shorter recovery time when contrasted with the traditional desktop model. If a thin client’s image is compromised or corrupted, recovery time is typically measured in minutes instead of hours. Recovery usually involves a power cycle (1 minute), patch (5 minutes), or re-image (15 minutes) of the system. This is substantially less time than the typical two hours it takes to re-image a PC or the multiple hours that you can spend rebuilding and recovering a user’s data and environment. As HP Thin clients have been explained to us, everyone have been amazed brought by this innovation. Though HP Thin Client has a Thin Design., still offered powerful performance and flexible configurations.

But what really give more thrill to us that moment is the freebies and prizes awaiting for us. Microsoft T- shirt I guess, optical mouse, three 2Gb USB flash drives and an 8Gb USB Flash drive. Then after the presentation, questions from them have been thrown to the audience who were very eager to win that time. Fortunately, almost all of the prizes have been won by the USEPIANS.

The last Tech Talk we had is about the Open Source For Business Applications - Spinweb Productions, Inc. Honestly, I was not able to start the Tech Talk since we’ve been having a good time roaming around the Grand Ballroom. Taking pictures or even availing the free internet access that instance. But still we are able to attend the last part and got even a chocolate as a prize even if I’m not included in the winners. Lolz

To sum it all, the whole COMMDAP experience is a remarkable one. There are a lot of things imparted to us by the different speakers. Who heartily shared their knowledge to us and introduces us to the latest innovations the world has to offer.

References:
http://www.comddap.org/aboutus.htm
http://www.nexusgroup.com.ph/

Risk Associated with Business IT/IS change?

DAVAO LIGHT AND POWER COMPANY

Regarding the Assignment 2 which tackle about the risks associated with business and IS/IT change, we considered the Davao Light and Power Company as our adopted organization. Davao Light and Power Company is the third largest privately owned electric utility in the Philippines. One of the country's top 300 corporations, it is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Aboitiz Group of Companies' investment arm, Aboitiz Equity Ventures, Inc. It holds the franchise for distributing electric power to Davao City, the largest city in the world in terms of land area, as well as Panabo City and the municipalities of Carmen, Dujali, and Sto. Tomas in Davao del Norte. On September 29, 2000, the franchise was renewed for another 25 years by virtue of Republic Act 8960.

It was just this Wednesday, July 8, 2009, when Davao Light and Power Company texted us and confirmed that we could conduct a three hour interview with them.


It was scheduled on July 9, 2009, Thursday, yesterday actually. There were five of us in our group and four from the other group who were given the chance by them. They gave us a very warm welcome and headed toward their Conference room to be our venue for the presentation they have prepared and fro the proper interview. Our interviewee is part of the Information System Department (ISD), one of the department that composes their Information Services Group (ISG).


Anyways, he first showed us a presentation illustrating their Management Information System. He also presented the development of some of the hardware and the systems being used for the data processing of the company. It was from 1978 when they started to evolve from a lower level of systems until they have came up there new system for the present usage. He illustrated that the Electronics Data Processing building have been using the Nova 2 Data General Corporation Computer for handing out the data, with the features of process data 3oo lines per minute, 64 kb and 3 CRT.


From then on, they transfer to NCR Century 201. They used it form 1978 – 1983. Unlike to NOVA 2, it process much data for 3000 lines per minute, 128 kb, 2x655 5 mb Disk drive and 2x657 96 mb Disk drive. Then on 1983 – 1994, the Electronics Data Processing building, was been changed to a department and manage the data using the IBM Mainframe 4331 and 4361. Their primary programming language that time is the COBOL or the COmmon Business-Oriented Language. Until such time the growth of the company have reached its highest peak, clipper has been introduced to them.


Clipper is a computer programming language that is used to create software programs that originally operated primarily under DOS. Although it is a powerful general-purpose programming language, it was primarily used to create database/business programs. For the past few years, the Davao Light and Power Company have been in the business. Not only the systems but also the structure of their Organization have gone through changes also.


Changes have been made in order to enhance the performance of their database, which is the one responsible for storing all the data being process in the company. With the existence of technology, a lot of things have been discovered and instituted to them. These particular things have been amended of course for the benefit of their company. Well, if we talk about alteration and changes, we can never let go of risks associated with it. Especially in the business, risks have been considered also.

As we asked our interviewee, about the risks associated with business and IS/IT change in their company, he then started to list some risk they have encountered so far.

1. Comparison of the new system to the old one - He gave us an example of the situation which happened in 2005. That time the programming language they have been using is the clipper. But they just observed that every month their system always crash. He described the clipper as a not robust for their database. Because of this, they begun using the Oracle as their foremost database management system up to this present. Although Oracle, have given them much easier tasks as its processed data more faster than the clipper, still there’s lacking to. The users of the databases have been commenting sometimes about the new one, that the old one is more great. Lot of comparisons have arises. In this situation, adopting new system is not that easy even if it do more great works than the previous one.

2. Financial - Adjusting to the latest changes made have been an issue and also a risk. We can never deny that financial aspect is always a factor when newborn technology pioneered in an organization. They will always considered the cost of the product that will be using.

3. Piracy – this kind of situation is not already new to them. It is about their employee being pirated by other companies. The setting is, the employees have just limited knowledge of some programming language. But as technology grows, their expertise should widen also. That’s why they decide to learn these things also. Once the other company knew about this, that this particular man is good with this, they immediately offer a new job with an immense salary. As usual, no man can be reluctant with this kind of offer. Then with this changes, the risk of being pirated could never been denied.

4. Security – this are the risk associated with the vulnerability of the system, information and networks. Risk of intrusions and connectivity to other vulnerable systems risk associated with the evolution of credible threats.

5. Organizational and change management – this is the risk associated with organizational, agency or government- wide cultural resistance to change and standardization; risk associated with bypassing or lack of use improper use or adherence to new systems and processes because of organizational structure and culture; inadequate training planning.


References:
http://en.wikipedia.org
www.davaolight.com

Green Campus Computing

Act Green! Think Green!

Green Computing used is the positive (or least negative) relationship between the physical computer and its impact to the environments in which it moves through during its journey from cradle to grave. I've heard about it last year when the third year students introduced it during our Acquaintance Party. The advocacy is just easy. There are steps that we could tag along in order to be a real advocate. However, if these steps are not used on the right track, it's still useless. So, I have three Sites down here that I believe a Green Campus Computing advocate also.

University of Colorado, Environmental Center
http://ecenter.colorado.edu/energy/projects/green_computing.html

In this site they have introduced a book for more Green Computing Guide. As we all know, technology have arises to its higher level at this moment. So, computers have been present for so many years to campuses and Universities in order to do a more efficient and accurate job. But, have we think of the disadvantage brought by these technology? In this site they have showed us the Computer Operating Costs, Energy Efficient Computing, and other Green Computing Practices. They have shared many concepts, but let me just quote the things from their site that I think could help us to have a more greener environment.

Screen savers save no energy

If screen saver images appear on your monitor for more than 5 minutes, you are wasting energy! Screen saver programs may save the phosphors in your monitor screen, but this is not really a concern with newer monitors, especially LCD screens. And they do not save any energy. A screen saver that displays moving images causes your monitor to consume as much as electricity as it does when in active use. These screen saver programs also involve system interaction with your CPU that results in additional energy consumption. A blank screen saver is slightly better but even that only reduces monitor energy consumption by a few percent.

So if we could adopt this on our University, especially on our Computer Laboratories, we could definitely save more energy and electricity which I believe, a great problem that our University is facing right now. With this simple move, we could greatly contribute to a low power consumption campaign.

When not in use, turn off the juice
This is the most basic energy conservation strategy for any type of equipment. Consider the following:

* Turn off your computer and/or peripherals when they are not in use. Turning on and off will not harm the equipment.
* Don’t run computers continuously unless they are in use continuously.
* Turn off at night and on weekends
* Look for ways to reduce the amount of time your computer is on without adversely affecting your productivity.

A very basic thing that we should always remember. Obviously, we the user of these devices have the sole responsibility to turn it off especially when not in use. Not just computers, also the lights and other appliances in the University, should not be forgotten to be switch off when they are not in use in order to conserve more energy. The employees or even the students should turn off the entire computer system (CPU, monitor and printer) or at least the monitor and printer when going out for lunch or will be out of office for a meeting or an errand. If we would just follow it, little by little, the University would learned from these and we're hoping that this could be implemented wisely.

Reducing Paper Waste
Rather than creating a paperless office, computer use has vastly increased paper consumption and paper waste. Here are some suggestions for reducing waste:

* Print as little as possible. Review and modify documents on the screen and use print preview. Minimize the number of hard copies and paper drafts you make. Instead of printing, save information to disks.
* Recycle waste paper.
* Buy and use recycled paper in your printers and copiers. From an environmental point of view, the best recycled paper is 100 percent post consumer recycled content.

Paper usage is really a great part of our University. Especially, during enrollment and even in the day to day basis, paper is very important. But why not recycle and reused paper? It could minimize waste and decrease paper consumption throughout the University.



CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY
http://campustechnology.com/articles/2006/08/where-green-and-it-meet.aspx

One of the article on this site entitled Where Green and IT Meet By Linda L. Briggs, caught my attention. She featured some interesting facts about U.S. colleges and Universities. On how much they spend each year on energy and estimates the average PC wastes up to 400 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. With this, they have discovered that IT people is not that particular when it comes to energy preservation. Although the cost of energy is soaring and computers are voracious energy consumers on campus, many in IT know very little about what their school is doing to save energy. That’s partly because most energy dollars don’t come out of the typical IT budget. The energy it takes to run PCs and servers across campus generally belongs to the facilities side, and is regarded as a set cost of doing business.

Computers are playing a growing role in energy management, as schools rely on sophisticated computerized energy management systems that rival the complexity of mission-critical systems on campus. Adopting a strategic approach to energy management, especially as new buildings are planned or retrofitted, can lower a university’s energy bills by 30 percent or more, according to figures from the government’s Energy Star Web site. Computerized energy management systems, also called building automation systems or direct digital control systems, offer software and hardware specifically for measuring and controlling energy consumption.

This strategy could be apply to our University if and only if many staff, especially the IT personalities would initiate. Though, it would cost that much, but still we will not regret it. As far as I know, Energy management systems are typically connected with different systems across the campus to collect data on everything from room temperatures, CO2 levels, and occupancy rates, to the energy used by soda machines and exit signs. The IT people could be a great help for they have the role for helping to select, install, and manage these complex systems. If this be pursue, hopefully in the near future, a lot of savings on the University overall budget can be acquired. Which we can never denied that it could ultimately benefits everyone.


http://www.edtechmag.com/higher/september-october-2007/seeing-green.html

On this site, I've found another article which promotes a greener environment. "Seeing Green" Adelphi University finds seven ways to save power by Nancy A. Feldman.

The following are the things that we should do so we can profit along the way.

Spend Now, Save Later

You spend roughly 50 cents on energy for every dollar of computer hardware, according to analyst firm IDC. And this figure is expected to increase to 71 cents over the next four years. So if you have the budget for new equipment, these tips can save you money in the long run — and reduce your carbon footprint to boot.

* Power down all electronic equipment when not in use.
* Don’t use screen savers — they consume 28 percent more energy than sleep mode.
* Run updates during the day to avoid leaving PCs on overnight.
* Set printers to sleep mode. They return to active status quickly when new print jobs are submitted.
* Buy Energy Star-compliant products. Americans saved $12 billion last year through the Energy Star program.
* Consider notebooks over desktops wherever feasible. They use up to 90 percent less energy.
* Replace CRTs with LCDs; they use one-half to two-thirds of the energy.
* Consider an all-in-one rather than separate fax, printer and copier. All-in-ones save on electricity and space, and reduce equipment heat emissions.
* Enhance the energy efficiency of your storage infrastructure by using consolidation, storage tie ring, single-instance archiving, snapshot and cloning technology.
Sources: HP, EMC and IDC

As we can see, those listed above are the fundamental ways that we could perform in order for our University to save more, in electricity, space and even reduce equipment heat emissions. Though they are basic, if neither of us will initiate in doing these things, still we can never progress. Let's start on switching off all the electronic equipments especially when not in use. You can take a giant step toward environmentally responsible or “green” computing by conserving energy with your computer. But green computing involves other important steps as well. Again, if we would just support it all the way no more doubts that our University would be one of the prime advocate of Green Campus Computing.

It is up to us to keep our campus, our workplace, our home and Earth green. We are all accountable for our one and only planet Earth.

References:

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2006/08/where-green-and-it-meet.aspx
http://www.edtechmag.com/higher/september-october-2007/seeing-green.html
http://ecenter.colorado.edu/energy/projects/green_computing.html

2010 POLL AUTOMATION

2010 POLL AUTOMATION

When the issue about poll automation have been brought up many news and articles have been written, discussing about this whole thing. A lot of questions have made up to people’s mind, Would this automated election could eliminate possible cheaters? Would it help us, the people votes to be worth it as a citizen of the Republic of the Philippines? These are just few issues and queries embodied by the preparation of the 2010 Poll automation.

As few of us know, it has been seventeen years since the first initiatives to automate Philippine elections. The effort has spanned three administrations (Presidents Fidel Ramos, Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo) and five national elections (not counting barangay elections and the ARMM gubernatorial elections). But still nothing have been implemented because of some uncertain circumstances. Now, there is another attempt of pursuing this Automated Election for 2010. It was on January 7, this year when the Commission on Elections (Comelec) submits a P13.9 billion-budget for the automation of the 2010 elections to the DBM.

From March 5 to June 9 of 2009, a lot of activities have been worked on to be able to perform this much awaited Poll Automation in 2010. These includes the passing of the Senate of P11.3 billion-supplemental budget for the automation of the 2010 elections, obtaining of bid documents from Commission on Elections (Comelec) for the automation of the 2010 elections of the eleven prospective bidders which in the scanning of the documents only seven bidders passed. Also when Pres. Arroyo signs RA 9295 which allocates funds for the automation of the elections, the public bidding organized by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and all other process they have to encounter in order for the election process to reach a higher level in terms of credibility and technology. After all those procedures they have undergone, only one bidder have the chance to lead all of us to a clean and honest election process as a lot of people believe. This is the Netherlands-based Smartmatic and its Filipino partner Total Information Management (TIM).

But, later this month numerous reports have been stated that the automation of the 2010 elections was placed in jeopardy after the Filipino partner of the technology consortium that won the bidding for the project backed out, which is the Total Information Management (TIM),announced by The Commission on Elections Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Jose Melo. Some officials of Total Information Management Corp. (TIM) informed him that they were withdrawing from their partnership with Dutch firm Smartmatic International. According to Commission on Elections (Comelec), Chairman Jose Melo, there are some irreconcilable differences between the two companies. Allegedly issues also came out that there are some people in the administration or politicians who were manipulating the Filipino partner in order to back-out. Also, the issue about the financial arises, whether which of the two would get the much higher profit with these future automated election. By then, loads of people have been frustrated upon hearing the news. The hope of having much cleaner procedures for the most mission critical election for our country have just gone. However, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) assures the people that they would settle this mess.

So, just this morning July 4, 2009 in the Philippine Star, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Jose Melo has announced that “Were able to iron out their differences over the control of funds for the P11.2-billion poll automation project. We were able to thresh out everything. Everything seems to be on track again after one week of suspense and apprehension that we will be reverting to the manual system. We are back with automation”.

On my own perspective, Poll automation in the 2010 elections is good because we have to keep abreast with trends in modernization. However, considering that it’s the first time we are attempting this technology, we can expect some problems to transpire and this will again compel the government to shell out several more millions. Its success can only be gauged by implementation and seeing its results. It’s a tremendous boost to our obsolete vote-counting system and would ultimately improve our unreliable election process. But still we can never be assured that it’s automated, so we are free from election fraud. Machines can cheat more efficiently than people, if so programmed.

As far as I know, it is still manual in terms of selecting the candidates, we just need to shade the circle of our choice and let the machines do the counting and tallying. Though poll automation will make counting votes quicker, I still have my doubts if the powers-that-be would not hack computer programs come year 2010. For the human virus will surely destroy the genuine purpose of automation. Cheaters will always find a way to hack the machine.

On the positive side, I could say that this is a welcome news for the Filipinos, the majority of voters expect the machines to deliver the goods. If not, we would be in a lot more trouble than before. The Commission on Elections should ensure that no sleight of hand will occur. The technical people of the Commission on Elections should work side by side with the supplier, from delivery period to actual operation during the elections. If these things are met, then we are in for a new age in election history. I believe that everybody has been eager for this moment to come because it will now bail us out of the globally laughable Jurassic electoral system that has been toyed with by politicians in the Philippine election playground for many years now, exploiting its weaknesses by using all sorts of immoral, unethical and even criminal methods.

Now that we have this poll automation for the next elections and thereafter, I only hope that the criminally-inclined will not tinker with it and render it ineffective to come out with true election results. If programmed and used honestly, this new system will push back to history the oft-repeated complaint by losing politicians, “Dinaya ako.” After so many decades of manual vote counting, we will at last have an honest-to-goodness automated poll count. Yes, let’s give the Commission on Elections and the winning bidder a chance to prove their worth in 2010. Otherwise, we would be staying true to our tag as “the nation of crabs”. Poll automation is a welcome change in the upcoming 2010 election. With this the Filipinos we’re hoping for a cleaner and transparent counting of votes. Let’s just pray that in the end this long journey for the poll automation will be successful.

References:
http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=483573&publicationSubCategoryId=63
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/features/07/01/09/timeline-long-road-poll-automation
Philippine Daily Inquirer