As a student, you were invited by the Dean of the Institute of Computing to attend a seminar-workshop on information systems planning with some of the faculty members. In one of the sessions, a discussion of outsourcing came up. You have been asked to present your evaluation about outsourcing the information systems functions of the school.

Required:

You are to take a position- outsource or in-source and justify your position. (3000words)

Before I start on my explanations and discussions, I would define first the meaning of outsourcing and in-sourcing.

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In-sourcing vs. Outsourcing

What is Outsourcing?

Outsourcing is subcontracting a service such as product design or manufacturing, to a third-party company. The decision to outsource is often made in the interest of lowering cost or making better use of time and energy costs, redirecting or conserving energy directed at the competencies of a particular business, or to make more efficient use of land, labor, capital, (information) technology and resources. Outsourcing became part of the business lexicon during the 1980s. It is essentially a division of labour. Outsourcing in the information technology field has two meanings.[2] One is to commission the development of an application to another organization, usually a company that specializes in the development of this type of application. The other is to hire the services of another company to manage all or parts of the services that otherwise would be rendered by an IT unit of the organization. The latter concept might not include development of new applications.

Outsourcing involves the transfer of the management and/or day-to-day execution of an entire business function to an external service provider. The client organization and the supplier enter into a contractual agreement that defines the transferred services. Under the agreement the supplier acquires the means of production in the form of a transfer of people, assets and other resources from the client. The client agrees to procure the services from the supplier for the term of the contract. Business segments typically outsourced include information technology, human resources, facilities, real estate management, and accounting. Many companies also outsource customer support and call center functions like telemarketing, CAD drafting, customer service, market research, manufacturing, designing, web development, print-to-mail, content writing, ghostwriting and engineering. Offshoring is the type of outsourcing in which the buyer organization belongs to another country.

Reasons for outsourcing

Cost savings.
The lowering of the overall cost of the service to the business. This will involve reducing the scope, defining quality levels, re-pricing, re-negotiation, cost re-structuring. Access to lower cost economies through offshoring called "labor arbitrage" generated by the wage gap between industrialized and developing nations.

Cost restructuring.
Operating leverage is a measure that compares fixed costs to variable costs. Outsourcing changes the balance of this ratio by offering a move from fixed to variable cost and also by making variable costs more predictable.
Improve quality.
Achieve a step change in quality through contracting out the service with a new service level agreement.

Knowledge.
Access to intellectual property and wider experience and knowledge.
Contract.
Services will be provided to a legally binding contract with financial penalties and legal redress.
Operational expertise.
Access to operational best practice that would be too difficult or time consuming to develop in-house.
Access to talent.
Access to a larger talent pool and a sustainable source of skills, in particular in science and engineering.
Capacity management.
An improved method of capacity management of services and technology where the risk in providing the excess capacity is borne by the supplier.
Catalyst for change.
An organization can use an outsourcing agreement as a catalyst for major step change that can not be achieved alone. The outsourcer becomes a Change agent in the process.
Enhance capacity for innovation.
Companies increasingly use external knowledge service providers to supplement limited in-house capacity for product innovation.
Reduce time to market.
The acceleration of the development or production of a product through the additional capability brought by the supplier.
Commodification.
The trend of standardizing business processes, IT Services and application services enabling businesses to intelligently buy at the right price.
Risk management.
An approach to risk management for some types of risks is to partner with an outsourcer who is better able to provide the mitigation.
Venture Capital.
Some countries match government funds venture capital with private venture capital for startups that start businesses in their country.
Tax Benefit.
Countries offer tax incentives to move manufacturing operations to counter high corporate taxes within another country.

Activites for Outsourcing

Research and Development
The competitive pressures on firms to bring out new products at an ever rapid pace to meet market needs are increasing. As such, the pressures on the R&D department are increasing. In order to alleviate the pressure, firms have to either increase R&D budgets or find ways to utilize the resources in a more productive way. There are situations when a firm may consider outsourcing some of its R&D work to a contract research organizations or universities. Reasons why a firm could consider outsourcing are:
• new product design does not work
• project time and cost overruns
• loss of key staff
• competitive response
• problems of quality/yield.
The key drivers for R&D outsourcing are emerging mass markets and availability of expertise in the field. In this context, the two most populous countries in the world, China and India, provide huge pools from which to find talent. Both countries produce over 200,000 engineers and science graduates each year. Moreover both countries are low cost sourcing countries. Other strategic drivers for outsourcing R&D are access to expertise and intellectual property, filling gaps in the capabilities of the R&D function, managing risk better, reducing the time to market, and focusing on the core competence or activities of the firm.
Manufacturing
Often companies will develope and market products but leave the manufacturing to other compaines that specialize in it. Thus a factory can do manufacturing for several companies and keep a large manufacturing plant operating at nearly full capacity when no individual contract could justify the expense of maintaining the infrastructure. An example of this would be Fabless semiconductor companies which do design etc but do not have their own, extremely expensive, fabrication facilities. Other examples would be companies that specialize in the tasks of procurting parts, assembly, QA, etc. and market this skills as their primary business to compaines that outsource manufacturing to them.


The Advantages of Outsourcing

* Outsourcing your non-core activities will give you more time to concentrate on your core business processes
* Offshoring can give you access to professional, expert and high-quality services
* With outsourcing your organization can experience increased efficiency and productivity in non-core business processes
* Outsourcing can help you streamline your business operations
* Offshore outsourcing can help you save on time, effort, manpower, operating costs and training costs amongst others
* Outsourcing can make your organization more flexible to change
* You can experience an increased control of your business with outsourcing
* Your organization can save on investing in the latest technology, software and infrastructure as your outsourcing partner would be investing in these
* Outsourcing can give you assurance that your business processes are being carried out efficiently, proficiently and within a fast turnaround time
* Offshoring can help your organization save on capital expenditures
* By outsourcing, your company can save on management problems as your offshore partner will be managing the team who does your work
* By outsourcing, you can cater to the new and challenging demands of your customers
* Outsourcing can help your organization to free up its cash flow
* Sharing your business risks is possible with outsourcing
* Outsourcing can give your business a competitive advantage as you will be able to increase productivity in all the areas of your business
* Outsourcing can help your organization to cut is operational costs to more than half

Criticism of outsourcing

Quality Risks
Quality Risk is the propensity for a product or service to be defective, due to operations-related issues. Quality risk in outsourcing is driven by a list of factors. One such factor is opportunism by suppliers due to misaligned incentives between buyer and supplier, information asymmetry, high asset specificity, or high supplier switching costs. Other factors contributing to quality risk in outsourcing are poor buyer-supplier communication, lack of supplier capabilities/resources/capacity, or buyer-supplier contract enforceability. Two main concepts must be considered when considering observability as it related to quality risks in outsourcing: the concepts of testability and criticality.
Quality fade is the deliberate and secretive reduction in the quality of labor in order to widen profit margins. The downward changes in human capital are subtle but progressive, and usually unnoticeable by the out source/customer. The initial interview meets requirements, however, with subsequent support, more and more of the support team is replaced with novice or less experienced workers

Quality of service
Quality of service is measured through a service level agreement (SLA) in the outsourcing contract. In poorly defined contracts there is no measure of quality or SLA defined. Even when an SLA exists it may not be to the same level as previously enjoyed. This may be due to the process of implementing proper objective measurement and reporting which is being done for the first time. It may also be lower quality through design to match the lower price.
There are a number of stakeholders who are affected and there is no single view of quality. The CEO may view the lower quality acceptable to meet the business needs at the right price. The retained management team may view quality as slipping compared to what they previously achieved. The end consumer of the service may also receive a change in service that is within agreed SLAs but is still perceived as inadequate. The supplier may view quality in purely meeting the defined SLAs regardless of perception or ability to do better.
Quality in terms of end-user-experience is best measured through customer satisfaction questionnaires which are professionally designed to capture an unbiased view of quality. Surveys can be one of research. This allows quality to be tracked over time and also for corrective action to be identified and taken.

Language skills
In the area of call centers end-user-experience is deemed to be of lower quality when a service is outsourced. This is exacerbated when outsourcing is combined with off-shoring to regions where the first language and culture are different. The questionable quality is particularly evident when call centers that service the public are outsourced and offshored. The public generally find linguistic features such as accents; word use and phraseology different which may make call center agents difficult to understand. The visual clues that are present in face-to-face encounters are missing from the call center interactions and this also may lead to misunderstandings and difficulties.[23] In addition to language and accent differences, a lack of local social and geographic knowledge is often present, leading to misunderstandings or mis-communications.[citation needed]
Public opinion
There is a strong public opinion regarding outsourcing (especially when combined with offshoring) that outsourcing damages a local labor market. Outsourcing is the transfer of the delivery of services which affects both jobs and individuals. It is difficult to dispute that outsourcing has a detrimental effect on individuals who face job disruption and employment insecurity; however, its supporters believe that outsourcing should bring down prices, providing greater economic benefit to all. There are legal protections in the European Union regulations called the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment).
Security
Before outsourcing an organization is responsible for the actions of all their staff and liable for their actions. When these same people are transferred to an outsourcer they may not change desk but their legal status has changed. They no-longer are directly employed or responsible to the organization. This causes legal, security and compliance issues that need to be addressed through the contract between the client and the suppliers. This is one of the most complex areas of outsourcing and requires a specialist third party adviser.
Social responsibility
Outsourcing sends jobs to the lower-income areas where work is being outsourced to, which provides jobs in these areas and has a net equalizing effect on the overall distribution of wealth. Some argue that the outsourcing of jobs (particularly off-shore) exploits the lower paid workers. A contrary view is that more people are employed and benefit from paid work. Despite this argument, domestic workers displaced by such equalization are proportionately unable to outsource their own costs of housing, food and transportation.
Company knowledge
Outsourcing could lead to communication problems with transferred employees. For example, before transfer staff have access to broadcast company e-mail informing them of new products, procedures etc. Once in the outsourcing organization the same access may not be available. Also to reduce costs, some outsource employees may not have access to e-mail, but any information which is new is delivered in team meetings.
Qualifications of outsourcers
The outsourcer may replace staff with less qualified people or with people with different non-equivalent qualifications.[28]
In the engineering discipline there has been a debate about the number of engineers being produced by the major economies of the United States, India and China. The argument centers around the definition of an engineering graduate and also disputed numbers. The closest comparable numbers of annual graduates of four-year degrees are United States (137,437) India (112,000) and China (351,537).


What is Insourcing?

Insourcing is the opposite of outsourcing; that is insourcing (or contracting in) is often defined as the delegation of operations or jobs from production within a business to an internal (but 'stand-alone') entity that specializes in that operation. Insourcing is a business decision that is often made to maintain control of critical production or competencies. An alternate use of the term implies transferring jobs to within the country where the term is used, either by hiring local subcontractors or building a facility.
Organizations involved in production usually opt for insourcing in order to cut down the cost of labor and taxes amongst others. The trend towards insourcing has increased since the year 2006. Organizations who have been dissatisfied with outsourcing have moved towards insourcing. Some organizations feel that they can have better customer support and better control over the work outsourced by insourcing their work rather than outsourcing it. According to recent studies, there is more wok insourced than outsourced in the U.S and U.K. These countries are currently the largest outsourcers in the world. The U.S and U.K outsource and insource work equally.

When outsourcing first burst on to the scene a few years back, there was a stampede of companies hungry to cut costs and streamline their business processes. Outsourcing was seen as the cure-all for business ills - what could be nicer than outsourcing a problematic process to a supplier at an apparently lower cost?
In this haste to outsource, and given the focus on short term cost-cutting, many companies paid too little attention to the medium term or what would happen should the relationship not work out.
Problems occur with outsourcing for various reasons, from client dissatisfaction to loss of control and know-how, so it stands to reason that insourcing is a pattern that will inevitably develop. It's an attractive solution - at the heart of which is regaining control. Insourcing could remedy a failing service, when transitioning to a new supplier would be too costly or difficult.
However, insourcing is inescapably a difficult and costly process, particularly if an organisation hasn't properly provided for this eventuality at the outsourcing stage. If a company insources a problematic process that the supplier can't handle, they must ensure they will have the capability, systems and know how in place to better the supplier's service once it's back in-house.
So, in deciding to insource, what are the legal precautions to manage the insourcing process that organisations should take?
Leveraging the existing agreement:
Organisations have to conduct very thorough needs analysis in order for the transition to be as seamless as possible. Like the mantra for outsourcing, don't insource your 'mess for less', certainly not before you've considered re-engineering the relationship with the supplier instead.

Personnel provisions:
This tends to get overlooked in the outsourcing agreement. The transfer of staff expertise and knowledge of the operation is crucial to successful insourcing. Staff transfer back in-house will need planning and meaningful incentives to be effective, including providing for the transfer of necessary intellectual property rights the staff have produced or gained.

Flexibility:
Companies embarking upon outsourcing need to approach it from a realistic perspective - it isn't necessarily going to last forever - so from a legal perspective, organisations need to build flexibility into the contract to allow them to insource should they have to.

Insourcing complex processes: Insourcing complex processes high in the value-chain - such as value-add services and service management - will need careful analysis as to whether the organisation has the in-house capability to provide these services. A gradual, planned handing-back is crucial to ensure an organisation can manage the insource whilst safeguarding quality.

Third party analysis:
Getting objective third-party advice on service levels and total cost of ownership can help to assess that the service is meeting its objectives, not just from the organisation's viewpoint but also that of its clients.

Measurement:
Benchmarking and key performance indicators (KPIs) are an integral part of helping organizations decide whether they should stay with their supplier, change supplier or in-source.

Advantages:
• High degree of control.
• Ability to oversee the entire process.
• Economies of scale and/or scopepe.


Disadvantages
• Reduces strategic flexibility.
• Requires high investment.
• Potential suppliers may offer superior products and services.

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Both in-sourcing and outsourcing has own advantages and disadvantages. I think almost of the company and organizations are using outsourcing because aside from low investment risk, it is good regarding commodification. But, in our adopted company, Lapanday Foods Corporation, they are In-source and I agreed on that kind of set-up. According to the MIS manager we interviewed, they just bought the software system (SAP ERP) and their programmers designed and develop the system. I am in In-source because it can avoid in showing some confidential information about the company and aside from that, their will be a lot of job opportunities be obtainable.

____..:**#**:..____

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci1185946,00.html


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsourcing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insourcing
http://services.silicon.com/itoutsourcing/0,3800004871,39156077,00.htm

On the assumption that you heard/read the SONA of the President last month, (July 2000), identify at least 3 areas related to ICT and identify how these areas can improve our quality of life.

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State of the Nation Address (SONA) 2009 of President Gloria Arroyo



1. Sa telecommunications naman, inatasan ko ang Telecommunications Commission na kumilos na tungkol sa mga sumbong na dropped calls at mga nawawalang load sa cellphone. We need to amend the Commonwealth-era Public Service Law. And we need to do it now.

-Cellular phones are important and it is part of our daily activities. This day, there are almost no different from telecommunication and Information Technology (IT) Field. Both of these fields collaborate to provide what we enjoy from our telecommunication operators. We can enjoy Short Message Service (SMS), Brew, internet, blackberry, Iphone, email, mobile blogging, and others telecommunication service because that collaboration. And it is not only for Value Added Service (VAS), this collaboration also do voice service as telecommunication core business.

2. Kung noong nakaraan, lumakas ang electronics, today we are creating wealth by developing the BPO and tourism sectors as additional engines of growth. Electronics and other manufactured exports rise and fall in accordance with the state of the world economy. But BPO remains resilient. With earnings of $6 billion and employment of 600,000, the BPO phenomenon speaks eloquently of our competitiveness and productivity. Let us have a Department of ICT.

-This day, there are almost no different from telecommunication and Information Technology (IT) Field. Both of these fields collaborate to provide what we enjoy from our telecommunication operators. We can enjoy Short Message Service (SMS), Brew, internet, blackberry, Iphone, email, mobile blogging, and others telecommunication service because that collaboration. And it is not only for Value Added Service (VAS), this collaboration also do voice service as telecommunication core business.

3. Automated Election

What is Automated Election Sytem(AES)?

* Computerized voting is a superior form of casting ballots. It allows for fairer and faster voting. It takes many forms with different processes but how it is implemented depends on the technological facilities allocated for the elections procedure. Automated election system (AES) is a system that uses appropriate technology to accomplish and aid such tasks as voting, counting, consolidating, canvassing, and transmission of election result, and other electoral process. Republic Act No. 9369, which is the Amended Elections Automation Law provides for the use of two forms of AES.


* The voters have to shade the oval which corresponds to their candidate of choice using pencil in a specially scanned paper ballot. It is composed of 2 Laptops, 2 Digital Scanners, 2 card readers, 1 hub and 1 printer. The votes in the shaded ballots will then be scanned and counted using an Automated Counting Machine (ACM).


* The first is a paper-based election system defined as “a type of automated election system that uses paper ballots, records and counts votes, tabulates, consolidates, canvasses and transmits electronically the results of the vote count.” It uses the Optical Mark Reader (OMR) Technology.


* The second form is the Direct Recording Electronic (DRE). It is defined as “a type of automated election system that uses electronic ballots, records votes by means of a ballot display provided with mechanical or electro-optical components that can be activated by the voter, processes data by means of a computer program, records voting data and ballot images, and transmits voting results electronically.” voters are provided with a Voting Pad where the photos of candidates can be selected by pressing on the desired picture. Once the vote is final, a receipt is generated after pressing ‘BOTO‘. The Board of Election Inspectors keeps the receipt just in case there are complaints raised.

It is feasible. An automated election, for a fact, cannot fully prevent cheating but only certain forms of it could be prevented through check and balance. It is also a fact that there is no system that is tamper proof. The following are plausible forms of check and balance: paper audit trail of ballots, protection of software source code, no switching of ballot boxes, the testing of the technologies, and the addition of some amendments on the Senate Bill No. 2231. The Automated Election Bill in the Philippines requires that there should be a voter verifiable paper audit trail. This feature of the bill will reduce the incidents of vote buying and increase the security and credibility of the people’s votes. The voter verifiable audit trail enables the voters to review and edit their votes. On the same note the right amount of protection on the automated elections' software source code would prevent hackers on hacking on to the computers for counting and thus prevents the tampering on the number of votes.

http://iskwiki.upd.edu.ph/index.php/Online/Automated_Elections_in_the_Philippines

If you were hired by the university president as an IT consultant, what would you suggest (technology, infrastructure, innovations, steps, processes, etc) in order for the internet connectivity be improved? (3000words)
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If I will be tasked to improve Internet connectivity in a university, here are some steps I would recommend regarding innovation:
First I would definitely look into their ISP (Internet Service Provider).
Nowadays, we are all aware the about the spread of using internet or known as “Net”. In an organization, in a company, in house, or even in universities and schools internet is one of the most essential part of our daily life. Through internet, you can gain lots of information. You can also earn money. But into us, students, internet is very useful regarding in doing our projects, reports, assignments, BLOGS, etc. Imagine our life without internet? Maybe this time we are still behind of some information, happenings and learning in our community. Internet is really important especially unto us IT students. We really need to gain some knowledge and information through internet.

What is internet?
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private and public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, and other technologies. The Internet carries a vast array of information resources and services, most notably the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support electronic mail. In addition it supports popular services such as online chat, file transfer and file sharing, gaming, commerce, social networking, publishing, video on demand, and teleconferencing and telecommunications. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) applications allow person-to-person communication via voice and video.

By examining and acquiring the best package of internet connection will be the root of your solution in Internet connectivity, I would definitely recommend two different ISP for the university. With this I can easily manage public and private allocation of bandwidth, also this would limit downtime issues since I can easily route all connections from one ISP to the other in case of server issues or heavy traffic occurs. Having two different internet connections with two different ISP is definitely the best solution against downtime issues, you can also tunnel important connections to which ISP is suited or has less traffic at the moment, the university can easily filter accessibility of specific sites through managing each ISP filters. The ISP that the students will be using would have to be heavily filtered, streaming sites both video and audio should not be blocked! Instead bandwidth allocation to this sites will be limited to avoid heavy traffic, yet this measures can be bypassed by using proxy servers outside of the school but having setup the university campus with two different ISP would mean connectivity of the staff and other important connections of the school would not be affected for they will be using the other one. Budget wise, having two different ISP would be expensive upon entry and maintenance would be twice since the university would be spending 2 servers each for the ISP.

Secondly I would touch the software and hardware issues in the university. What server do they use? How do clients connect to the internet? What operating system does their client and server use? These are just some question I would ask for me to be able to maximize connectivity to the schools university. Each client especially those of the staff would be using and the students should be setup differently, limitation should be focused on system units that would be used by students and staff while units under the Library should be lightly restricted. Now on the hardware aspect, the school should set everything up to wireless networking, this would eliminate cables issues and wireless connection is easy to maintain compare to cables. But using a wireless network would add another issue on to who are allowed to use the internet. Security also plays a big role to connectivity, this is how clients connect to your network and be allowed to access the internet, now having setup your security authentication will not matter, what matter most is for the admin to know who are connecting, so I would recommend to have each users register his unit MAC address to be added in the server for it to have access of the school Wi-Fi connection. Setting up a password authentication on a wireless network is not recommended, what is important is that each connections should have its identity and this can only be done by acquiring its MAC address, this would add plenty of work load to the admin but this would also ensure the campus internet bandwidth to be secure.

Innovation
The term innovation refers to a new way of doing something. Innovation is a key factor in long-term organisational success. While there is a short-term need to generate new products and services to meet shareholder expectations, innovation is also critical to long-term survival. It may refer to incremental and emergent or radical and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations. In many fields, something new must be substantially different to be innovative, not an insignificant change, e.g., in the arts, economics, business and government policy. In economics the change must increase value, customer value, or producer value. The goal of innovation is positive change, to make someone or something better. Innovation leading to increased productivity is the fundamental source of increasing wealth in an economy. Innovation is an important topic in the study of economics, business, design, technology, sociology, and engineering. Colloquially, the word "innovation" is often synonymous with the output of the process. However, economists tend to focus on the process itself, from the origination of an idea to its transformation into something useful, to its implementation; and on the system within which the process of innovation unfolds. Since innovation is also considered a major driver of the economy, especially when it leads to increasing productivity, the factors that lead to innovation are also considered to be critical to policy makers. In particular, followers of innovation economics stress using public policy to spur innovation and growth.
Those who are directly responsible for application of the innovation are often called pioneers in their field, whether they are individuals or organizations.

In the organizational context, innovation may be linked to performance and growth through improvements in efficiency, productivity, quality, competitive positioning, market share, etc. All organizations can innovate, including for example hospitals, universities, and local governments.

While innovation typically adds value, innovation may also have a negative or destructive effect as new developments clear away or change old organizational forms and practices. Organizations that do not innovate effectively may be destroyed by those that do. Hence innovation typically involves risk. A key challenge in innovation is maintaining a balance between process and product innovations where process innovations tend to involve a business model which may develop shareholder satisfaction through improved efficiencies while product innovations develop customer support however at the risk of costly R&D that can erode shareholder return. In summary, innovation can be described as the result of some amount of time and effort into researching (R) an idea, plus some larger amount of time and effort into developing (D) this idea, plus some very large amount of time and effort into commercializing (C) this idea into a market place with customers. (Reference needed)


Technology

What is technology?
Technology is a broad concept that deals with human as well as other animal species' usage and knowledge of tools and crafts, and how it affects a species' ability to control and adapt to its environment. Technology has affected society and its surroundings in a number of ways. In many societies, technology has helped develop more advanced economies (including today's global economy) and has allowed the rise of a leisure class. It can be most broadly defined as the entities, both material and immaterial, created by the application of mental and physical effort in order to achieve some value. In this usage, technology refers to tools and machines that may be used to solve real-world problems. It is a far-reaching term that may include simple tools, such as a crowbar or wooden spoon, or more complex machines, such as a space station or particle accelerator. Tools and machines need not be material; virtual technology, such as computer software and business methods, fall under this definition of technology.

In technology, I would recommend high end computer devices that performs fast and accurate. It could help browsing the internet with greater speed. When we are browsing in the internet we can see that there are many websites who are currently using special effects like animations, add-ons, flash, videos and lots of picture that requiring a bigger video card requirements. So if we try to browse using our computers in lab and in nodal, there are possibilities of buffering or sometimes if you dont have a choice, you need to restart your unit.

A high speed internet connection such as broadband will allow you to collaborate more closely with your suppliers through sharing plans, forecasts and consumer data. Sharing such information with your suppliers makes it easier for you to:
analyse real-time information about sales, orders or market trends
forecast and react quickly to changes in demand
improve efficiency - accurate information on stock means you will only order the supplies you need


Infrastructure

What is infrastructure?
According to mr. Wikipedia, Infrastructure can be defined as the basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function.
The development and maintenance of essential public infrastructure is an important ingredient for sustained economic growth and poverty reduction.
Poor infrastructure is perhaps the most binding constraint to growth throughout the University.

Maintenance

I think it is one of the best way in improving the connectivity of the internet. Here are some tips to improve the performance of our computers.Performing maintenance will increase the performance of the computer, and thus Beyond TV. The following three basic PC maintenance steps are highly recommended.

1.Viruses, worms, et. Al. can cause all manner of problems from system crashes to loss of data. Professional programs to protect PC's against viruses are available, such as Network Associates' McAfee package, and Symantec's Norton Antivirus software. Some anti-virus software is free. Visit your favorite download site for a sampling. Be sure to scan for and remove malware detected by the scanner of your choice.

2.Spyware / Adware is installed on your PC without your consent or knowledge through Web sites, or is installed with other software packages. These programs run in the background, often sending information about your PC or yourself over the Internet. In doing so, they slow a computer down, occupying the CPU and the Internet connection. Two very popular spyware detection and removal programs are free to personal users -- Patrick M. Kolla's SpyBot Search & Destroy and Lavasoft's Ad-Aware SE. Be sure to scan for and remove spyware detected by the scanner of your choice.


3.Hard Disk fragmentation is not an easy phenomenon to explain, but the symptom it causes is a slowing, often drastic, of operations involving data transfer to and from your computer's hard disk drive. All modern versions of the Windows operating system include a disk defragmenter. In Windows XP, for example, it may be accessed via START BUTTON --> ALL PROGRAMS --> ACCESSORIES --> SYSTEM TOOLS --> Disk Defragmenter. Be sure to run a complete hard disk defragmentation prior to running Beyond TV.

MORE TIPS:
The modem. The first tip is to get rid of the modem and move to ADSL. Yes, broadband is available at low cost in most areas. Visit keyword broadband to see if it's supported by your exchange. If you are on broadband you can probably skip the rest of our top tips because you'll be enjoying life rather than fretting about your connection speed.
Upgrade Drivers. Driver files are updated regularly by most modem manufacturers. For some modems, you can also "flash upgrade" the software in the modem to provide the latest (and fastest) communications software. Even so, you should be sure the driver is right for your operating system. To find the latest drivers, just enter the modem details into a search engine such as aolsearch.aol.co.uk/ or www.google.co.uk with the word "driver". So, to find drivers for a USR Sportster modem, enter "USR Sportster driver" and follow any instructions on how to install it. You can check your current modem drivers from Control Panel. With Windows XP, Select Start | Control Panel | Phone and Modem Options | Modems | Properties | Drivers.

Surf when the yanks are in their PJs - the internet is much faster if the rest of the world is asleep. Try surfing while eating your bowl of breakfast corn flakes. It's much more bracing!

Tweak your settings. Your PC has some settings that may improve modem throughput. All data sent over the internet goes in data packets. The size of these packets is the Maximum Transmission Unit or MTU. The aim is to send packets that are as large as possible without them needing to be broken down into smaller packets which would slow down your connection speed. A modem user, should set the (MTU) to 1500, the RWIN multiplier to 10 and Time to Live to 35. Download Tweak-Me or Tweak-XP to get this done for automatically you.

Use FTP download wherever possible. If you want to download files, you can often choose between FTP or HTML download. FTP, (File Transfer Protocol,) is much faster for file transfers so you should choose that when you can.
Use a high speed port. This'll only apply to readers with really old computers. The serial port may use an old, slow chip called a UART. The answer is to fit a high speed serial port with a 16550 UART chip or to fit an internal modem which includes one of these beasties.
Use a download tool. There's nothing more frustrating than losing a connection near the end of a one hour download. The good news is that most downloads are resumable which means they can be restarted from where the connection failed. You need the right tool to manage the reconnection - one of the best is shareware Getright. Getright also searches for the fastest download sites and splits the download between several sites with the downloads running in parallel for the maximum possible download speed.

Use a faster browser. Once you've connected to AOL, you can start any browser and run it in a second window. Opera is one of the fastest so why not download a free copy and give it a test run?
Manage your cache. Every time you use the internet, images and other files are downloaded onto your hard disk. If a particular image or other file is needed in a subsequent session, it can be pulled from the disk faster than it could be downloaded again. They are kept in a "Temporary Internet Files" folder, often called Cache. When the folder is full, Windows deletes the oldest files.

You can vary the size of this folder by visiting Control Panel and selecting Internet Options. If you increase it, then more files can be stored on hard disk but if you go too far, then a slow PC may spend too long searching cache! You'll need to experiment to find the right level for your PC and internet connection speed.
Define a blank homepage. Each time you start a browser outside your AOL window, the browser will go to the defined homepage. If this is slow, you should change the home page to a fast web site. If you are a real speed nut, set it to blank. To do this, go to Internet Options as above, and select Use Blank. Now your external browser is up and running in record time.

Don't display images. Text only windows are much faster to download. You can easily restore images when required. Here's how to set whether to display images: From Internet Options (see above) select the Advanced tab. Scroll down until you see the multimedia section, then select or deselect "Show pictures." Select Apply then OK to save your change.

References:
http://internetspeedmonitorpro.com/testing-and-improving-your-internet-speed/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume40/ImprovingInstitutionalPerforma/158023