Baderman Island Technology Analysis Paper
Baderman Island Technology Analysis Reba R Gaines University of Phoenix Online TM/591 Professor Ali Yallah Baderman Island Technology Analysis Baderman Island Resort is a self-contained, all-inclusive resort and spa.
Set exclusively in Baderman Island, the resort offers an array of restaurants, three hotels, a golf course, pristine white sand beaches, botanical gardens, and a state of the art convention center.
With future expansions to include 18 additional holes to its golf course, an additional 150 acre buffer to its botanical gardens, an additional 25 acres to accommodate additional facilities for its spa, an additional 50 acres to its recreational acre, an additional 300 acres to include the finishing of the Melancon Hotel and Convention Center, the doubling of the Tenney suites, and the final touches on the Main Hotel, and an additional 100 acres of private, Baderman Island Resort must upgrade its infrastructure to handle the demand of its operations and management of its human resources and technology (Apollo Group, 2005).
The purpose of this paper is to recommend three emergent technologies for three business areas within Baderman Island, explain the business opportunity for each emergent technology, and justify the proper fit within the business organization and how management might use the technologies to maintain a competitive edge. “a technology is considered an innovation and is still developing in terms of capability or capacity. Its potential marketplace has not yet accepted it as a technology that will be useful, useable, cost effective, or a viable substitute for a technology (or service) it could replace”(Luftman & Bullen, 2004, p.
80). The emergent technologies that will be discussed are virtualization, RFID tags, and 3D virtual meetings. Virtualization Boardman Management Group (BMG) has recently moved its main office and center of operations to Baderman Island. The second floor of the Meredith Visitor Center will now accommodate all Boardman Management Group operations for the management of Baderman Island as well as the management of all offsite properties. The management of all physical servers, network devices, and applications for Baderman, its offsite properties, and onsite vendors will be managed from one central location.
This can be accomplished with virtualization, a “technology that allows for the abstraction of computing resources.
Virtualized resources can be presented to users and applications in the most logical way possible, without regard to the physical characteristics of the resources themselves” (Ortiz, 2007). Virtualization although growing in acceptance is still considered an emergent technology because its potential marketplace hasn’t totally been realized. Virtual server, virtual storage, virtual appliances, etc are still being developed.
Although much development is still occurring, virtualization is becoming an accepted alternative among operating systems making it a hybrid technology, both an emergent and pace technology. Potential Opportunity Server virtualization can save money on the license and maintenance fees because there are fewer physical machines. Virtualization will allow BMG to rebuild its intranets and extranets and provide services for its internal and external customers.
BMG can capitalize on virtual storage (iSCSI) as storage prices are trending downward.
BMG can create its own private cloud providing applications and data to its many hotels, restaurants, golf club, convention center, and other amenities and attractions. Justification Real estate comes at a premium and is very costly. It is imperative that BMG utilizes and optimizes the new space that they are moving into. By implementing virtualization, BMG can assimilate and consolidate its critical servers and applications to decrease footprint, reduce energy costs, ease deployment, and provide disaster recovery.
Virtualization eliminates the need for BMG to deploy physical servers which contributes to decreasing the footprint.
Virtualization also minimizes the cost of maintaining a datacenter by reducing energy cost, minimizing server sprawl and eliminating under utilization. As BMG embarks on their expansion projects, new virtual machines can be deployed quickly to accommodate the additional capacity required to grow their infrastructure dynamically without expending an enormous amount of capital. Virtualization’s rate of adoption is completely characterized by the five characteristics described in the framework for the concepts of innovation (Luftman & Bullen, 2004, p. 189).
It is perceived to be better than physical servers in its ability to host multiple operating systems and share the host’s resource. Its encapsulation of resources allows it to operate as if it was a physical machine yet it is totally virtual giving it a relative advantage. It is compatible with all baseline operating systems on the market. Complexity in implementation is minimal making it more attractive to adopt. The vendors allows for free downloads and trials. Its visibility in competition with Microsoft’s Hyper-V has shown multiple advantages.
(Luftman & Bullen, 2004, p. 190)
Uses for Competitive Advantage Reduced costs and better utilization will help BMG operate at their max efficiency resulting in a higher ROI and attract investors thus establishing a competitive advantage. Because BMG will be able to self manage their infrastructure with fewer resource and less capital, the savings can be dumped into other projects. The increased speeds in the delivery of new capacity will help expedite expansion projects enabling BMG to increase profits and revenue. Virtualization will also provide increased speeds, responsiveness and recycle times over conventional hardware.
BMG can use virtualization to address other issue such as desktop infrastucutre management and security, cost-efficent busines contiuity, anddata center power and cooling reduction.
Virtualization will have an impact on how BMG utilizes it human capital. It will take less people to support their environment. It’s good for the staff and the company as those resources will be repositioned to more value added projects. This will help HR provide dedicated resources that will transform into subject matter experts as experience with the product grows (Luftman ; Bullen, 2004, p. 196).
Virtualization will allow BMG to build their own private cloud delivering and standardizing applications and data across their family of hotels and spa resorts; all to maintain a competitive advantage. Safety/Sales Security is the top amenity for Baderman Island Resort as the safety is of its guests is top priority. One emergent technology that would prove to be both useful and profitable to Baderman Island is RFID tags. “An RFID tag is a microchip combined with an antenna in a compact package; the packaging is structured to allow the RFID tag to be attached to an object to be tracked.
