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Informatics |Информатика
LESSON 8
Read the text: THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ERA
The information technology industry is changing at a pace that is bewildering to many business executives. Managing the flood of data available electronically is a challenge, but capturing information from transaction data, for example, offers profitable opportunities to mine the data for trend spotting. The Internet’s worldwide reach has enabled firms to enter global markets with a minimal investment. It also, of course, has brought new competition to these companies in their own home markets. Apparently, the investment in new information technology is worth it. By the year 2000 the Internet economy had already reached $850 billion, exceeding the size of the automobile and truck and life insurance industries.
Don’t Travel - Use Cyberspace. Silver Hammer, a California production firm that provides cable networks and television shows with graphics and promotional material, gets 30 percent of its business without leaving its office. The company, founded in 1996, won awards for five of its first six projects, among which were the Oprah Winfrey Show and the TV series Dark Skies. A new British TV network, attracted by the firm’s success in the United States, asked Silver Hammer to create promotional spots for its debut. However, there were concerns about how the two companies could work together, being so far apart.
Silver Hammer’s solution? It set up on its Web site something it called a “cyberbin” that was accessible by password only to a particular client. It posted story‐boards, graphics, scripts, and correspondence that the client could see, comment on, and approve from a computer anywhere in the world. The cyberbin saved time by eliminating shipping delays of three days per package. The two companies took advantage of the eight hour time difference between California and London in the same way Indian software engineers and American software firms do. Work Silver Hammer posted on the Internet at the end of the business day in Los Angeles was ready to be checked the first hour of the business day in London. The client could spend the entire day evaluating the material and send its commentary to California before the office opened i the morning.
Silver Hammer now uses the cyberbin to win other European jobs. Said CEO Holly Diefenderfer, “This has been so effective for us to open doors to other areas of the global marketplace.”
1. Match the left
part with the right:
1. The Internet’s worldwide reach has enabled firms |
a) without leaving its office. |
2. Silver Hammer gets 30 percent of its business |
b) to win other European jobs. |
3. The cyberbin saved time |
c) to enter global markets with a minimal investment. |
4. Silver Hammer now uses the cyberbin |
d) by eliminating shipping delays of three days per package. |
2. Complete the sentences with the suggested words: flood, changing, profitable, transaction
The information technology industry is ______ at a pace that is bewildering to many business executives. Managing the _______ of data available electronically is a challenge, but capturing information from _______ data, for example, offers _______ opportunities to mine the data for trend spotting.