Chapter one IT 205 study guide - In 2007 American...

In 2007, American businesses will invest nearly $1 trillion in
information systems hardware, software, and telecommunications
equipment—more than half of all capital investment in the United
States. In addition, they will spend another $250 billion on
business and management consulting and services—much of
which involves redesigning firms’ business operations to take
advantage of these new technologies. More than half of all
business investment in the United States each year involves
information systems and technologies.
In 2007, more than 40 million businesses had dot-com Internet
sites registered. Six million Americans purchase something every
day on the Internet, 19 million researches a product, and 38
million use a search engine.
In 2006, FedEx moved in the United States nearly 200 million
packages, mostly overnight, and the United Parcel Service (UPS)
moved more than 570 million packages.
As newspaper readership continues to decline, 94 million people read at
least some of their news online. Sixty million bank online, and 55
million now read blogs, creating an explosion of new writers, readers,
and new forms of customer feedback that did not exist before.
E-commerce and Internet advertising are booming: Google’s online ad
revenues surpassed $10 billion in 2006. Internet advertising continues to
grow at more than 15 percent a year, at the expense of traditional media,
reaching more than $18 billion in revenues in 2007.
New federal security and accounting laws require many
businesses to keep e-mail messages for five years. Coupled with
existing occupational and health laws requiring firms to store
employee chemical exposure data for up to 60 years, these laws

are spurring the growth of digital information now estimated to be
5 Exabyte’s, equivalent to 37,000 Libraries of Congress.
In 1492, Columbus reaffirmed what astronomers were long
saying: the world was round and the seas could be safely sailed.
By 2005, journalist Thomas Friedman wrote an influential book
declaring the world was now “flat,” by which he meant that the
Internet and global communications had greatly reduced the
economic and cultural advantages of developed countries. U.S.
and European countries were in a fight for their economic lives,
competing for jobs, markets, resources, and even ideas with
highly educated, motivated populations in low-wage areas in the
less developed world (Friedman, 2005). This “globalization”
presents you and your business with both challenges and
opportunities.
A growing percentage of the economy of the United States and
other advanced industrial countries in Europe and Asia depends
on imports and exports. In 2007, more than 33 percent of the U.S.
economy resulted from foreign trade, both imports and exports. In
Europe and Asia, the number exceeds 50 percent. Many Fortune
500 U.S. firms derive half their revenues from foreign operations.