UB's College of Arts and Sciences: I.T Problem Case Analysis

Problem

The foremost communication problem faced by the UB's College of Arts and Sciences relates to its non-standard browsers. Coupled with slow servers and contact centers, the problem multiplies to create several information problems, both for the students, and the staff (See Apendix).

Symptoms of the Problem

Without a centralized server, The University of Baltimore (UB) faces significant problems in deploying voice of IP. The University does not also have any Interactive Voice Response (IVR) or a Contact Recording or Quality Monitoring System. In addition, the University's computer systems have a diverse class of internet applications and browsers. However, most systems use the convention Windows XP browser 'Internet Explorer (IE).'

Consequently, students' queries are subject to delayed and undirected responses from the staff. Furthermore, the university and students face severe problems in administering their queries. The staff is usually non-cooperative when there is an instant need for records. Enrollment, examination, results, syllabus, and teachers' feedback take place in the presence of severe server problems and slow connections etc. The quickest way to enhance the internet speed of the University's computer systems is to standardize its browsers.

Alternatives

A Web browser is the computer program used to access the World Wide Web, including the graphic portion of the Internet. The job of the Web browser is to use the initial URL to retrieve a Web document from a Web server, interpret the HTML, and present the document to the user with as much embellishment as the user environment provides (Kirk, 1998). Web browsers are developed by teams of people who try to abide by the rules that the W3C states that must be met for the web pages look as they look (Hollier, 2009). Obviously every team has a vision of the rules and every vision results in implementation. Therefore, each development team gets a different implementation of the same normal.

Despite the shared goal, all browsers have a different view: New Chrome is popular for speed as standard. Mozilla Firefox is balanced and flexible thanks to its extensions. Internet Explorer is despised by advanced users and has great acceptance among the newcomers. Opera stands as the fighter who is always looking for new frontiers. Finally, Safari is a "de facto" browser for Mac.

Evaluation of Alternatives

Today's most popular browsers include Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Google Chrome and Opera. All of these browsers hold similarities as well as differences in speed, security and support. In the Internet age, these browsers are competing fiercely to get the bigger share. Drawing on the strengths and weaknesses for each of these alternatives, we will arrive at the best choice for UB.

Mozilla Firefox (version 4)

 Mozilla Firefox is the best known and most popular Linux browsers. As Netscape Communicator, the Mozilla suite was the first dominant commercial browser. Its developers eventually got the open source religion and the suite became the first prominent commercial application to be open-sourced in 1998. While it took over four years to ...