The other class is from the computer science department so it falls under the normal 10 week schedule. Given the holiday break we have in December, the class runs through the middle of February. The class is named Modeling and Simulation and I am certainly trying to understand just the title of the course. This only means I have yet more reading to get done!

I just finished reading over Michael Porter’s "Strategy and the Internet" as an assignment for one of my courses. Part of the assignment included a brief summary of our thoughts about the role that strategy play in today’s Internet environment and if we agreed with Porter.

Initially I had a hard time getting into the proper frame of reference while reading Porter’s article. I was approaching his words from a customer point of view and missed the value of his opinions. It was not until I switched my thinking reference to a decision-making individual within the enterprise, that I was able to look into Porter’s insight. Something to keep in mind as well is the time frame at which this article was printed. In 2001, the markets where recovering from the dot-com era where economic approaches were not quite sound. Of course, looking at that era now brings there mistakes more obvious but it can be said the signs were there all along. I should also note that even though the article was penned in 2001, the principles introduced by Porter would still hold true today. Technology has always had a place in the enterprise, however with the Internet, IT has been moved into the forefront of any successful company. IT is not the path to success and profitability, but it is a cornerstone for the foundation need to reach profitability and provide value to the share holders.

Porter’s position on the role of the Internet is that of an enabling tool of “traditional proven principles and effective strategy” and not a competitive advantage that will provide unrivaled profits within an industry. I can certainly agree with this point of view and one industry that comes to mind is the online distribution of music. The music industry has been changing in the last few years, since the popular rise of the Internet, the industry structure has been changing as well. However, the Internet itself has not provided one company a leading edge. Porter mentions the need of customer service, product differentiation, and proprietary content/assets as some of the keys to corporate financial success. While on the topic of music distribution, I would make a note of Apple was being the only company that capitalized on these principles. Apple was the first company to bring the concept of the online music store with the introduction of its iTunes web store. The launch came at the same time that Apple introduced the iPod to the masses. Apple’s products were different and provided a unique service to its customers, in the form of legal music ownership and a great product in the form of the iPod.

To this day, the success of the iPod and iTunes in Apples’ music strategy can be be said is completely based on price, instead it is based on the value provided by their products. Apple has kept their iPod and iTunes products as proprietary platforms and not easily imitated by competitors. In addition, switching from Apple’s platform to a competing offering is not quite as easy to do. The iPod as a portable player can only be used with Apple’s iTunes online store. Switching away from Apple’s iTunes is not hard to do from a technology point of view. However, from a user point of view, the iTunes store continues to be a favorite due to its user friendliness and feature set. This combination makes it hard for users to make the move away from this platform. All together, Apple has been able to capitalize on all of these fundamental concepts to create profits and provide value to the company’s shareholders.

Another company which comes to mind while reading Porter’s essay, is Red Hat. Red Hat Inc. has become a lead player in enabling its customers with enterprise level open source applications. Specifically the importance of following sound and proven corporate principles. In 2003, Red Hat launched a new strategy which targeted its customer’s needs. According to Red Hat’s press release, the primary goal of the strategy, is to provide a complete infrastructure to enable their customers create web applications geared toward commercial applications. Red Hat utilizes the well known open source model where price of software approaches zero. Similarly to Apple, Red Hat approaches its industry with a specific focus toward its customers and a proven commitment to the technologies that it supports. By their very nature, open source tools provide a common infrastructure to the community. It is Red Hat’s commitment to its value proposition that has provided a greater value to its members. Red Hat has created a support infrastructure around a “freely” available product (the linux kernel), thus enabling its customers to succeed.

Has the Internet created a new economy? A new way of doing things? A fundamental change to our decision making process? I would say yes and no, some new markets have been created by customer needs that could be best satisfied by the convenience provide by the web. Some corporate actions can be optimized thanks in part to the deployment of open internet standards among a corporation, its suppliers, partners and customers. However, I would agree with Porter on the importance of strategy when considering long term success of a company. More importantly, it is the introduction of internet technologies as supporting and enabling characteristics for the core corporate strategies — those strategic plans that provide a company with the greatest economic value.

Our business class is Strategic Technology Management, which takes an inside look at the role of strategy in today’s technology driven companies. Our first reading is Michael Porter’s Strategy and the Internet where we take a look at the role of Internet technologies in a company’s strategies. I think it will be a very good class with a balance combination of technology and business theories.

Our engineering class is called Testing Real Time Systems. I am not sure that I can give you as good as a description as the previous course but this is mostly because we don’t have much insight into what this course will be like. I do know that we’ll be creating and testing a technical specification for a video game to run on Windows PC. I guess it will be a fun project with semi-real world applications.

The course was very very reading intensive and I barely managed to stay afloat with the reading but fortunately our assignments were team-based so we helped each other out to accomplish each task. Our "big project" was an industry analysis and we decided to take a look inside the online music industry. We also looked into the details that lead to the Ford transformation during the mid 80’s and the strategy that put Nucor Steel ahead of other steel manufactures. Definetely quite a learning experience.

I am enyoing quite a bit the discussions we are having in both of these courses and I can see that I will be learning quite a bit during these next few weeks. However, in order to do well and have something to contribute to the class discussion, there is a huge amount of reading that needs to be done. This has proven to be the most difficult part of this "trimester". I have a couple of ideas that I would like to explore here and get some feedback, I will start working on these on my next little break.

I also want to comment a bit about my experience so far with OS X on the Powerbook. Something that I will say now is that although it is a change, it has been a very pleasant experience so far. The community in general appears to welcome newbie questions and that is great news for the future of Apple and its OS X.

I am extremely excited about the opportunity to be able to take most of the classes offered in this program. The business component of the program makes it quite an attractive offer and I would have to say that was the biggest “attraction” and incentive for me to join this program. Now, I have always had reservations about a few of the classes and what is the true concentration of the program. “Embedded systems” is the emphazis and most of the students in the program do work in the field and have both the practical and academic experience in the area. I knew I was going to have to put extra effort to be able to get through these classes but I never thought it was going to be this hard.

I have watched a few of the lectures and read a couple of chapters in the books and I am “lost”. I am usually quite interested in technology and so I thought this was going to be another way to keep me motivated through the harder parts of these courses. However, I cannot seem to find an interest to the whole embedded systems field. I have always been interested in the software-side of computer science/engineering but this is quite different. I really don’t see myself going into this area of business once I am done with the program.

And that is what I am having a hard time dealing with. I want to take advantage of this opportunity but I feel that it is coming at a high “price”. I will have to put a lot of time and effort into these 4-5 classes, so that I can take advantage of the business curriculum, and at the end I will have a MS in a field that at this point in time I do not find much interest for. I am questioning if I should really persue this opportunity after all.

You would aks yourself why am I am having a hard time when it appears that I have made a decision and the answer is that I don’t want to disappoint anyone including myself. Your thoughts?

UPDATE: I looked into other programs offered by the department and I would be pretty much stuck with one of these 2 classes I am taking now and I would be able to get the business core classes that I wanted so I have decided to put my head down and swim against the current for the remainder of this term. After that, things should open up for a little while and that will be good time to recover.

Thank you to those of you that wrote or called in offering your support and your advice. It really means a lot to me and I really appreaciate and respect your input. So now what? I guess I will be adding a “school” category to my blog!

Today being monday, I watched my first class lecture and all I can say at this time is WOW! I think I am over my head a little bit. I certainly know I have a bunch of stuff to read so I am off to read for a bit before it gets much later tonight. Stay tuned for more school updates.

update: thank you Jodi and Mike for the good luck wishes and I can report now that I definetely had a better experience compared to last time. At least I did not have any blank questions this time around. I knew what to expect this time around and I covered the material better as well. Since the majority of the exam was based on actual programming, my score is based now on the professor’s discretion and weather or not he can understand what I was trying to do.