Use a table to identify the software products sited in theBayState Realty Case Study that fall within the followingcategories of software. You need not limit yourself to only thoseproducts mentioned. Think outside the box as to other software thatBayState might need.

system software

general purpose software

application specific software

System Software	General Purpose Software	Application Specific
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Use a second table to identify and explain the various elementsin the total cost of software ownership and then list the stepstaken by the CIO to limit the firm’s software TCO expenditures.

Elements of TCO	Explanation

Steps taken by the CIO for cost control:

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List the reasons why BayState Realty chose to go withoff-the-shelf software instead of developing their own softwarepackages in house.

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List the reasons why it makes sense to go with Linux in the datacenter. Be sure to include how this particular use of open sourcesoftware mitigates the risks typically associated with the choiceof an open source software product.

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Compare the advantages and the disadvantages associated withoutsourcing the hosting of the firm’s three Web sites.

Advantages	Disadvantages
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BayState Realty is one of the largest and most successful realestate agencies in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with over 370agents, a headquarters in the Back Bay of Boston and 12 regionaloffices across New England. The offices in Boston accommodate 280employees, including both agents and all of the firm’sadministrative and operational functions, like Accounting andInformation Technology, on three floors of a financial districthigh-rise. Each HQ employee has a wired workstation running on alocal area network (LAN). The LAN allows office access to commonservices and to share high-end printers, computer projectionsystems, and local data-back-up servers. Employees also use avariety of wide-area networks (WANs) to access corporateinformation systems as well as a rich body of documents,photographs, and property videos stored on BayState’s servers thatare hosted at the off sight, BayState Realty Data Center.

As part of day-to-day operations, the firm employs a customerrelationship management (CRM) system to maintain information on itshigh-end corporate and residential clients as well as potentialclients. The firm also maintains large, multi-media files ofphotographs, floor plans, and video tours for all of the propertiesit represents for its clients. In addition, the firm operates anInternet site to market its services to the public, an Extranetsite for the management of its commercial real estate business incollaboration with corporate partners and affiliations across theglobe, and an Intranet site as a knowledge repository for sharingreal estate selling and management best practices, and as a gatewayto many other firm-wide information resources.   Theculture at BayState is fast-paced but highly collaborative whichmeans that timely access to property information and relatedartifacts is essential for success.

Sally Smith is the chief information officer (CIO) forBayState.   In this role, Sally must ensure that firmemployees have access to all of the software required to enableBayState’s core business processes – i.e. working with customersaround the buying and selling, or the leasing and renting of eithercommercial or residential real estate. Though this software isessential to transacting, managing, and innovating within the firm,it is also viewed as an overhead cost. Therefore, part of Sally’sjob is to manage the total cost of the firm’s software ownership(TCO). To this end, Sally focuses on the procurement and deploymentof a limited set of well-established, off-the-shelf products inline with the needs of the organization. She also works to leverageopen source software products when it makes sense to do so.

For example, in terms of system software, BayState employees useonly Dell laptop and desktop computers running Microsoft’s Windowsoperating system. BayState (Dell) servers also run Microsoftoperating systems. However, she was obliged to add Android smartphones and tablets to this list at the insistence of the salesstaff. Cisco (network management) and Symantec (informationsecurity) software products are uniformly deployed to manageBayState networks and to protect the firm’s hardware platforms fromunauthorized intrusion, malware, and computer viruses. For generalpurpose software, Sally has again settled on Microsoft Office asthe firm’s suite of personal productivity tools, Internet Explorerfor Web browsing, Microsoft Outlook for e-mail, and MicrosoftSharePoint for Intranet and Extranet collaboration. These choicesallow Sally to negotiate favorable licensing terms with Microsoftfor the initial acquisition of products, to standardize andminimize implementation costs, and to limit firm investments inongoing staff training and product documentation and support. Atthe same time, her technical staff is experimenting with Linux asan open source alternative to Microsoft SQL Server within the DataCenter.

For the specific business functions of the firm, Sally’sinformation technology team has worked closely with theirline-of-business colleagues to select best-in-breed applicationspecific software. These software products include the CRM systemmentioned previously as well as an Accounting System, a HumanResource Management System, a Real Estate Sales Documentation andManagement System, a Rental Property Management System, and manyothers process-enabling application systems. In making thesechoices, the firm has focused first and foremost on the “fit” ofeach application specific product to ensure that it complements thefirm’s ongoing business process. Here choices are made to ensureboth proper alignment between the business and tis enablingsoftware and effective cost control. Sally and her colleagues haveresisted the temptation to customize these software products tobetter fit with the business. Instead, they have adapted the firm’sbusiness processes to make the best use of the software in questionand in so doing better control the TCO for that software.

More recently, the BayState IT team has taken a number of stepsto expand the software standards for the firm. As employees haveasked for smart phone and tablet computers, Sally’s team has workedto identify products that fit best within the overall embedded baseof BayState’s existing hardware and software acquisitions, thusminimizing integration costs for these new products. The IT staffmembers operating the firm’s data center have begun theimplementation of Linux (an open source software product) as theoperating system of choice for servers running shared applications,like Accounting, HR and CRM. Finally, Sally found that it made moresense for the firm to outsource the hosting of its Web sites to athird party because the hosting firm was better equipped for 24 X 7support of firm Web sites. The hosting company also enjoyed greatereconomies of scale in operating and maintaining BayState Realty’sWeb site platforms.