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Q2 How Can New Hardware Affect Competitive Strategies? 119

To put these sizes in perspective consider that Walmart stores about 2.5 PB worth of customer
2
1
data. Facebook processes about 600 TB each day, in a 300PB data warehouse. The super-secret
3
NSA data center in Utah is estimated to hold about 12 EB of data. And Cisco estimates that annual
global Internet traffic volume will exceed 1 ZB by the end of 2016. 4
Specifying Hardware with Computer Data Sizes

Buying hardware can be tricky Computer disk capacities are specified according to the amount of data they can contain. Thus,
and expensive, whether you a 500GB disk can contain up to 500GB of data and programs. There is some overhead, so it is not
are buying for business or for quite 500GB, but it’s close enough.
personal use. Consumers can
now check out a new computer at You can purchase computers with CPUs of different speeds. CPU speed is expressed in cy-
a traditional brick-and-mortar cles called hertz. In 2014, a slow personal computer had a speed of 2.8 Gigahertz. A fast personal
store and take the hardware for computer had a speed of 3.5+ Gigahertz, with dual processors. As predicted by Moore’s Law,
a test drive and then purchase CPU speeds continually increase.
online. Is this “showrooming” An employee who does only simple tasks such as word processing does not need a fast CPU;
ethical? Read the Ethics Guide on a 2.0 Gigahertz CPU will be fine. However, an employee who processes large, complicated spread-
pages 140–141 and decide.
sheets or who manipulates large database files or edits large picture, sound, or video files needs a fast
computer like a dual processor with 3.5 Gigahertz or more. Employees whose work requires them to
use many large applications at the same time need 8 GB or more of RAM. Others can do with less.
One last comment: The cache and main memory are volatile, meaning their contents are
lost when power is off. Magnetic and optical disks are nonvolatile, meaning their contents
survive when power is off. If you suddenly lose power, the contents of unsaved memory—say,
documents that have been altered—will be lost. Therefore, get into the habit of frequently (every
few minutes or so) saving documents or files that you are changing. Save your documents before
your roommate trips over the power cord.

Q2 How Can New Hardware Affect Competitive

Strategies?

Organizations are interested in new hardware because they represent potential opportunities, or
threats, to their ability to generate revenue. It’s important to keep an eye on new tech hardware
for the same reason you watch the weather forecast. You care about how the future will affect you.
Below we will look at three new hardware developments that have the potential to disrupt
existing organizations.

Internet of Things

The first disruptive force that has the power to change business is the Internet of Things (IoT).
This is the idea that objects are becoming connected to the Internet so they can interact with
other devices, applications, or services. Everyday objects are being embedded with hardware
capable of sensing, processing, and transmitting data. Objects can then connect to a network
and share data with any other application, service, or device.

1 SAS Institute Inc., “Big Data Meets Big Data Analytics,” SAS.com, accessed May 14, 2014, www.sas.com/
resources/whitepaper/wp_46345.pdf.
2 Pamela Vagata and Kevin Wilfong, “Scaling the Facebook Data Warehouse to 300 PB,” Facebook.com, accessed
May 14, 2014, https://code.facebook.com/posts/229861827208629/scaling-the-facebook-data-warehouse-to-300-pb.
3 Kashmir Hill, “Blueprints of NSA’s Ridiculously Expensive Data Center in Utah Suggest It Holds Less
Info than Thought,” Forbes.com, accessed May 14, 2014, www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/07/24/
blueprints-of-nsa-data-center-in-utah-suggest-its-storage-capacity-is-less-impressive-than-thought.
4 Cisco Systems, Inc., “Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2013–2018,”
Cisco.com, accessed May 14, 2014, www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/visual-
networking-index-vni/white_paper_c11-520862.html.