Page 538 - Using MIS

506 tHe InternatIonal DIMenSIon International MIS

make any decision otherwise. We chose English because it is a language that most business pro-
4
fessionals have in common.” For companies like this, standardizing on a language for database
contents is not a problem.
A single database is not possible, however, for companies that use multiple languages.
Such companies often decide to give up on the benefits of a single database to let divisions in
different countries use different databases, with data in local languages. For example, an in-
ternational manufacturer might allow a component manufacturing division in South Korea to
have a database in Korean and a final assembly division in Brazil to have a different database in
Portuguese. In this scenario, the company needs applications to export and import data among
the separate databases.
Besides language, performance is a second issue that confronts global databases. When using a
single database, data transmission speeds are often too slow to process data from a single geographic
location. If so, companies sometimes distribute their database to locations around the world.
Distributed database processing refers to the processing of a single database that resides
in multiple locations. If the distributed database contains copies of the same data items, it is
called a replicated database. If the distributed database does not contain copies of the same
data, but rather divides the database into nonoverlapping segments, it is called a partitioned
database. In most cases, querying either type of distributed database can improve performance
without too much development work. However, updating a replicated database so that changes
are correctly made to all copies of the data is full of challenges that require highly skilled person-
nel to solve. Still, companies like Amazon.com, which operates call centers in the United States,
India, and Ireland, have invested in applications that are able to successfully update distributed
databases worldwide. Given this infrastructure, Amazon.com then made this distributed data-
base technology available via its Web services, as you learned in Chapters 5 and 6. The cloud has
made the international distribution of data much easier.
Challenges of International Enterprise Applications?

As you learned in Chapter 7, workgroup business processes and functional applications support
particular activities within a single department or business activity. Because the systems oper-
ate independently, the organization suffers from islands of automation. Sales and marketing
data, for example, are not integrated with operations or manufacturing data.
You learned that many organizations eliminate the problems of information silos by creat-
ing enterprise systems. With international IS, however, such systems may not be worthwhile.

Advantages of Functional Systems

Lack of integration is disadvantageous in many situations, but it has advantages for international
organizations and international systems. For example, if an order-processing functional system
located in the United States is independent from the manufacturing systems located in Taiwan, it
becomes unnecessary to accommodate language, business, and cultural differences within a sin-
gle system. U.S. order-processing systems can operate in English and reflect the practices and cul-
ture of the United States. Taiwanese manufacturing information systems can operate in Chinese
and reflect the business practices and culture of Taiwan. As long as there is an adequate data
interface between the two systems, they can operate independently, sharing data when necessary.
Enterprise systems, such as ERP, solve the problems of data isolation by integrating data
into a database that provides a comprehensive and organization-wide view. However, as dis-
cussed in Q2, that advantage requires that the company standardize on a single language and,
most likely, place that database in a single location. Otherwise, separated, functional databases
are needed.

4 Private correspondence with the author, August 2011.