MIS Technology Briefing

When I first heard about the Technology briefing excercise in the MIS class, I wanted to do my assignment in ERP technologies, given my professional experience working as a Project Consultant in the implementation of ERP Business Solutions.

However, I soon understood that the real motive behind the Tech Briefing was to learn a new technology and relate it to the basics of Information Systems that we were learning in class. Almost immediately, the picture of my friends trading stocks online came to mind, and I realized that I had very little knowledge of how Online Trading in the Stock markets works. I was in awe of how a system dealing with as huge a quantum of data as it did, managed to function almost flawlessly, delivering results on demand with great accuracy and consistency.

This also fit well, with my long term career plan of working in Investments Management, where such systems were a key part of day-to-day functioning.

I shared my ideas with Jack and Saurabh, and we submitted a paper highlighting our interests, Online Trading being one of them. Throughout our research, we learnt that our limited understanding of Online Shares & Commodities Trading was just the tip of a giant Information System Iceberg, that churned out such an efficient end-result.

For instance, we did not know that Bloomberg had 2 million new visits each month to their news and information site; or that Citigroup had 1.6 trillion USD in assets and that if its Banking division were to be seperated as an independent entity, it would still figure in the world's top 10 largest firms. This and much more trivia made this team effort an interesting and rewarding one.