Information Systems: Foundation of E-Business International Edition, Paperback Book, By: Steven Alter

THE REALITY BEHIND SYSTEM SUCCESS.Steven Alter's Information Systems: Foundation of E-Business, fourth edition, emphasizes the essential role information systems play in today's successful businesses. Viewing information systems from a business perspective, is essential for understanding how e-commerce and e-business really work and for appreciating why technology is not a magic bullet that solves all problems. Most current business practices rely on IT, but successful application of any technology involves much more than the technology itself. Today's managers need a way to understand and evaluate the impact and use of technology in their businesses. This book is an indispensable tool for business and IT students because it: *provides a rigorous, yet non-technical approach, that any manager, executive, or business professional can use to visualize and analyse system-related opportunities and problems that confront almost every company in today's economy. *presents a practical, straightforward approach for attaining business results, recognizing possibilities, and avoiding the wasted time and effort consumed by technology initiatives that never achieve their goals.*combines the vocabulary of today's technologies with problem solving tools and methods that business and IT students can continue to use in the future. About the Author: Steven Alter is Professor of Information Systems at the University of San Francisco. He holds a B.S. in Mathematics and Ph.D. in Management Science, both from MIT. While on the faculty of the University of Southern California, he revised his Ph.D. thesis and published it as Decision Support Systems: Current Practice and Continuing Challenges, one of the first books on this type of information system. Professor Alter's journal articles have appeared in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, MIS Quarterly, Communications of the ACM, Communications of AIS, TIMS Studies in Management Sciences, Interfaces, Data Processing, Futures, and The Futurist. Prior to joining the University of San Francisco, he served for eight years as a founding vice president of Cons ilium, Inc. (acquired by Applied Materials in 1998). He participated in building and implementing early versions of manufacturing software used by major semiconductor and electronics manufacturers in the United States, Europe, and Asia. His many roles included starting departments for customer service, documentation and training, technical support, and product management. Upon returning to academia he decided to work on a problem he observed in industry, the difficulty business people have in articulating what they expect from computerized systems and how these systems can or should be used to change the way work is done. His initial efforts in this area led to the 1992 publication of the first edition of this text. The subsequent editions have benefited from additional research on how business professionals understand information systems.