Information systems for business beyond free download

The technical terms are explained thoroughly and included in the Index for reference. The text was consistent and easy to follow. The Table of Contents and the Index added to the ease of reading. The chapters are divided into units that can be presented separately or together. The chapters can be read independently of each other so that they are easily assimilated into the course curriculum. The chapters are organized into units and are easy to follow.

If the information on a specific topic is needed, it is easy to find using the Index. The text is available in a downloadable full-text PDF format as well as a Flipbook. It was not clear if the text could be downloaded to a mobile device or cell phone. Navigating through the downloads was easy and the display of graphics was clear.

The exercises and examples used in the text seemed to be neutral in regard to race, ethnicity, and background. I did not find anything that was culturally insensitive. This text covers a broad introductory view of management information systems relevant to business majors. This text covers the basics found in other texts used but keeps to a high level view that works for an introductory audience that does not Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less.

This text covers the basics found in other texts used but keeps to a high level view that works for an introductory audience that does not require an in-depth understanding for their area of study.

The accuracy of the text is relevant to the time in which it was published. This book will need updates to certain chapters to keep in line as technologies change.

The historical parts of the text work but it will need necessary updates which should not be difficult to implement. The text is written in adequate context for the intended audience which is not highly technical. The concepts are explained appropriately. The less technical approach will assist in keeping the attention of those needing this overview of technology. The text is easily divisible into sections that can easily be separately assigned as a supplement to different topics throughout the course.

The organization of the text is presented clearly and in a logical fashion making the text easy to comprehend. The textbook is written at an introductory level which covers many basic and standard topics associated in information systems in the business space. The chapters are short, well organized, and clearly targeted for a student seeking to gain a The chapters are short, well organized, and clearly targeted for a student seeking to gain a general understanding of the basic concepts and terminology associated with technology in business.

The content does appear to be accurate and as expected from an introductory book, details on the subject matter are very much limited but it does give the reader a basic understanding of the material. Although some of the information presented in the book is dated, the basic underlying foundation of information systems is presented in a clear and concise manner. As is the case with technology changing so quickly, that as soon as it comes out in print, it is almost outdated.

Unfortunately, this is inherent in this industry. The presentation of the material lends itself for a student to easily gain an understanding of the terminology and basic concepts of information systems.

Overall, the information is written in a way that is clear and concise and should be an easy read for the students. The manner and layout in which the text and images is presented was consistent throughout the book. I did not find any distractors. The book is presented in a clear and well organized manner. The chapters build upon each other in a way that is appropriate and easily understood for an entry level book on information systems in business.

The topics are well organized and presented in a standard way which is typical of many textbooks are on information systems. Although some of the information is dated, it is presented in a clear and concise manner. As previously mentioned regarding dated information, some of the images are also dated.

This is an inherent problem in the information systems space since the information is constantly changing and in many cases, becomes almost obsolete just as soon as it becomes available for public consumption. I did not find anything that could be considered offensive or culturally insensitive. The book is culturally neutral which I have found is the case for most books on information systems and technology in general. This is a great introductory book in information systems for students who are looking for an understanding of the basic premises and terminology of technology and how it is used in business.

Highly recommended. Topics are not covered in great depth, however, this is acceptable since this textbook is geared to an introductory MIS course. The book lacks an index and a glossary. The content is up-to-date and the topics have a good introductory treatment. In-depth coverage has to be limited given the scope of the textbook.

Coverage of topics is provided at an appropriate level for an introductory MIS course. This breakdown is typical for introductory MIS textbooks. Within each chapter, subheadings are descriptive and appropriate. The chapters and sections within chapters are logical and easy to follow. They follow the common structure of MIS textbooks. Embedded links are very helpful, however, these may need to be updated frequently. It will be frustrating to students to follow a broken link. The included illustrations are clear.

Cons: Coverage of E-Commerce is a bit light, consisting of a few mentions and a definition. DSS and ERP are mentioned, but not knowledge systems or expert systems or transaction processing systems.

No index or glossary. Just a bibliography and answers to study questions. Pros: Author does a good job of explaining the difference between data and information, one of the primary reasons for information systems to exist. The security section is well done and comprehensive.

As a former developer, I thought the section on IS development was especially good, with clearer definitions and concepts than some commercial texts I have. It is great that it covers patent trolls when discussing intellectual property. This is a significant hurdle for any new technology entrepreneur. I've been involved in IS for over 30 years, and the treatment of the topics were accurate.

There was one use of Wikipedia as a source for the definition of an information system, yet it was used as one of several definitions from different sources to compare. Still, I would probably de-emphasize that in class. For textbook as old as this because technology moves very fast, an IS text just a few years old can be considered dated , it is surprisingly comprehensive, and prescient in a few places.

Some examples, both positive and negative: Cloud computing doesn't include much about modern cloud providers i. Amazon , yet it treats the topic accurately. This chapter would need to be supplemented by current cloud usage and trends.

Covers IPv6 which will be a hot topic in the near future, as well as IoT and driverless cars. I found it very easy to read and follow. There was the use of first person narrative in a couple of places early in the book, i. Not a major criticism - the meaning is clear. Formatting - sometimes the font size is reduced for a part of the page, maybe to make a paragraph fit on a page, but sometimes for no discernable reason.

It means some segments of a paragraph may be harder to read than other parts. Not a major criticism, but it affects the perception of quality. An instructor can supply the missing pieces if they know SQL. The book is very readable with reasonably short paragraphs and sidebars that are easy to digest. The subheadings are descriptive and helpful. The sections and chapters follow a common pattern and topic layout of similar information systems texts.

Embedded links: Use of hyperlinks in the text that take you to websites. I found at least one link that no longer works. I attempted to click on most all of them and most all of them worked fine. The risk is these links change or get removed at a future date, reducing the perceived quality of the text.

However, I don't see this as a major detriment to the text, since the links just enhance the information -- they are not required to be clicked on. I noticed no issues with cultural insensitivity. Cultural differences were cited as potential issues to overcome when using information systems for global business.

The end of chapter summaries and study questions are as a whole thoughtful and useful as a help to students to review key points of the chapter. Utilizes academic research well, and includes important publications like Carr's and Brynjolfsson's work.

I like the chapter dedicated to human roles in computing and information systems. I think it will help students map out goals toward a career in technology. Part 1 covers Information Systems IS broadly, touching on all the major aspects. Part 2 gets more into IS practices. Part 3 tackles the changing landscape of IS while re-emphasizing the timeless importance of certain principles such as ethics Part 3 tackles the changing landscape of IS while re-emphasizing the timeless importance of certain principles such as ethics and legal considerations.

Keeping up with changing terminology is tough in tech fields such as IS, but this book does an admirable job of it without sacrificing accurate with uncertain, emerging tech.

For example, the book uses established modern examples such as "flash drives". And a "modern laptop" illustration shows a recent-model Apple MacBook. The treatment on security describes well the modern approaches of RSA, firewall intrusion detection, and even mobile security, with citations from recent studies on same, such as a SANS study.

As a teacher of IS, I find this material highly relevant for any denizen of our tech society, regardless of their field of study or profession. Because of its separation of major topics "What is", "Strategic Advantage", "Beyond the Org" and its natural categorization within "Hardware", "Software", "Globalization", etc. This also makes it more readily updated as detail points develop further, e.

The book seems targeted at the lower-division college student—perfect for its presumed application as an introductory textbook for IS majors or those in related tech and business pursuits. As discussed previously, the book's division into major topics and natural categories makes modularity a breeze!

The book's flow of topics and categories is natural for IS, starting with computer system fundamentals and culminating in large-scale ethical and global considerations. Part 3 could use more framing of the relationships among these "beyond" topics. IS doesn't lend itself to culture-specific examples, and the book makes no overt references.

Relatively light in photographs only one with people! I've adopted this book as a free alternative edition in the class "Introduction to IS", which to date has required an expensive conventional printed textbook. This book compares very favorably, and I expect to drop required printed textbook in future terms. The textbook does cover the basic aspects of MIS that the commercial textbooks cover. Subjects such as hardware, software, databases, security, ethics and etc. One strength or weakness depending on your point of view is that the chapters are Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less.

One strength or weakness depending on your point of view is that the chapters are short. Unless our course is short or low credit you would need to supplement with other sources. The text is also from so it is showing its age. Blockchain and data science for example aren't covered. But the textbook that we currently use from a major publisher also does not cover them in much depth.

So this textbook is not really that different from an expensive alternative. But again it is a quick read. The book does seem to be accurate. But the things covered are usually pretty short. Just a paragraph or two are spent on a lot of subject.

Again that could be an advantage or a drawback depending on how you want to use the book. The author does introduce the more widely read ideas from MIS, He discusses Porter's five forces model and value chain. The author also mentions one of Brynjolfsson and McAfee's articles. While the author does represent them correctly the information is quite succinct.

The book is from so it is showing its age. Many things could be added to it. If you wanted to use a short textbook with the basics of databases and networking and then supplement it with new information and ideas I think that you could easily do that with this text.

The textbook is brief but the author does present the information in a way that should be very accessible for students. The fonts used and the paragraph spacing seem to change which I found a bit odd. But the layout of the chapters is consistent throughout the book.

You could easily use just certain chapters of this book. There is a chapter on hardware, one on software and another on security. So you could just assign those if you just needed something short on those aspects of IT. The topics covered and how they are presented are pretty standard. It follows many of the same design considerations of a commercial textbook on MIS. The textbook is well organized. One thing that I found disconcerting was that the font and the spacing seemed to change a lot.

One paragraph would be single spaced and then the next is more widely spaced and in a different font. The text covers many standard topics of information technology.

The chapters were well organized with a clear table of contents but no index of terms, topics. The content is accurate for However, technology changes so quickly that some of the information was quite dated.

As mentioned above - the content is a bit dated, since it was written in I'm not sure how a information technology text can stay relevant unless it is updated regularly. The topics are the standard topics presented in an introductory information technology book and are presented clearly, however, the information is dated.

The book is a comprehensive primer on Information Systems. It covers a range of essential technical topics including software, hardware, databases, networking, and security as well as business topics including people, processes, competitive It covers a range of essential technical topics including software, hardware, databases, networking, and security as well as business topics including people, processes, competitive advantage, globalization, and ethics.

It ends with a compelling look at what the future trends will likely be. As you might expect, information systems texts can age out quickly, so the publication date of means some of the content needs to be updated, including some cases. However, the foundation is very solid and much of the material is unaffected e. Likewise, some topics such as Big Data and Business Analytics have made great strides in technology and adoption since and would need refreshing in any new version.

Designed for the non-technical business student, the book flows well and clearly explains all acronyms and technical jargon in easy-to-understand terms. Chapter subsections have appropriate lengths and breakpoints, making it easy-to-read. A very minor point but since this is an ebook, having the chapter name and title in the header of each page makes for easier navigation; as-is, headers alternate between book title and chapter title.

The book is divided into two, logical sections: technical aspects Chapters and business aspects Chapters The transition from the first to the second in Chapter 7 is clear. The only consistent area for improvement is in some text formatting which is inconsistent in font type or size and many of the images which should be higher-resolution and have better placement, such as centering on the page. Overall, "Information Systems and Beyond" is relevant, logical, and well-written, making it a good candidate for an introductory MIS textbook for undergraduate business students who do not necessarily have a technical background.

If the book also had accompanying slides, I could see this giving some paid textbooks a run for their money! It starts with an effort of understanding the information systems by It starts with an effort of understanding the information systems by addressing different components of IS such as Hardware, Software, Database, Networking and Communication, and IS Security.

This textbook is certainly relevant. However, due to the nature of the content i. Effort of adding some current articles in order to stay up to date would be appreciated especially for the additional reading assigmnets. No inconsistency issues found in the textbook. The terminology was consistent and relevant to the subject matter. The chapter ware consistent in length. In terms of format, however, there are some rooms to be improved e.

This textbook is broken into 3 segment 6, 4, and 3 chapters each. With consistent structure of chapter i. Learning objective and Exercise questions are especially valuable for discussion. No navigation issues found. Adding glossary and index, however, would help readers locate important concepts more easily. The book's comprehensiveness is variable, presumably reflecting the interests of its author. I find that a plus in many ways. I like a book that reflects its author's personality and preferences, rather than being designed by a committee of I like a book that reflects its author's personality and preferences, rather than being designed by a committee of reviewers who will collectively make sure that it covers everything that any instructor could possibly want and is also twice as thick as any student can possibly stand.

That also makes it easier to decide if a book suits me or not: either its coverage matches my personal biases or it doesn't. This book gives job descriptions and career paths a chapter of their own, but gives CRM Customer Relationship Management a bit over four lines. For me, that's backwards, especially when 90 percent of the students who use this book won't be MIS majors, but for other instructors it may be just fine. It gives business processes a chapter of their own, but gives agile development ten lines.

You'll have to decide if its balance is right for you. I feel the book falls down in this regard when it comes to hardware. It has a generally-good discussion of the kinds of hardware students are already familiar with: desktops, laptops, tablets and so on.

It doesn't recognize that students are already familiar with this content, but that's a style issue rather than a comprehensiveness issue. However, it spends no time at all on kinds of computers that students don't already know about but should as entry-level professionals: from servers to supercomputers, other than a couple of references to mainframes in passing as something outdated.

Ask any user of IBM's z series how true that is. To my mind, it's more important to tell students something they don't already know than to confirm what they do know. I noticed only two real inaccuracies: 1. Processor speed is equated with clock rate. This ignores the effect of micro-architecture on how many clock cycles it takes to execute a typical instruction.

More importantly, it effectively ignores multi-core, multi-threaded processors. Cores get two lines p. They are a key element of processor architecture. Parallel conversion is mentioned p. This is not the case for online systems, where timing differences can affect results and where it is not practical to get customers to enter their transactions twice. This conventional wisdom has propagated from textbook to textbook without a reality check ever since online systems became the norm.

I am disappointed that it is still doing that today. There are a few situations where parallel conversion is viable. They involve internal systems such as financial accounting, where all users are internal and the sequence of activities can be controlled. I also felt that the software split into OS and applications is too simplistic. Applications are defined p. Later, compilers are grouped with applications, as are DBMS - even though both of these exist simply to develop or facilitate "real" applications.

I would vote for the traditional split into systems and application software here, with the OS considered a type of systems software but not the only type. Others may disagree with me, of course. It's certainly relevant. As for longevity: parts of the information systems field move so rapidly that no book can hope to remain current for more than a few years, even if it is up to the minute when first published. That said, its chapters on business processes, ethics and so on should stand the test of time fairly well.

I didn't notice any problems in consistency of content, except for the trivial one that mainframes are described as being from the ss in one place and from the s in a table right afterwards. Either way, they're described as being from when a reader's parents were in kindergarten. The point is the same whichever decade one picks. There is an issue, though, in consistency of approach.

Much of the content is written for the non-MIS major. For example, there's no need to go into database normalization for MIS majors; they'll take a full course on database management and will study it there. I would prefer to see the author take a position, one way or the other, on who his audience consists of and then write for that audience.

It is divided into modular chapters, with each chapter divided into major and minor sections. The section structure is difficult to follow, though: sections are not numbered in outline fashion, and section heading type size differences are not always obvious enough to serve that purpose.

The order is traditional for MIS books: start with an introductory chapter or two, continue with technology in the order hardware-software-database-telecoms, then talk about how systems are used and how they're developed, and wrap up with ethics and perhaps a look to the future.

Most MIS instructors are used to this organization and will feel comfortable with this book in that regard. There are no navigation issues, as the text doesn't really have navigation other than the standard PDF sidebar with chapter headings.

However, the reader interface is flawed by random jumps in type size sometimes within a paragraph; e. This is distracting. The book needs a thorough, careful going-over by an expert in Microsoft Word or whatever other package this book was created in. No problems here. Either the author knows how to write coherent English or he had a good copy editor. I can't tell which, but the end result is fine in this regard. It has few if any examples that involve people, so opportunities for cultural insensitivity aren't there.

The thorough attention it pays to ethical considerations is in its favor as regards cultural relevance. It's a short book, almost "Information Systems in a Nutshell. Part of the reason is that it doesn't spend much if any time on topics the author doesn't care much if anything about.

If your choice of topics matches those of this book, take a careful look at it. If you're teaching a quarter or two-credit course, take a look at it also: it's short enough for those without having to skip chapters or cover them too lightly. If neither or those is you, it may not be a good choice. This text does an excellent job of covering the broad range of topics essential to a beginning class in Information Systems. Ranging from concrete topics like Hardware, Software, Data, and Networking to softer topics like Business Processes, People in a typical organization, Globalization, and the Digital Divide.

The is well book organized using plenty of relevant pictures, charts, and tables to help make its points clear. As far as I could tell, this book ui accurate, error-free, and reasonably unbiased as of this review, late All written books age with time but this text seems relevant and up-to-date.

Special attention is paid to the role of databases. This chapter reviews the history of networking, how the Internet works, and the use of networks in organizations today. Different security technologies are reviewed, and the chapter concludes with a primer on personal information security. Can IT give a company a competitive advantage? This chapter discusses the seminal works by Brynjolfsson, Carr, and Porter as they relate to IT and competitive advantage.

This chapter will discuss business process management, business process reengineering, and ERP systems. This includes people who create information systems, those who operate and administer information systems, those who manage information systems, and those who use information systems. This chapter will look at the impact that the Internet is having on the globalization of business and the issues that firms must face because of it. It will also cover the concept of the digital divide and some of the steps being taken to alleviate it.

This chapter will discuss the effects that these new capabilities have had and the legal and regulatory changes that have been put in place in response. From wearable technology to 3-D printing, this chapter will provide a look forward to what the next few years will bring. Information Systems for Business and Beyond was written by Dr. Since then, it has been accessed thousands of time and used in many courses worldwide. This update to the textbook brings it up to date and adds many new topics.

True to its open textbook roots, many of the updates have come from the community of instructors and practitioners who are passionate about information systems. Smith Ph. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4. Bourgeois, David T. Open Textbooks. Read Online.