SAP and Is It Worth the Price?

So, I have been thinking lately about what kind of job I am going to do after I graduate from my university. I never really had any ideas of what kind of job I would do later on. I always feel that I am doing this day by day without even thinking what would my future looks like and how my study can lead me to become a bigger person. By writing this post, I want to share what my major has to offer and how promising it is in current economy. Well, first of all, information system is a very broad thing to be explained precisely, however, the general idea of information system is to organize a group of raw data in order to be processed or "executed," so that it will be useful and meaningful for common people. I always believe that my major would guarantee me a job after I graduate from university because of how "broad" and how important my discipline is, however, that might not be the case these days due to the fact that we are having a financial crisis in United States (which I hope will end soon). Nowadays there are a lot of companies that prefer to hire a Computer Science graduate than an Information System graduate since they feel that Computer Science graduate is the complete package, they can do the language, maintaining IT department, and database should not be a big deal for them to handle.

However, we there is this program that will make us Information System graduate has a more promising future than those Computer Science graduates. This software is SAP which stands for Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing. It was created by a company in Mannheim, Germany, the company states that "it is the world's largest inter-enterprise software company and the world's fourth-largest independent software supplier, overall." This software basically works as a database in which all the information and process of the organization being stored together, so that it would be much easier for the user to process all the data they needed. This program requires you to take additional courses in order to get the certificate, however, keep in mind that these courses are not easy and could be easily be one of the hardest courses you ever taken. So, what is the reward of taking all these hard courses? Well, people with SAP certificate have a higher overall salary than a "normal" Information System graduate. Based on Dhoho blog, the base salary for SAP analyst salary is anywhere between $125,000 to $150,000 per project. Dhoho blog also has some brief descriptions about the SAP certificate and how useful they are. On the other hand, based on Top 10 Jobs in Information Technology  article by Rachel Zupek, the “general” Information System major only falls around $75,000 per year. Looking at those data makes me more motivated to achieve my certificate for the SAP in San Francisco State University before I graduate. I am hoping that I will have better chance of getting a job in my discipline as a SAP analyst or manager with the certificate in my hand. In the end, getting a job requires good luck as well, so for those of you who are trying to get a job, I wish you luck and I hope this blog will help expand your knowledge about Information System. Below is a YouTube video that explains about SAP in a great detail, I hope you guys enjoy it.

E-Voting for Election Day? Why Not?

As you guys know yesterday was the Election Day and it was an intense fight between Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney. However, it turns out that Mr. Obama won yesterday election and will lead our country for four more years (Yay!). Even though I am not from United States and do not have the ability to vote, yet I do feel that Mr. Obama would be better choice for us. Obviously, I am here not to talk about my political stance, but instead there was one innovation from the Election Day that amazed me a little bit. They started to use E-Vote (Electric voting) to collect all of our votes which is very cool for me. This is actually my first time experiencing the Election Day here in United States, so I have no idea whether they already used electric vote or not last time. However, I do know that in my country (Indonesia), there is not such a thing, we still do it in a traditional way which use a sheet of paper that has a picture of the president we are voting for. It is amazing to see how fast the technology has grown, I wonder how Election Day would look like 24 year from now, and it must be really awesome. Prior to vote, the voters will receive a barcode in which they will need to swipe it to the computer which has the E-vote software in it. After that you will choose the candidate that you want to vote and then hand sign it at the very end. This software will only allow one vote each voter so that he or she will not be able to vote twice using different computers.  For those of you who wants to know more about how E-Vote works in a more detailed article you can read Internet-based and open source: How e-voting works around the globe article by Cyrus Farivar. It has a very detailed explanation about the history of this system and how it actually works.

Sadly though, every innovation must have pros and cons and yes, E-Vote has its own flaws as well, many people argue that the votes could be hacked or manipulated by someone that has the authorization to check the vote (Could e-Voting Machines in Election 2012 be Hacked? Yes. By Mark Clayton) which would be a very serious issue if there was anything like that on the Election Day. Furthermore, many experts believe that software bugs or malicious software can be another issue (Clayton), this software bugs will be able to get inside the system and alter the result of the vote which will become a major loss for the losing candidate and his or her supporter.

At this point, you guys might wonder what I am trying to say on this post. Well, as you guys already know, I am majoring in Information System and this should be a very interesting innovation for me, because it really giving my discipline more options in term of work-field. Like what I've told you guys above, we are anticipating that there might be a major flaw that need to be worked on and this is a good for Information System and Information Technology discipline because now the presidential office should hire someone that could work on the database to make it much more secure and solid. There should be a way that will prevent those votes to be hacked or even seen by anyone in the office.

There was another issue on this event which is the voting lines. There are many complains about how long the lines are, people talk about it on their Twitter, Facebook, or maybe blogs. There is an article in ABC News that talks about this issue," People in states like Florida and Ohio waited up to seven hours. In other states, there were shorter, though still-frustrating two-to three-hour waits. Some experts place the blame on high turnout, but many will tell you the culprit is technology -- failed and faulty e-voting machines." This lines show how people are aware of the possibility of faulty e-voting machines and this is a very great opportunity for those IT people to get a new job. I believe that with a better database and preparation system this issue should be able to be fixed.

Yet, with all those flaws that the system has, I still believe that E-Vote should be maintained and improved further, because technology is our future and I believe that E-Voting will change people perspective about the Election Day. I can recall seeing my parents avoiding the Election Day due to the fact that the process takes almost their whole day and I remember how my dad always babbling about how long it takes for us to know the result. E-Vote can be the solution for all the inefficiency; therefore, I believe that if we can figure out how to reduce the waiting line to the minimal limit and use a solid and advanced security system, there should be no reason for us not to like this innovation. Image if we have the capability to minimize all the Election Process to only five or ten minutes and by the end of the day we will be able to know the final result of the vote, it would be fantastic and I believe that it would increase the number of participants who use their right to vote.

Education path for Information System Descipline

I have been writing about Information System related topics for my blog posts and I hope by now some of you might find this discipline interesting or at least planning to get to know this study more than before. In this blog post, I would like to talk about what classes I took for my Associate Degree and what I am taking or planning to take in order to get my Bachelor degree in Information System.

Like what I have said in some of my posts, I started my study in City College of San Francisco majoring in Computer Information Science. I needed to take two Computer Science classes in which I could choose between three programming language which are C++, Java, or Visual Basic. Of course I have no right to force you guys to choose which language you should pick, but I believe before you take Java and Visual Basic you need to master C++ first. I believe that C++ is the basic of all languages, so that if you know how to work with C++, you should be able to learn other languages easily. I took Introduction to C++ which is CS 110A in City College and I took Intermediate level C++ which is CS 110B. These two classes are the foundation to my programming knowledge and I feel that it does not really necessary for Information System major to take the Advance level of C++ which is the CS 110C class, obviously because software programming is not the main focus in Information System. Furthermore, I also took Introduction to Information System (CS 101), this class teaches us all the basic things you should know about computer systems such as what is Gigabyte, Megabyte, and ASCII code, etc. Personally, I feel that this class is not that useful for those of you who have basic knowledge of computer and networking, sadly though this class is a requirement for those who want to transfer to CSU/UC. Other than those computer related classes, another required courses that I had to take was Microeconomics (ECON 3), Macroeconomics (ECON 1), Financial Accounting (ACCT 1), Managerial Accounting (ACCT 3), Statistics (ECON 5), Mathematics for Business (MATH 75), English classes, and elective general education courses. I cannot tell you much about these classes because I did not enjoy all those classes myself, one advice though, really spend your time studying ECON 5 and ACCT 1 because it will be very useful for you later on when you transfer to University. For those of you that currently studying in City College of San Francisco and planning to transfer to San Francisco State University majoring in Business Administration, Assist.org will really help you out.

After I got my Associate degree I transferred to San Francisco State University which I took Information System 350, Business 360, Marketing 431, and Decision Science 412. Many people believe that ISYS 350 is one of the hardest classes for Information System major because it covers a lot of stuffs related to programming language such as Java and C#. I believe that this difficulty happens due to fact that many people do not have a strong background on programming language when they get into their University. So that, I really encourage you guys to take some basic classes about programming language. Throughout summer I took Information System 363 and International Business 330. Well, ISYS 363 should be an easy class for those of you who have some experiences with Microsoft Excel and Access. However, for those of you who do not have any experiences before, this class could be challenging for you since you need to do A LOT of stuffs related to Microsoft Excel and Access. So, you might want to learn some basic knowledge about Excel and Access before taking this class in order to give you a head start, but I believe that you guys will have a fun time with this class since it is the basic of our discipline. On the other hand though, do not ever take IBUS 330 on summer, I repeat DO NOT. This class is hard enough on long semester due to how much time you need to spend for this class. It requires you to watch 90 minutes videos and you need to stop at some point of the video to take notes which will take A LOT of your time, so you guys better not take this class with other hard classes such as DS 412 and Finance 350. This semester I am taking English 414, Finance 350, Management 405, Information System 463, and Information System 464. I cannot tell you guys much yet about these classes because I have not done with them yet, but I will put it down later on when I am done with these classes. I am not sure yet which classes I will take next semester, but I need to finish up my Segment III General Education as soon as possible in order being able to graduate. For those of you who curios of the degree road-map of this major, you can see Degree Roadmap in Business Administration – Information System. This link has a complete guideline on which classes you should take and when the best time for you to take them is.

Well, of course people in Information System could work at any place they want because almost every company would need Information System on their system. For me, my dream is to work at a car dealership working on their database because like what I've told you guys many times my real passion is on automobiles or working on something related to car. My advice for you guys that want to the same education path as mine is that you need to realize what Information System really is – what will you guys do on the future and what kind of studies you need to take in order to accomplish your dream. I learn from my mistake in which I believe that because I love gaming and computer stuffs, Information System would be fun things for me to do, but later on I realize that my thought was wrong. Nevertheless though I still enjoy my major, yet it is not as easy as I thought it would be, I believe that Information System is one of the hardest branches in Business. You guys should check out the YouTube video that I provided, this video gives you guys those advises that you guys need in order to be able to succeed in this discipline.