Reference no: EM132675438

Spacey Corporation (SpaceY) is a distribution of exotic steel, aluminium, and titanium alloys to the aerospace industry and to other specialty industries. These metals meet exceptionally exacting standards because they become parts in airplanes, rockets, industrial furnaces, mining equipment, deep sea drilling endeavours, and other high-performance products.

SpaceY sells raw materials produced in the form of bars, rods, sheets, filings, rings, and forgings. In turn, SpaceY customers use these materials to fabricate the final products. Many SpaceY customers are parts suppliers to end-product assemblers such as Boeing Aircraft, Lockheed Martin, Bombardier, Gulfstream, Cessna, etc.

SpaceY maintains a sales staff to sell these metals, and the company stores its products in seven warehouses throughout the country. They obtain their products from steel and metal manufacturers through North America. If a customer requests a product not carried by SpaceY, the company will special-order it from an appropriate supplier.

Currently, SpaceY's procurement, inventory, sales, and logistics process are primarily manual processes used with the aid of standard office productivity applications such as word processor, spreadsheet management, presentation tools, micro databases, etc.
Management is considering the potential of cloud computing services for automating the above-mentioned areas as well as standard office management functions.

Please answer the following questions:

1. Articulate the goal of the organization and the role of information systems in clear and concise manner;

2. Analyze the industry and competitive marketplace as well as identify the best competitive strategy to pursue given the company's strengths and weaknesses;

3. Compare and contrast the top two eCommerce business models (advantage and disadvantages) that may suit the overall objective identified in #1 above and recommend the best eCommerce business model based on your analysis.

4. Describe the nature, type, and role of each of the five components of information systems in supporting your recommended eCommerce business model to help the organization achieve its overall objectives; and

5. Recommend specific types of hardware, data storage, and networking requirements / technologies to support the effective deployment of the recommended eCommerce business model