The importance of market security research--Assignment代写范文

Assignment代写范文:“The importance of market security research”，这篇论文主要描述的是随着各行各业对于技术的需求，企业和组织对IT安全技术的部署的需求也在逐渐的增加，社会、政治、经济等等诸多的方面也都需要技术的支持，例如政治方面需要通过有效的技术支持，来应对恐怖活动、贸易壁垒以及税收政策的实施。

Demand for Technologies in Research department of industries have been witnessing exponential growth for past few years, owing to the increasing deployment of Technologies enabled business solution.

Giving brief overview of IT market on global as well as country tevel, the report thoroughly studies the importance of IT security market in all the countries studied. Various factors that will drive the IT security market in future have been comprehensively discussed in the report.

PESTEL stands for the Political, Economical, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal factors. ART will need to identify the PESTEL factors which influence its strategies and operations, and how these factors change over time.

Political factors include Inter-country or inter market relationship, political stability, government policy on foreign direct investment, terrorist activities, trade barriers and taxation policy. When a government changes its policy, ART may be given more opportunities or may face more threats.

Economical factors include general country economy, income level of citizens in a country, inflation, taxation rate and conditions within an industry which all affect ART in one way or another. For example, Starbucks has recently announced its closure of 600 outlets in the US and slowing down on its expansion plan. This is largely attributed to the recession in the US, and thus has caused the US citizens not being able to spend on buying luxury goods.

Social factors such as demographic factors like birth rate and aging population have significant impact on an ART's strategy. In many Asian countries, aging population has reduced the sales of an organisation producing infant products but it also has brought opportunities for an ART to sell new products,

Technological changes have altered the way ART operate. Advancement in telecommunication and Internet technologies have enabled firms to sell their products and offer their services online. For example, ART allows its customers to shop online. Technologies have become a threat to many businesses too. ART like Sony,

Intel, Nokia and Creative who operate within the high-tech industries, technological changes allow their competitors to create new products to replace theirs. This not only intensifies competition within the industries, these companies also 'retaliate' by investing enormously in their research hand development in order to stay competitive.

Environmental factors like increased awareness on issues of global warming and energy consumption has re-directed world's attention. As a result, firms are trying to be more environmental friendly by producing more environment-friendly products.

For firms that operate in multi-countries, they will need to observe legal requirements in different countries. These legislations include business law and employment law. There is an increasing trend that employment law in many countries especially the European countries has given more power to the employees. This has enabled employees to

exert more pressure on firms. For instance, employees are asking for less working hours, better pays and more benefits all of which will increase operating costs of firms.

Applied Research Technologies, Inc.

ART was one of the technology world emerging giants. The company had grown through the merger and acquisition of numerous technology-based industrial companies, acquired in the LBO buyout waves of the 1980s and 1990s.

By 2006, ART consisted of a portfolio of about 60 business units, each of which operated as a profit center. Total corporate revenue was $11 billion in 2006.1 Major divisions in the corporation included Healthcare (medical diagnostic equipment), Industrial Automation (robotics), Energy (extraction, conversion, and transportation solutions for the oil and gas industry-including the Water Management Division), and HV AC (Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning, including climate control solutions for residential, commercial, and industrial markets). Exhibit 1 shows the organization structure of the company.

STRETIGIC GROUP:-

Firms pursue cooperative agreements in order to gains fast access to new technologies or new markets, to benefit from economies of scale in joint research and/or production, to tap into sources of know-how located outside the boundaries of the firm, and to share the risks for, activities that are beyond the scope or capability of a single organization. (Powell, 1990).

Resources like financial, human, intangible, physical, organizational or technological. The rate and direction of a firm's growth is influences by how management conceptualizes the firm's resource base."

Acquisitions impact on dominant logic since management must learn and adapt its dominant logic to the new industry conditions it faces on entry. Core competencies evolve over time and acquisitions can help this evolution. Resource differences can lead to different ways that firms attempt to enter new markets. Parental resources or lack of them can constrain subsidiary development.

The company's success had been built on its innovative and entrepreneurial culture, coupled with a decentralized management philosophy. ART's vision statement, proudly displayed in almost every office and cubicle, stated: "We aim to change the world through innovation, and to grow our place in it through entrepreneurship."

Culture and Practices 文化与实践

ART was dedicated to supporting innovation not only with funding (the company's R&D

spending was double the rate for U.s. industrial companies), but also in itS practices, several of which were deeply embedded in the company's culture. ART encouraged employees to spend a half day each week "experimenting, brainstorming, and thinking outside the box." It was a practice that the company's visionary founder and current CEO, David Hall, referred to as "tinker time." He explained the concept:

Innovation and entrepreneurship are the twin engines driving this company. It's the reason we've ingrained "tinker time" in our culture...! expect all our managers, and particularly those on the front line, to create, promote, and back promising ideas. But we understand that when you go for the big leap, you won't always clear the bar. So there is no shame in failure when you are stretching for big objectives. Around here we routinely celebrate what we call "worthy attempts"- even when they are unsuccessful.

Knowledge sharing and dissemination was another key part of ART's business philosophy, and despite the high level of decentralization and profit accountability, technology and human capital were both widely shared among divisions. For example, experts in one division routinely served as advisors on project committees for other divisions, and it was not uncommon for employees to go "on loan" to help another unit with a promising product idea or technology.

The company also moved quickly to bring products to market. If an idea showed promise,

funding was usually available for small ''beta batch" productions, which often allowed market testing to achieve what was called "proof of concept" within ART. Once an innovation was proven, significant investment was quickly put behind it.

Objectives and Priorities 目标和重点

To infuse discipline into its decentralized organization, ART's top management set highly

aggressive performance objectives and tied executive compensation tightly to them. In 2006, as in any other year, each division was expected to deliver sales growth of 10%, pretax margins of 15%, and return on invested capital of 20%, referred to as the 10/15/20 Target. The belief that innovative products were the source of the company's ongoing competitive advantage was reflected in a companywide metric requiring 30% of each division's total sales come from products developed in the last four years.

Hall also continually emphasized that to be competitive, ART had to shorten the life cycle between a new technology's conception and its commercialization. In response, the company had introduced the "Fast Track Pipeline," a program that focused on the highest priority projects by providing them with additional resources and management attention. ART currently had 67 such projects in the pipeline, six in the Water Division, but none in the Filtration Unit. (The mini oxidation unit had not been identified as a "Fast Track" project).

In the late 1990s, Hall began pushing to grow ART's global presence. "It's important not just to expand our market access, but also to broaden our talent. access," "he insisted." "Innovation and entrepreneurship know no national boundaries." In the quest to meet this challenge "to attract the best and the brightest wherever they live," in 2000, the corporate R&D group opened the India Technical Center (ITC)-a substantial operation that Hall hoped would become a model for other R&D centers he planned to open up around the globe.

The Filtration Business Unit 过滤业务单元

The Filtration Unit was part of a business ART acquired from an oil and gas services company in 1996. Its core product line was in mobile water treatment that allowed oil and gas exploration companies to meet government water recycling requirements at well heads and drilling sites. These products were still the unit's core line, but in the late 1990s, new competition from Chinese manufacturers had led to a commoditization of the business and an erosion of margins. ART's newly acquired filtration business had tried to develop the next generation of products and technologies, but after two high-profile new product failures, the unit had lost confidence. By 2006, it was losing about $6 million annually.

New Management, New Energy 新的管理，新能源

In a promotion from his role as a lab manager in the HV AC Division, the 32-year-old Vyas had assumed the role of business manager for the Filtration Unit in June 2001. He immediately confronted the unit's twin organizational problems of low morale and growing turnover, and in his first year, rebuilt the team by carefully selecting entrepreneurial-minded individuals to fill the vacancies left by turnover in the unit. One of his key recruits was Janice Wagner, whom he knew from her five years as a marketing manager in the HV AC Division. She was excited to join a unit that had an opportunity to develop a new business from scratch.

Convinced that survival depended on innovative growth, Vyas appointed a technology evaluation team early in his tenure, charging them with the responsibility to focus on technologies with the potential to turn the unit around. In one of his first reviews with that team, Vyas learned that for almost a year, the filtration unit had been working with ITC technicians on an exciting new technology the young Indian team had developed based on a license obtained from a Delhi-based start-up company. Developed as a potential solution to the widespread Third World problem of obtaining clean water in remote regions, this small-scale oxidation system was thought to have application in many less-developed markets. But in an effort to cut costs, the filtration unit's previous management had decided to abandon the collaboration a year earlier.

After reviewing the technology, Vyas became convinced that this had been a mistake and encouraged his evaluation team to pursue the project. Working closely with the ITC technologists, the team concluded that the oxidation technology was the most promising opportunity in their portfolio, and recommended developing a small-scale oxidation system that enabled waste-water disinfection in small batches. "We were so excited by that decision," said Div Verma, the ITC technologist in charge of the project. "We believe this project can make a huge difference to the lives of millions."

Motivated by the support they received, the ITC technicians developed a promising initial design. Without bulky equipment (the equipment was a 26-inch cube) or an electrical power source (it utilized battery power), this small system could transform waste water into potable water without chemicals in minutes. A single unit had the capacity to process approximately 2,000 liters of contaminated water per day. With pride, they took their design to Vyas.

But Vyas wanted to understand the business opportunity and asked Wagner to prepare a brief overview. Wagner learned that only about 2.5% of the world's water was fresh, and most of that was frozen. Population growth, industrial development, and agricultural expansion were all putting pressure on fresh-water supplies in both developed and developing countries. Indeed, the World Resources Institute found that demand for water was growing at twice the rate of the population. As a result, the World Health Organization estimated that over 1.1 billion people lacked access to clean water, and that 2.4 billion lacked access to basic sanitation. The research also revealed that water borne diseases accounted for 80% of infections in the developing world, and in 2002, 3.1 million deaths occurred (90% children) as a result of diarrheal diseases and malaria. As countries such as India and China industrialized, they used more fresh water and added more pollution to existing water sources.

Wagner concluded that the scarcity of clean water was reaching crisis levels in developing nations, and that the mini-oxidation system could help avert some of the catastrophic effects. But she also reported comparable R&D efforts also underway in the government and private sectors in China and Europe, and that several companies in the United States and Canada were researching the technology. Nevertheless, her analysis suggested the ITC team's product was further along and probably superior to anything else in the space.

New Opportunities, New Initiatives 新的机会，新的举措

Vyas decided to pursue the project and convinced the VP of Corporate R&D who had ITC oversight to allow the three ITC technologists working on it to become members of his technical team-a move that would allow them to focus on developing commercial designs for the oxidation technology. Simultaneously, he asked Wagner to do a first-cut market assessment to identify potential opportunities for the technology. Over the next few weeks, through focus groups and interviews with potential customers, she uncovered several promising applications.

But while the market research was exciting, progress in bringing a product to market proved to be slow and difficult. From January 2003 to February 2006, the technology team coordinated with separate manufacturing and marketing teams located in the United States to work through two complete cycles of product development, beta batch productions, and test marketing of two different versions of the mini-oxidation system. Both failed due to what were subsequently revealed to be defects in the design and lack of interest in the marketplace.

The first-generation product was aimed at the application for whim the technology was originally developed-to provide developing nations with safe drinking water. Largely supported by foreign aid, the mini-oxidation system was field-tested by representatives from funding agencies. Unfortunately, the output water had a detectable odor which the funders found unacceptable. Despite assurances that LTC technicians could fix the problem, the trials failed to convert into orders.

The team decided to refocus a second-generation product on specialized applications in Western countries where funding was more available. The plan was to develop a slightly modified version of the product and aim it at a potential market for military use and NGO disaster relief activities that Wagner had identified in her initial analysis. This decision was enormously disappointing to the Indian technologists who had developed the initial prototypes, and Vyas had to work hard to keep them on board. The second-generation product fixed the odor problem, but field trials showed that the solution caused the unit to consume too much power, requiring frequent battery replacement. Once again, no orders were forthcoming.

While these trials were -occurring, the filtration unit's small R&D team in the United States persuaded Vyas to allow them to work with corporate R&D on an entirely new version of the product that would utilize ultrasound waves for water disinfection. High frequency vibrations were shown to control the growth of algae, organic waste, and bacteria such as E. coli. Market applications for this technology included treatment for clean water storage receptacles, public/private ponds, fish

tanks, and ballast water. However, in 2006 this technology was still in the earliest stages' of research and testing.

New Oversight, New Discipline 新的监督，新的学科

In January 2006, just as Vyas and the rest of the mini-oxidation team were launching their second??generation system, Cynthia Jackson was appointed vice president of the Water Management Division. Jackson's attention was soon drawn to the troubled Filtration Unit which she felt needed to put much more rigor into the planning and analysis that supported their product development activities. According to Jackson:

Peter Vyas seems to be an excellent talent manager. He was able to recruit and retain good people to his unit, and then build them into highly motivated teams on two different continents. He's also shown himself to be an outstanding advocate for the group's ideas skilled at managing upward, gaining support, and running interference so his team can concentrate on the task at hand. And I'm aware that the company has high hopes for the Filtration Unit, but the results just are not there.

In my view, the unit lacks discipline. They had a promising technology that was in search of a market, but had not done the work to nail down either. In the first meeting I had with them I explained that they would be developing any future proposals using a rigorous three-phase process linking market analysis and technological development to business planning.

In her first meeting with Vyas, Jackson also made it clear that the unit's continued existence was in jeopardy if they did not turn things around.

To coordinate the third launch of the mini-oxidation system, Vyas assembled a single six-person development team with representatives from various functions located in the United States and India. Because Janice Wagner had demonstrated strong project management skills, Vyas named her as the team leader. (Exhibit 3 details committee membership.) From the outset, the team was highly committed to the product and worked tirelessly to complete Jackson's three-phase process.

Wagner took the lead in preparing the Phase 1 requirement "to develop a general product concept supported by market research." Having learned that the unit lacked the expertise to sell to developing markets, governments, and NGOs, she decided to focus additional research on U.s. data that seemed to indicate strong potential for a residential water purification system. She also decided to see if opportunities might exist in domestic agricultural applications.

According to the Palmer Drought Index from April of 2006, 26% of the United States was considered in moderate to extreme drought conditions, and Wagner's research showed that low rainfall, high wind, and rapid population growth in the Western and Southeastern regions of the country caused a major water scarcity problem for these areas. The resulting government imposed water restrictions often led to severe limitations or outright bans of water used in residential landscape irrigation. Because re-use of waste water would serve conservation efforts while preserving residential landscaping, Wagner felt that the mini-oxidation system offered a perfect solution for the needs of homeowners in these drought-stricken areas. In addition, since the product would be used for irrigation and not for drinking water, the disinfection quality could be lowered and energy consumption would therefore be reduced compared to past product iterations.

Wagner's research on the U.s. water industry indicated that the domestic water-treatment

equipment market generated sales of over $9 billion. (Exhibit 4 provides selected data from the research.) Residential water treatment products ranged from water filters that reduced sediment, rust, and chlorine odor (average retail price $50) to systems that provided more comprehensive household water purification (retail price $1,500 to $3,000). The research also showed that in-ground sprinkler systems cost between $1,800 and $4,000, and after conducting some industry interviews and focus groups, Wagner felt this was a good barometer of what a homeowner was willing to pay for a lush, green lawn.

After discussing the product concept with the development committee members, the team

decided to recommend a retail price of $2,000 ($1,000 wholesale price) for a residential irrigation mini-oxidation system (RIMOS) capable of supporting a 10,000 square-foot lawn. Pricing for an agricultural irrigation large oxidation system (AILOS) would be significantly less on a per-acre basis, with details to be developed only after further research had been done. Wagner and Vyas compiled the data and product concept information in a formal proposal for Jackson to approve.

Jackson responded to the team's Phase 1 proposal with a flurry of questions and challenges. She highlighted the sparseness of concrete market numbers and their lack of data on target markets. And when the team floated the idea of designing a larger-scale agricultural version of the system, she asked them to think about whether that would stretch resources too thin. With the whole company under pressure to trim budgets, Jackson asked the team to consider reducing the project's costs by eliminating either the RIMOS or AILOS product. After some discussion, Vyas and his team agreed to focus future product development ':lnd marketing efforts on the RIMOS product for the U.s. market.

Having won the approval of Phase I, the team was now ready to begin the second phase of Jackson's product development process. This involved designing actual product specifications and determining how to do this within the $1,000 wholesale price point that the group had determined was appropriate. A working prototype was also to be created as part of this phase.

The team relied heavily on ITC expertise to adapt the existing product originally designed to provide potable water in remote locations, to one capable of processing wastewater for lawn irrigation. During this phase, several misunderstandings surfaced between team members in the United States and India. For example, Wagner became concerned when the Indian team repeatedly missed design deadlines she had requested. When she confronted Div Verma, the lab leader responsible for the project, he responded tersely:

Peter told us he wanted the new design to be flawless. 1 take that as my number one priority. We can't meet this deliverable without proper testing. Why is everything so rushed with you? If we don't have a perfect design, then we run the risk of failing a third time and that is not acceptable. My team will not provide designs for a prototype until we are sure that all the bugs have been worked out. We don't want to be involved in another failure.

Emphasizing the mandate to move quickly while ensuring product quality, Vyas mediated the disagreement by crafting a compromise that gave the Indian technical team a formaL schedule allowing them two weeks of extra testing time. "I felt there was a mix of disappointment and pride that had to be dealt with," said Vias. "1 also told Div thatthis third generation product would give us the credibility to return to the developing world project." Once the prototype was finished, the final designs and specs were again submitted for review.

Jackson was impressed by the attention to detail in this latest iteration, but wanted to ensure that the team was fully utilizing the internal expertise available at ART. With Jackson's help, Vyas tapped engineers and manufacturing managers from the HV AC and Healthcare Divisions who had expertise his team was lacking. He invited them to join his development team, and they quickly became deeply engaged in the project. They identified several design changes and production specifications that increased efficiency and lowered manufacturing costs.

The development of the business plan was the most difficult phase for Vyas and his team. They were unaccustomed to creating complex sales forecast models and cost estimates. But eventually they developed a detailed product concept, marketing approach, and manufacturing strategy for RIMOS, as well as sales forecasts, cost projections, and expense estimates. They also acknowledged that they still believed there was a significant market in water treatment for the developing world and in emergency relief work, but these future options had not been included in the current forecasts or business plan. They hoped to explore these with the help of the Oil and Gas Division which had excellent international contacts.

Jackson challenged the team's pro forma financials which she felt lacked the data to support their assumptions. She asked the team to perform additional due diligence and to justify their assumptions. She also pushed back on the projected sales assumptions and suggested that the proforma financials needed to be stress-tested. But after testing the analysis, Wagner felt her research was sound and was adamant about the size of the opportunity and their ability to capture the market.

Vyas stood by Wagner and also defended the financial data which he felt had been carefully developed by the manufacturing and technology experts. Exhibit 5 summarizes the team's sales and operating margin forecasts.

The team acknowledged that its assumptions relied on the ability to gain access to the HV AC Group's Residential Market Division. As Wagner pointed out, ART's norms encouraged them to take advantage of these types of synergies, and they had good contacts in the division. However, the HV AC Residential Market Division's senior executives had full discretion regarding the products distributed through its channels, and they had not yet made a formal decision about RIMOS.

Jackson also expressed her concerns with the $2,000 retail price point and pushed Vyas to clearly identify the risks associated with the plan. After further consideration, the team developed a risk assessment and response matrix, which they included in the business plan. The business plan revealed the need for $2 million in funding for beta batch production of RIM OS and the marketing budget to support its distribution and promotion.

Toward a Decision: Go or No Go?

An hour after receiving the investment proposal from his team, Vyas was still pacing back and forth trying to decide whether to support or reject their request for the $2 million in funding for RIMOS. He knew his development team was absolutely convinced it could succeed, but he also realized that the unit's existence and even his own career were being openly questioned.

Two floors above Vyas's office, Jacksol1 was"also contemplating the RIMOS project. HaviI)g, heard through the company grapevine that a funding request had been submitted to Vyas, she began to think about how she would handle the request if it was sent up to her. She had heard rumblings from other managers in her division that the Filtration Unit was a drain on division resources and that it was time to pull the plug on any additional funding.

As a newly promoted division VP, Jackson understood that her actions would be closely watched. She wanted to make sure she did not drop the ball.

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