“Honey, does this shirt make me look flat?”—Thomas Friedman

Module 2

            If my titles seem a little ridiculous I apologize, but for how many times Friedman refers to a flat world it seems a little redundant, and I would like to continue that redundancy.

            Workflow Software

            Workflow software is something that was developed back in the 90’s while the internet was on the rise. In its beginning stages it was mostly connected pc’s and emails and of course was a way to connect throughout a company or even just in the office. For example in a doctor’s office keeping patients files saved on a network computer hub other physicians and nurses can upload and download those files thus making the business practice in a health care center more efficient, and of course as the companies would expand so would this network of sharing, connecting and emailing. I mentioned a form of this in my last module as the company I work for is Lowes and we in fact have a similar sort of set up through our employee portal, Lowes.net. I mentioned a small portion of this run through IBM called connections, this program is very similar to Facebook in a way that I have my own profile and connect with anyone in the company and we also post project information for all employees to see through blogs and wiki’s. The other parts of Lowes.net help me manage my payroll, health care, job search, work list, and email’s and other Lowe’s news related articles are also posted there. Lowes.net is also interconnected with or genesis POS system so tracking and selling orders for customers can be taken care of in a somewhat seamless manner. We also have design tools to better serve our customers such as the deck building design tool, which with the right measurements, and what product the customer desires, we can design the deck, have a 3D rendering of the deck, and have a list of materials for the customer so they can have a price and location of all materials for them to purchase. Friedman mentions workflow software as being an unnoticed but revolutionary. I could not agree more because with my generation, this is something that we have always had but has developed and gotten better over time and I could not imagine not having these tools and using paper and snail mail.

Open Sourced Software

            Open sourced software (OSS) is also known as community-developed software, is a way for freelance engineers to collaborate and develop software. Truthfully anyone can add to this software and make it better a good example would be the operating system Linux. Linux has various flavors developed by a multitude of software geeks to create or better the platform. Basically online communities that come together and somewhat volunteer to create software and share it in what is called “freeware”. I didn’t know much of Linux or any OSS type software growing up, as I got older I heard more about it through learning about Linux and in today’s environment people use this to develop for android and the apple marketplace. I have since learned about a site called www.xda-developers.com/‎ and through this site there are blogs and wikis to teach me how to root my smart phone or tablet to better work for me. Again, I relate to this with my connections post, I find this very important with today’s life because we can constantly share and update this information where it will be always available.

Outsourcing

            Outsourcing is contracting out of a business process to a third party. I had known what outsourcing was but had to look up the definition to answer what outsourcing was. In Friedman’s book he goes on more in depth of explaining what outsourcing is by using India as an example, and that they train much of their population in school to learn these technical trades in computers and software IT. Thus, jobs had been outsourced to many Indians with their technical trade being in much use. This had been important because it has increased technical expansion in our world and flattening it even more. These are jobs that are in areas that are little known in the United States but specifically trained for in India and if you haven’t noticed by now whenever you make an IT phone call on one of your electronic products, more than likely that on the other line you are connected to a citizen in India. This also came to be more important during the Y2K bug was on the horizon, India had the man power and the knowledge to remedy the software glitch that could in theory crippled our computers because each computer at the time had its internal time clock to end on the eve of 12/31/99 and restart the next morning as 01/01/00 not reading it as the year 2000 but the year 1900. Thanks to outsourcing, what could have been crisis, had been avoided.