Assignment One

Businesses need storage for their e-commerce website. Storage is important because it houses
website files, product data, transactional data, inventory, multimedia and customer information.
The amount of storage space depends on the amount of data to be stored and storage needs
increase as product listings and customer information increase.
The amount of capacity for a business depends on the following factors;
The number of products on display
The number and quality of product images, in most cases product images are under 200Kb to
make them easy to download in the customers browser.
The number of emails you wish to be stored on the server
Other content like videos among others.
For small businesses a storage capacity of between 500mb to 1 GB can suffice. This is important
in storing HTML files, java script and media files. Additionally, bandwidth is an important factor
to consider which is the amount of data that can be transmitted in a given amount of time.
ROLES OF SECONDARY STORAGE DEVICES
Secondary storage devices are storage devices not directly attached to a computers central
processing unit and they are always typically detachable. Such devices include external HDD,
NAS and SSDs, etc.
They normally possess large storage capacity than primary storage devices ensuring consistency
in storing large amounts of data arising from increasing customer enrollment thus providing
convenience.
Normally, businesses have important files in their data base that must be protected at all costs
from harm, malice and corruption for example business transaction history, customer transaction
history among others. Since secondary storage devices are not attached to the central processor
unit of the business computer system, backup and protection is provided for such files in case of
attacks from hackers and from other malicious software like viruses. Backup can be done in full
and incremental backups.
TYPES OF SOFTWARE THAT WILL BE NEEDED.
For business, a variety of softwares are needed and these include system software which runs and
manages hardware and provides a platform for running other softwares these include windows,
macOS, Linux etc.
Application software on the other hand enables the user to run other sophisticated functions such
as customer data analysis, transaction modelling and analysis among others.
Application software may include specialized software tools like;
e-commerce platform software. Includes specialized tools that enable businesses to market,
create, manage and sell products on-line. It provides features like customer transaction
management, inventory, product catalogs and customer relationship management. Examples of
such platforms include shopify, WooCommerce among others.
Database management software is basically important in storage, organization and data
management allowing businesses to create, protect, read and update data within a database while
maintaining data integrity and security. Examples of such data management systems include;
Relational data management systems which organize data into rows and columns allowing for
structured relationships between data elements. Examples include PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL
among others.
Hierarchical, network and object -oriented data bases in which hierarchal database’s structure
data in a tree like format, network databases create relationships between records in the parent-
child format, object -oriented databases represent business data inform of objects.
CHALLENGES AND CONSIDERATIONS RELATED TO DATA PERSISTENCE, CAPACITY
AND SOFTWARE SELECTION
Growing businesses normally are faced with large amounts of data which may lead to challenges
as discussed and hence require considerations;
Management challenges. Large amounts of data normally arise from heterogenous sources with
different formats and representations. Managing data normally includes tasks like cleaning,
transforming, dimension reduction etc. Therefore, considerations in the data management system
should be considered in that it should possess high performance and multidimensional
management tools.
Storage challenges. With increasing amount of data inflow, a challenge is posed where consistent
expansion of storage capacity of a business management system is required. Most times tangible
storage devices may not suffice as you consistently need to purchase these. Therefore an option
of cloud storage space may be considered as a means of storing large amounts of business data.
Processing challenges. In business, on time results matter, therefore if results are not generated
timely and accurately, they will be of least use. Therefore, business data may pose processing
challenges hence advanced indexing schemes like Fastbit and processing methods like map
reduce can be employed in business softwares.
Security challenges. As businesses grow to popularity, they attract malicious activities from
several sources, therefore business data must be protected with firewalls and antivirus softwares.
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