North South University

Department of BBA

MIS 205
Information Systems in Amazon.com
Computer and Information Systems
Course Code: MIS 205
Section: 07

ID Name
133 0225 030 Md. Tanver Hossain
133 1289 030 Mostafa Aziz Proteek
131 0134 630 Zawad Zafir
131 0614 630 Zakaria Zaman Tasin
111 0580 030 Md. Altaf Hossain

Submitted To
Md. Nabid Alam (Nba)
Lecturer, School of Business
North South University.

09 August, 2015

Page 2 of 12
 Table of Contents

i. Cover Page Page i

ii. Table of contents Page ii
iii. Executive Summary
Page iii
01. Introduction Page 5
02. Five Major Functions of those Information Systems Page 5
03. Business and information system at Amazon.com Page 5
04. The three major benefits of having that information systems Page 6
05. Inputs taken by AMAZON Page 6
06. Information Processing System of AMAZON Page 7
07. Output generated by AMAZON Page 7
08. Form of Web Technology Page 7
09. Contribution of Web Technologies in terms of Organizational Objective Page 8
10. Technical Understanding Page 8
11. Data Mining Page 8
12. Entities & Attributes Page 9
13. Five information system security threats that have negative impact in
the AMAZON’s system Page 10
14. Two threats those are most dangerous most likely to causes severe
damages for AMAZON Page 10
15. Suggestion for AMAZON security management tool that can prevent or
manage these threats Page 11
16. Concluding Remarks Page 12

Page 3 of 12
Executive Summary
The report is originated in result of our internet searching and other sources, which we have
done, as a requirement of Management Information System. In our report we explain briefly
about Amazon and its information system. On this report we are focusing on how
Amazon.com manages its information through various information systems. We are gathering
information by observing website, several information about online market and our own
thought about Amazon. At first we describe what are the major functions and the benefits of
the information system of Amazon, describe what are the main inputs, outputs and processing
procedure of Amazon. Then we have described about which form of web tech is being used
in information system and how the web tech is helping the information system to achieve
organizational objectives. Later on, we have discussed about the technical understanding of
the information system. What type of database and the database management packages are
used. We have also discussed about how data mining is helping this information system. And
lastly we discussed about the security of the information system, what could be the possible
threats for the information system and best security management tool to prevent those threats.

Page 4 of 12
Introduction
The company was founded in 1994, spurred by what Bezos called his "regret minimization
framework", which described his efforts to fend off any regrets for not participating sooner in
the Internet business boom during that time. In 1994, Bezos left his employment as vice-
president of D. E. Shaw & Co., a Wall Street firm, and moved to Seattle. He began to work
on a business plan for what would eventually become Amazon.com.

Bezos selected the name Amazon by looking through the dictionary, and settled on
"Amazon" because it was a place that was "exotic and different" just as he planned for his
store to be; the Amazon river, he noted was by far the "biggest" river in the world, and he
planned to make his store the biggest in the world.

Five Major Functions of those Information Systems

Input involves capturing and assembling elements that enter the system to be processed. For
example, AMZAON.com raw materials, data, energy.

Processing involves transformation processes that convert input into output. For example
AMAZON .com’s customer product selection, Customer orders, paying money.

Output involves transferring elements that have been produced by a transformation process
to their ultimate destination .For example AMAZON .com delivery product for customer
house.

Feedback is data about performance of a system. For example Amazon.com’s data about
sales performance are feedback to a sales manager.

Control involves monitoring and evaluating feedback to determine whether a system is

moving toward the achievement of its goal. The control function then make necessary
adjustments to systems input and processing components to ensure that it produces proper
output.

Business and information system at Amazon.com

Amazon.com uses two main systems which have been developed for its e-business strategy to
manage vast numbers of products and tens of millions of active customers. They have been
mainly used for renting space on its e platform to others.

AWS (Amazon web Services), announced on http://aws.amazon. com and

S3 (Simple Store Services), announced on http://aws.amazon.com/s3

Page 5 of 12
Amazon web service has allowed the partner retailers, the individual sellers and the
developers to advertise their products through the Amzazon.com web site by building their
web based applications in reliable and low cost way and gathering their web based
applications in a reliable, scalable and low cost way and gathering their data. At the same
time, Amazon.com has widened its data and robust infrastructure cheaply and easily by
releasing a variety of integrated web services. In addition, these services have provided
Amazon.com to monitor all activities to analyzing and making right decision for its global e
business.

The other system, simple storage services has been designed to make web scale computing
easier for the business partners and the developers by web service interface to keep and
receive any data, any tine from anywhere, S3 has also given Amazon.com the opportunity of
accessing the same data storage for running its global e business .it has known the world‘s
largest retailing data storage. Amazon.com has also built a system known as SAS (Smart
Analytic Search), to allow detecting and decreasing the examples of fraud in Amazon web
site by analyzing the behavioral patterns of fraudsters and designing the predictive scores.
The SAS also been designed for measuring the personalization of customers and analyzing
the effectiveness of how well Amazon.com serves its customers.

The three major benefits of having that information systems

 The shoppers are able to use the web site from anywhere at any time to buy a reliable
product by less price.
 The shoppers have more convenience to get more reliable information about products.
 The shoppers have the opportunity to search online catalogues without leaving their
homes or offices.
 It can be enhanced better communications between suppliers, sellers and shoppers.
 The Sellers and retailers can collect and delivered more information about shoppers.
 The retailer have the opportunity to minimize cost regarding to staff, cleaning,
building maintenance, rent, printing catalogues and so on.

Inputs taken by AMAZON

Amazon gets many types of information as input from various sectors of their business. They
are given below

 Inventory of their products

 Customer’s order
 Payment order
 Feedback from customers
 Feedback from their business partners

Page 6 of 12
  Customer information

Information Processing System of AMAZON

After taking inputs Amazon processes it to generate output. After getting orders from
customers processing system starts. It firstly check their inventory whether it’s available or
not. If not it notifies the customer. When they get payment order it firstly check whether the
credit card number is valid or not, then it connects with the respective bank to check whether
they have sufficient balance to make the purchase or not.

Output generated by AMAZON

 When customers browse their offerings it keeps track of the data and analyze it to
suggest them to make it more efficient.
 It also keeps the records of their previously viewed product so that customers can get
easy access.
 It also offers product comparison.
 When the payment is done Amazon provides confirmation message that their
purchase is complete.
 It also provides help regarding their ordering, payment and shipment systems.

Form of Web Technology

Amazon.com uses all the form of web technology, internet, and intranet, extranet. As
amazon.com is an E-commerce and cloud computing based company and it provides internet
based retailing product, so they use internet to communicate with customer. They are selling
retailed product All over the world through internet. Customers log into their website, select
products and add to cart for buying. They also use intranet for their internal communication.
The specialists and the organization managers are linked with each other and the prime
maintenance officer (PMO) always have the live observation power for observing the current
situation of the process through intranet software. All the process supply, storage, input in
online, to delivery, happens in Amazon.com's internal environment through intranet. They
also maintain communication with their suppliers and others. For this reason they established
software which works on the extranet technology. Amazon.com’s intellectual property
includes service marks, copyrights, patents, domain names, trade dress, trade secrets and
proprietary technologies. Based on customer shopping habits, it operates a powerful
recommendation engine that suggests products that customers will probably like but
otherwise would have gone unnoticed.

Page 7 of 12
Contribution of Web Technologies in terms of Organizational
Objective
Amazon.com's organizational objective was to be the largest Internet-based retailer in the
world. They already achieved that by the web technology. The internet technology helped
them to achieve their organizations objective. Amazon .com is popular for its variance and
superior quality product with fast delivering feature. In this regards, web technology showed
the path of fast, responsive, and high quality products with individual customer preferences.
It's created the new channels for interactive communication within amazon.com and its
stakeholders. Which continued the external communication with supplier, customer, idea
partners, and other external influences? Customer of amazon.com uses web technology to ask
question, evaluate product, request preferences, make and track their purchase. The
specialists and the organization managers used the internet and corporate intranet to maintain
contribution on effective response. As all the stakeholders are connected through internet, the
company maintained the commitment toward the customers, which surely showed the path of
success for achieving organizational objective.

Technical Understanding
Amazon.com uses the relational database management system, which is based on cloud. It
helps the customers and the employees to save time and cost. Which is creating a good
relationship with the stakeholders of the company? Amazon uses the EC2 (elastic compute
cloud) and EC2 reduces the time required to boot and create new servers instances to
minutes. , and allows you to develop the ability quickly, even up and down ability of your
computing needs.

Examples:

1. Inventory report: This database system gives both customers and employees the
inventory report of products. How many are still available. How many have been
sold. That way customers can put an order easily and employees can get a hold a of
their revenue at an ease.
2. Improvement report: In the start of every month it shows the performance of the
employees, the number of sales, the number of product left, the number of clicks or
views on the website etc. So it shows exactly in which sectors the Amazon needs to
improve.

Data Mining

Data mining is using the static data in data warehouse. By doing data mining amazon.com
can easily find the hidden patterns, can discover new trends, purchase behavior of existing
Page 8 of 12
customers, can attract new customers and even find out the problems they are facing in
current products. It can also help with seasonality. By doing data mining amazon.com can
provide their customers with more accuracy, which products are on demand by looking at the
trend and by looking at the seasonality they can easily forecast the demand of the products
and thus bring in the products accordingly. This will boost their profit and reduce cost
because of more accuracy in their forecasting. Example: During winter by looking at the data
of previous winter amazon.com will be forecast accurately which products sell. Such as:
jackets, hoodies, and gloves etc.

Entities & Attributes

1. Products:
I. Product code
II. Product name
III. Product Manufactured date
IV. Product expiry date
V. Product region

2. Employees:
I. Employee ID
II. Employee first name
III. Employee last name
IV. Employee hire date
V. Employee salary

3. Customers:
I. Customer ID
II. Customer first name
III. Customer last name
IV. Customer city
V. Customer time of purchase

4. Registration:
I. Registration number
II. Registration date
III. Registration term
IV. Registration status
V. Registration time

5. Inventory:
I. Quantity
II. Product codes

Page 9 of 12
 III. Shipped in date
IV. Delivery date
V. Inventory cost

Five information system security threats that have negative impact in

the AMAZON’s system
1) VIRUS THREATS: Virus is a kind of computer program that damage another
program and die with that program. This kind of program written to alter the way a
computer operates, without the permission or knowledge of the user. A virus mainly
replicates and executes itself.
2) SPYWARE THREATS: Spyware is a serious kind of threat for our information
system. It constantly monitor others online activity or install programs without user’s
consent for profit or capture personal information.
3) HACKER: Hackers are people not computer or any program. They actually create
computer security threats and malware. Hackers are programmers who victimize
others for their own gain by breaking into computer system to steal, change or destroy
information.
4) PHISHING THREATS: Phishing is attempting to steal sensitive information like
USERNAME, PASSWORD, and CREDIT CARD INFORMATION. It attack
network communication while user’s computer is connected to the network
5) USECURE WIRELESS ACCESS POINT: wireless access point like broad band
router that has not secured than one with any device like laptop mobile will be
connect to it and can access to internet and all other computer on the wireless
network.

Two threats those are most dangerous most likely to causes severe
damages for AMAZON
1) SPYWARE THREATS:
i) Monitor online activity and steal personal information that can be used for identity
theft.
ii) It can siphon our bank account information, credit card information to sell it to
another party or direct use them.
iii) Spyware can able to shut down all the systems and can permanently cause
damage of user’s files.
iv) Spyware have that ability to control user’s computer as a server. Then it can able
to install several unwanted programs in the computer and able to make the
computer as a vehicle for delivering malicious programs.
v) Spyware can change computer setting and reduce connection speed

Page 10 of 12
2) HACKER:
i) Hacker can hijack or change username and password.
ii) Steal money open or use credit card, bank information
iii) Steal, use or seal personal information
iv) Can make purchase by using credit card
v) Ruin credit
vi) Can able to install new program, delete files or change computer setting.
vii) Hackers have the ability to track user’s conversation.

Suggestion for AMAZON security management tool that can prevent

or manage these threats
 Amazon should install anti-virus and anti-spyware software, including spam filters,
and ensure they are turned on and updated regularly. Read more about how to secure
your computers using anti-virus and anti-spyware software.
 They should enable wireless or Wi-Fi network security and change the default
password immediately because most default passwords are well-known to hackers.
 Install a software firewall, normally included in IT security bundles or operating
systems.
 Choose strong passwords involving a combination of numbers and upper and lower
case letters. Change passwords regularly.
 Back up data regularly and store copies of backups off site.
 Allow only authorized staff to access IT data and systems.
 Put IT policies and procedures in place.
 Amazon should be careful about employees connecting portable devices to work
systems.
 Amazon should be alert for spam claiming to be from 'trusted' email senders - for
example, banks do not do business by email.
 Think before opening attachments or sharing information to ensure data protection.
 Store data carefully - choose who has access to it and decide what devices you allow
staff to connect to your network.
 Amazon should protect their website through strong password that only authentic
users can access the site.

Page 11 of 12
Concluding Remarks
Amazon offers the world’s biggest online book retailer by largest customer base over 30
million people. Besides selling books, Amazon diversifies itself by selling movies,
electronics, toys, and groceries. Amazon also generates some of revenue from other
marketing such as online advertising and credit card agreement. Amazon has organized
systems in two segments, which are North America and International. Websites are also
being individually focused for UK, Germany, France, Japan, Canada, China, and Italy. Other
than those countries, Amazon also provides them internationally shipping for some products.
Amazon succeeds in its online business, and gains more net incomes than some competitor
on ground such as Barnes and Noble, and Borders. Amazon’s e-business strategy is a
combination of products. The company started with online books then other products to gain
customers in a wide range. However, offering a large product variety, Amazon has still
maintained its strong brand.

Page 12 of 12