Contracting for IT Software Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Contracting for IT Software - Case Study Example The SLOC is a method that plays a huge role in estimating project costs for both an existing program and a program that is yet to be built. This approach is more straightforward and less risky particularly when dealing with an existing project. Three types of SLOC methods are used in project costs estimation. These are the physical SLOC, physical carriage returns, and the Logical SLOC. The physical SLOC is the most common in the development cost estimation process (Sudhakar 80). In the application of physical SLOC, one has to express the physical length of the code used by a programmer as seen by a physical eye. That is, the user applies this method by counting the lines of source code with the exclusion of comments and blank segments. To facilitate the counting process, a user builds automated counters of the physical lines of code. It is vital to note that the use of function points is another crucial method used in the estimation of IT software project costs. Function point entails a unit of measure that is used to determine the quantity of operational or business functionalities within an information system. The function points provide a measure of a software size. In general, it measures the size of a software development project by quantifying the software functionalities required by the user on the basis of the logical design and functional specifications. The function points method plays a huge role in ensuring that there is a clear measure of a software system’s size and complexity to aid in determining its development cost. Here, one function point represents one user required business function (Mislick and Nussbaum 66). It is essential to clarify the function point method can be used in the following way to determine the development costs of a software project.

Google Search Engine Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Google Search Engine - Term Paper Example The MapReduce system indexes the pages that are later used to present information to the users and has been a major contributor to the success of the company. In September, 1998 a company named Google Inc. was launched in a garage by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They initially started working in their friend’s garage and within a span of just one year moved to an office with 8 employees. In 2004, Google was able to raise a massive sum of $1.67 billion dollars through its Initial Public Offering (IPO). (Schneider, 2012) It was a highly publicized event that caught everyone’s attention. As of now, Google has more than 20,000 employees worldwide that are stationed in various parts of the world, making sure that the company operates to provide its customers with valued services. The first international office of Google was opened in Tokyo, Japan in August 2001. This was a sign of how technology has shifted from west to east in the past decade. Far East is considered to be on e of the most tech-savvy regions of the world and the big minds at Google capitalized on this opportunity and went straight to Japan for their international expansion. (Google, 2012) In the same year as its IPO, it opened its R&D (Research and Development) centre in Japan to attract the brightest, innovative and qualified engineers from amongst the Japanese and other Asian countries. In 2007, Android was announced as the first open source platform for mobile devices. In January 2010, Nexus One was the first phone introduced by Google as its benchmark phone that was equipped with the Android operating software and enabled new dimensions for mobile phone users. (Google, 2012) Google’s mission statement from the very first day has been â€Å"to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful† (Schneider, 2012). It specializes in Internet Search, cloud computing and advertising technologies. Amongst its most famous products include Gma il (email service) and Google+ (a social networking service). Google Chrome, Picasa (photo organizing) and Android mobile operating system have been its recent success that has helped it take over the technological world. It has been roughly estimated that Google runs over one million servers in data centers around the world. (Pandia, 2007) The huge success rate of Google can be attributed to an intricate set of innovative processes. The â€Å"science driven PageRank algorithm† has generated excellent search results that have been able to attract millions of searches on a regular basis. Google has reported that it spends approximately 200 to 250 million US dollars annually on purchasing or revamping its IT equipment. (Pandia, 2007) This shows the extent to which Google is committed in improving its infrastructure to provide the most latest and up-to date services to its customers. Peter Hidas of the Gartner Group has concluded that based on the above figures Google is roughly the fourth largest server producer in the world trailing behind HP, Dell and IBM. He even went on to say that Google has surpassed Microsoft’s total servers, signifying the fact that Google has the capacity and ability to handle excessively large number of computers in parallel. Its technical solution has been a result of continuous innovation and thus is far ahead of its competitors. (Pandia, 2007) According to estimates by some Google engineers, Google is processing a massive sum of 20,000 terabytes of data on a