Case study chapter 5

3.) Evaluate Merill Lynch's approach to Web services development. What are the advantages and disadvantages? Is it a good solution? Explain your answer.

Mr Crew seemed to have a clear undersatnding of what type of system the organization needed, he realized that there was not going to be a quick or cheap way to meet his goal. After looking into buying a premade system that would do the job he realized that it would not be worth it due to the amount of money it would cost to retrain all of there associates, it was estimated that it would have taken more than 1 year and over $80 million dollars, which was not feasable. So he decided that tehy would build a system from the ground up. This solution came with a list of issues as well when you copy data and move it from place to place many errors can occur and data can be lost. They ended up creating a new set of in-house proprietory tools that enabled there system to communicate with eachother cross functionally. I think that this was the right choice for Merill Lynch, when you have such a large organization to switch over a whole new system is usally very difficult. Since they had the man power and the knowledge to build there own system, I think it was a smart choice.


4.) Do you think that Merrill Lynch's decision to sell of its successful technology initiatives was a good idea? Why or Why not?

I think that it was a wise decision. They placed alot of money and manhours into building this new system, marketing it and making a profit seems like a a no brainer. They not only have the proof that the system is capable of providing support to a large order of buisness, but they also have it brand marked by their name. They have already used the system to gain thier competeive edge, and since they are the pioneers of the system they would be able to tweak it to there own advantage. Consumers may be able to purchase the program but Merill Lynch ultimately owns the programmer which is much more valuable.