Analysis of Productivity Software for Amateur Soccer League: IT Report

This report delves into the application of information technology and productivity software within the context of a non-profit amateur soccer league. It begins by defining information technology and highlighting its role in data management and integration. The report identifies the need for productivity software to track participant information, manage budgets, and prepare promotional materials. Google Apps for Business is recommended as a suitable solution, with a detailed discussion of its advantages, including security, collaboration capabilities, and cost-effectiveness. The report further addresses the importance of monitoring the software to assess potential risks and the administrator's activities, proposing methods like antivirus/firewall implementation and usage checks. Finally, it outlines the process of evaluating the software's performance through various testing methods like load testing and stress testing. In conclusion, the report emphasizes the importance of IT solutions for efficient operation and recommends Google Apps as an effective tool for the soccer league.

Running head: FOUNDATIONS OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Foundations of Information Technology
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Discussion..................................................................................................................................2
1. Requirement of Productivity Software...............................................................................2
2. Purpose of the Software.....................................................................................................3
3. Monitoring of Software......................................................................................................4
4. Evaluation of Software Performance.................................................................................4
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................5
References..................................................................................................................................6

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Introduction
Information technology can be defined as the applications of various systems and
computers for the purpose of storing, transmitting, manipulating and retrieving the
information as well as data in any specific organization or company (Schwalbe 2015). This
information technology helps the proper integration of computer networks and database. An
amateur soccer league is being started and they require productivity software for keeping
track of the budget information and participants.
The following report outlines a brief discussion on the productivity software of the
soccer league. This league requires preparation about flyers. The proper requirement of
software, purpose of software, process for monitoring that software and the evaluation for the
software will be provided here.
Discussion
1. Requirement of Productivity Software
The productivity software is the application software that is dedicated for producing
various information like databases, presentations, electronic music, worksheets, graphs,
charts, digital video and the digital paintings (Lee, Barta and Juliff 2013). The productivity
software helps to increment the productivity for the office people right from the knowledge
workers to the typists. The core productivity software examples are the work processing,
programs of relational databases and spreadsheets. There are two types of categories for the
productivity software. They are the time management software and the project management
software. The non profit amateur soccer league requires any typical productivity software for
their business. There are various types of productivity software available in the market in
today’s world (Cataldo and Herbsleb 2013). The most popular productivity software for any

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organization mainly include Google Apps for Business, LibreOffice Productivity Suite, Open
Office, Microsoft Office, WordPerfect Office X5, Zoho, Quickoffice & OfficeSuite Pro5 and
PlusOffice Free 3.0. The perfect productivity software for the non profit amateur soccer
league is the Google Apps for Business (Meyer et al., 2014). The office suite of Google
involves a basic selection of the tools of office productivity. These office tools are the
updated Gmail versions, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Video, Google Docs and
Google Sites. Various options of pricing are available in the Google Apps. Moreover, the free
trial for restricted frame of time is also available with the Google Apps on the basis of
business size (Wiegers and Beatty 2013). The soccer league would be able to track their
participants as well as budget information by Google Apps software.
2. Purpose of the Software
The purpose of Google Apps is to track the participants and the information of budget
of the soccer league. There are various advantages of Google Apps productivity software.
The most significant advantages of this particular software are given below:
i) Maintaining Security: This is the most important advantage of Google Apps
software (Bilbao-Osorio, Dutta and Lanvin 2013). It is extremely secured and helps to
maintain the privacy and security of data. This is mainly because the data centres of Google
do not include the unnecessary software or hardware and thus the vulnerabilities are reduced.
Moreover, an extra layer of security is incorporated within the software for minimizing the
risks of hacking. Encryption is also present within Google Apps and thus intruding is
mitigated (Lindh and Nolin 2016). The security is extremely important for the budget
information in the non profit soccer league.
ii) Fostering Collaboration: This is the second advantage of Google Apps software. It
helps to foster collaboration and streamline all types of tasks.

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iii) Cost Effective: The third advantage of this software is that it is extremely cost
effective and does not incur huge costs or expenses.
The three basic requirements of the soccer league that is the tracking of participants,
budget and preparation of their flyers can be easily maintained with the help of this Google
Apps productivity software.
3. Monitoring of Software
Monitoring of any software is extremely important for any organization. The soccer
league should be able to monitor their software, Google Apps so that they can understand and
evaluate the probable risks and threats of software (Lee, Barta and Juliff 2013). Furthermore,
the activity of the administrator can be easily analyzed with the help of this software. It even
measures the collaboration of users and tracks the signing of their participants. The
monitoring of Google Apps can be done by two methods. The first method is by installing
and implementing antivirus or firewall within the software. This would check the
unauthenticated users and thus detect or block them completely. The second method is to
check the usage of the software (Wiegers and Beatty 2013). This means which participant is
utilizing how much data or CPU can be thoroughly checked by this method.
4. Evaluation of Software Performance
The productivity software, Google Apps for the soccer league should be evaluated
properly for understanding the performance of that software. This evaluation is done by a
specific performance testing. This type of testing is performed for determining the
performance of the system (Meyer et al., 2014). Moreover, the investigation, measurement,
validation or even verification of the software is done by this testing for knowing about the
reliability, scalability and the usage of the resources. This evaluation of Google Apps is done
by seven major types of testing. They are the load testing, stress testing soak testing, spike

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testing, configuration testing, isolation testing and internet testing. The most significant goals
of the performance include throughput, concurrency, response time of server, response time
of render, specifications of performance and many more (Brown and Hocutt 2015). The non
soccer league would be able to evaluate the performance of their software with the help of
this productivity software.
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above discussion it can be concluded that, information technology
is the application of several systems as well as computers for storage, transmission,
manipulation and retrieval of information and data within any particular company or
organization. It can be referred to as a basic subset of ICT. The significant integration of all
types of computer network as well as databases. A non profit amateur soccer league has
appointed a new manager for their productivity software. This is solely required to keep track
of the information related to budget and their participants. This report has discussed,
evaluated and recommended various options to their board of directors. Moreover, the
purpose and the monitoring of the productivity software are also given here.

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References
Bilbao-Osorio, B., Dutta, S. and Lanvin, B., 2013, April. The global information technology
report 2013. In World Economic Forum (pp. 1-383).
Brown, M.E. and Hocutt, D.L., 2015. Learning to use, useful for learning: a usability study of
Google apps for education. Journal of Usability Studies, 10(4), pp.160-181.
Cataldo, M. and Herbsleb, J.D., 2013. Coordination breakdowns and their impact on
development productivity and software failures. IEEE Transactions on Software
Engineering, 39(3), pp.343-360.
Lee, M., Barta, B.Z. and Juliff, P. eds., 2013. Software quality and productivity: theory,
practice, education and training. Springer.
Lindh, M. and Nolin, J., 2016. Information we collect: Surveillance and privacy in the
implementation of Google Apps for Education. European Educational Research
Journal, 15(6), pp.644-663.
Meyer, A.N., Fritz, T., Murphy, G.C. and Zimmermann, T., 2014, November. Software
developers' perceptions of productivity. In Proceedings of the 22nd ACM SIGSOFT
International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering (pp. 19-29). ACM.
Schwalbe, K., 2015. Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.
Wiegers, K. and Beatty, J., 2013. Software requirements. Pearson Education.