...HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE Hudson’s Bay Company and IBM: Virtual Blade Platform CASE 1 (a) What Is Server Virtualization? TAGS Computer utilization; data center servers; multiple operating systems; virtualization and data center capacity; economic and management results SUMMARY Server virtualization is a technique of optimizing computing resources by dividing individual physical servers into ‘virtual servers’ with their own environments and applications. It is one of the most common methods for companies to consolidate computing power, reduce costs, and become ‘greener’ as a result. The first video is a basic introduction to server virtualization. L=2:35. (b) Hudson’s Bay Company and IBM: Virtual Blade Systems Platform TAGS SUMMARY Strategic alliance with IBM; blade servers; SANS environment; Citrix; reduced “on the fly” maintenance; appliance computing; server consolidation; Director Software; predictive failure analysis; lower management costs Hudson’s Bay Company is a Canadian firm founded in 1670 as a fur trading company. Today Hudson’s Bay operates 500 stores, and is one of the largest retailers in Canada. The company turned to IBM’s virtualization platform to achieve cost savings, greater flexibility, and reliability, as it grew to provide customers with new services and products. L=7:21. First, watch the brief overview of virtualization, and then watch the IBM video about Hudson’s Bay Company and their experience with...
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...hypervisor doesn’t require much processing power to manage an operating system because each operating system is already aware of the demands the other operating systems are placing on the physical server. The third type of server virtualization is OS level virtualization. The OS level virtualization system does not use a hypervisor. Instead the virtualization is part of the operating system and it performs all the functions of a virtualization hypervisor. Because the virtualization is part of the operating system all servers must run the same operating system. Each virtual server remains independent of one another, but you can’t use various operating systems among them. Virtualization is very important to companies such as the Hudson’s Bay Company. Hudson’s Bay Company customer base is very large and required a system that would help them become more efficient. Virtualization helped HBC improve their overall efficiency by cutting technology cost and providing a means to store almost unlimited amounts of customer...
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...Saks Company Nordstrom DIRECT COMPETITOR COMPARISON Comparison Years Years HBC JWN M DDS Industry 2013 2012 2013 2012 Result Market Cap: 3.50B 13.73B 20.22B 4.52B 795.76M JWN Better Short-term Liquidity Employees: 29,000 62,500 172,500 21,600 5.00K JWN Better Current Ratio 1.14 1.13 2.20 2.33 N Qtrly Rev Growth (yoy): 0.87 0.06 0.03 - 0.07 HBC Better Quick Ratio 0.33 0.40 1.69 1.90 N Revenue (ttm): 7.02B 12.92B 28.02B 6.69B 954.90M M Better Days Receivable 0.00 0.01 69.32 71.91 S Gross Margin (ttm): N/A 0.37 0.40 0.37 0.46 M Better Days Inventory 150.77 142.42 61.59 58.83 N Oper Margins (ttm): 0.03 0.10 0.10 0.08 0.05 HBC Better Days Payables 25.41 20.88 60.16 59.55 S Net Income (ttm): 52.30M 728.00M 1.50B 316.10M - M Better EPS (ttm): 0.23 3.74 4.03 7.19 0.23 DDS Better Winner N P/E (ttm): 84.21 19.07 14.21 14.61 17.99 HBC Better PEG (5 yr expected): 1.26 1.83 0.98 0.98 1.13 JWN Better Profitabilty P/S (ttm): 0.49 1.07 0.69 0.69 0.81 JWN Better Sales Growth Years 2012-2013 1.1% 3.0% N Gross Profit % 40.6% 40.8% 38.8% 39.3% S Hudson's Bay Co (formely known as SAKs Inc)= HBC EBIT % 3.2% 3.4% 11.1% 11.5% N Nordstrom = JWN ...
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...The differences in conducting and operating business are very prominent but the end result in what they overall accomplished for their respective countries are very similar. The role one plays in a respective business can be very significant and allow them to achieve success and prosper. Jay Cooke and Donald Alexander Smith are two men who fall into this category, as the role they play in their businesses, Cooke and Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), throughout their career is different but very meaningful. Donald Alexander Smith began his career immediately by obtaining an apprenticeship clerk position at the Hudson’s Bay Company, where he later began to move up the positions in eventually becoming Chief Commissioner. Smith played a very vital role in the success of HBC when they were transferring territories of the company to the government of Canada, as he was appointed mediator in order to make the transition very smooth. After holding this position he continued to work diligently in negotiating and operating the land sales of the company, where he made his own fortune by...
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...Social Media Marketing Era. The following eras will be described using different business types to explain what companies did during the era; Production Era, Sales Era, Marketing Concept Era, Market Orientation Era, Customer Experience Management Era, and Social Media Marketing Era. The production era began in the mid 1800s and lasted for 60 years. The revolution of mass production began during this era and business’ main focus was on selling their products rather than satisfying customer needs (Crane, 2014). The Ford Motor Company played a big part in the production era, this is when Henry Ford introduced the first moving assembly line. The moving assembly line at the Ford Motor Company was able to to meet the ever growing demands of a motorized vehicle by producing one Model T vehicle every 24 seconds (History, 2009). The main focus of The Ford Motor Company was the amount of vehicles the assembly line could produce and sell; this was done by creating using production plants where the parts being used to produce the vehicles could be interchangeable on the assembly line, and the ability of the assembly line to move instead of being static. After the production era came the sales era, beginning in the 1920s and lasted until the 1960s. Industries, like the flour industry, were producing more than customers could consume and competition was growing (Crane, 2014). Companies like General Mills had to find ways to persuade customer to purchase their products. During sales era, General...
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...Demographic Segment * Population The percentage of urban residents was increased from 54% in 1941 to 81% in 2011. The most popular cities are Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. Montreal and Vancouver accounted for 35% of Canada’s population. Since more and more Canadians move from rural areas to urban areas, department store retailers can reach more customers if they open their stores in urban areas. * Age Structure Canada is facing population aging. In 2014, the median age of male Canadians was 40.4 years old and the median age of female Canadians was 42.9 years old. Moreover, it is reported by the latest population projections, the proportion of Canadian aged 65 years old and older will increase to 20.1% of Canada’s population in July, 2024. According to Sotheby’s International Realty, the average household income of baby boomers is from $300,000 to $500,000. After a lifetime hard work, they want to enjoy upper class lifestyles. Thus, baby boomers have the ability and motivation to purchase high-end brands. * Geographic Distribution In 2013, 86.2% of Canadians lived in Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, and Alberta. In 2015, there were 13,792,100 Canadians who lived in Ontario. Quebec had the second largest population size in 2015 at 8,263,600. British Columbia had the population size at 4,683,100 in 2015 and Albert had the population size at 4,196,500 in 2015. People live in Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, Alberta play a large part of the Canada’s entire...
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...Hudson’s Bay Company and IBM: Virtual Blade Platform Case Study Three types of sever virtualization Visualization uses special software called “hypervisor” which creates a layer and abstracts and interacts with the physical resources and reallocates them more efficiently. It serves as a platform for the virtual servers’ operating systems. The hypervisor keeps each virtual server independent and unaware of the other running servers. It monitors the physical server’s resources and relays its resources to the right virtual server. Due to their own processing need, physical servers need to reserve some power and resources to run the hypervisors’ application. That fact has an overall impact on the performance and speed of applications. Para-Virtualization: Unlike the normal virtualization process, the guest servers are now aware of one another. A hypervisor in a para-virtualization system doesn’t need that much power to get along with the additional guest operating systems. The whole system works as a coherent unit. OS- Virtualization: The OS approach is completely different with regard to the first ones. The OS-virtualization doesn’t use a hypervisor at all. The host OS performs all the functions of a virtualized hypervisor. The only condition is that all guest servers must possess the same OS. Each virtual server is independent from all the others but a mixture between the OS is not possible because all have to be homogenous. Importance of virtualization for...
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...Hudson’s Bay Company and IBM: Virtual Blade Platform Case Study Three types of sever virtualization Visualization uses special software called “hypervisor” which creates a layer and abstracts and interacts with the physical resources and reallocates them more efficiently. It serves as a platform for the virtual servers’ operating systems. The hypervisor keeps each virtual server independent and unaware of the other running servers. It monitors the physical server’s resources and relays its resources to the right virtual server. Due to their own processing need, physical servers need to reserve some power and resources to run the hypervisors’ application. That fact has an overall impact on the performance and speed of applications. Para-Virtualization: Unlike the normal virtualization process, the guest servers are now aware of one another. A hypervisor in a para-virtualization system doesn’t need that much power to get along with the additional guest operating systems. The whole system works as a coherent unit. OS- Virtualization: The OS approach is completely different with regard to the first ones. The OS-virtualization doesn’t use a hypervisor at all. The host OS performs all the functions of a virtualized hypervisor. The only condition is that all guest servers must possess the same OS. Each virtual server is independent from all the others but a mixture between the OS is not possible because all have to be homogenous. Importance of virtualization for...
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...– On May 2nd , 1670 , King Charles II allowed the group of Prince Rupert a monopoly to trade in the Hudson Bay drainage basin . – 1672 the company’s first public Sale of Furs was held at Garraway’s Coffee house . – 1690 Henry Kelsey embarked on a 2 years exploration journey that would make him the first white man to see the buffalo herd of the Prairies . – 1713 Treaty of Utrecht . France relinquishes all claims to Hudson bay , which again becomes a British possession . – 1745 British Parliament offers £ 20,000 for discovery of the North West Passage and £ 5,000 for reaching the North Pole . – 1754 Anthony Henday travels inland from York Factory to “draw down many of the natives to trade” . He passed Saskatchewan River as far as the Foothills and is the first to meet the Blackfoot tribes. – 1774 Samuel Hearne completes building of HBC’s first inland post , Cumberland House near pine Island Lake of the Saskatchewan. – 1779 North West Company (NWC) founded in Montreal as a seasonal partnership. The company becomes a permanent entity in 1783. – 1811 Thomas Douglas, Lord Selkirk, majority shareholder of HBC , purchased over 74 million acres in the Red River valley from the company for the sum of ten shillings. He planned to use the land to settle displaced Scottish highlanders, the first settlers arrived in the following year. – 1821 HBC , merhges with its main rival the NWC, based in montreal, and is granted a...
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...prohibits the Métis from selling their goods. They were ranged because that the only way for them to survive. They live off through trading and fishing. The European government are marginalising the Métis people because they don’t really care about the Métis and the aboriginal people. Confluent between the European power and the Métis started to oppose them. The seven oak was one of the events that happened that caused the Métis harm. Most of the Métis lived in Red River area. The land around Red River was HBC land and the NWC has posted there and people living in that area. Conflict arouse between the two major companies. The NWC was ordered to leave the area, which was claimed by the HBC, Métis who lived in the area and the North West Company was supplied with buffalo, then a proclamation banned sending goods from Red River and resulting the North West Company from resupplying its trading posts. The proclamation would result in violence. Then when no one wanted to move away they fought resulting many casualties. After the event, the remaining settlers left the area....
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...The winter Olympics occur every four years and it is an event very important to many Canadians. Many people attend the Olympics to support all the athletes that compete in the competition. For those who cannot be there in person but still want to support the athletes, they are able to donate by buying the Canadian Olympic Team Red Mittens. The mittens are produced by the Hudson’s Bay Company and are sold for about ten Canadian dollars. In order to raise more funds, the HBC created an advertisement that featured the mittens. The advertisement was effectively made by incorporating visual techniques, linguistic techniques and rhetorical appeals. To begin, the advertisement is able to attract more donators through the use of visual techniques like using a layout and foregrounding. Firstly, the layout helps to promote the message that the advertisement is trying to state. In the advertisement, the statement is posted on the left side and highlighted text and mittens are posted on the right side. In the studies of linguistics, there is a “distinction in sentences between what is given – what the hearer already knows about – and the new – what this sentence is adding” (Myers 139). Kress and van Leeuwen discovered that this concept is applied in advertisements by stating that “the expectation on the left is followed by the surprise on the right” (Myers 140). In this advertisement, the statement is the expectation and the mittens are the surprise. Secondly, the advertisement takes advantage...
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...While he left home to study in 1850, conflict was stirring between the Métis and the rest of Canada. Canada was pushing to acquire more land, looking to the west as the south was being annexed by the United States. The threat lessened when the Hudson’s Bay Company agree to sell their land . In the summer of 1869, the Canadian Government sent John Stoughton Dennis to the Red River to survey the land. Dennis was clearly unwelcomed by the Métis people which led him to survey Oak point instead. When Dennis returned with crew on October 11, 1869, eighteen Métis led by Louis Riel stopped the surveyors, and claimed that the Canadian Government had no right to act without their permission. This was the first act of resistance and it made Louis Riel a champion for Métis rights (ibid: Brown, Jennifer...
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...services that they provide. Order winners are issues that directly and significantly help products win orders in the marketplace. People buying the product or service regard such factors as key reasons for buying or using the product or service. An Order qualifier is the characteristic of a companies product or service which are set in order for a customer to consider the product or service for either purchase or use. The Order winner is what we would consider as the winning factor, giving that extra factor to win the customer or service over that of other competitors. Companies must provide qualifiers to enter the given market and become equally as good as the competitors in order to keep sales and service levels before being able to enter with a winner in order to be that one step above another competitor. “The success of a company depends greatly on Order-winner factor“ (Slack, Lewis 2008). It is one of the most important issues that pushes and persuades people to take or use a product or service from a company. The order winner issue tends to be at the top of the list for companies and the managers that make these strategic plans, because it seems to benefits the given company and increase sales / services However there is an ongoing debate as to whether Order Winners are more important than that of Order Qualifiers. his is usually when performance has been achieved, so on another note order winners are not anymore important than order qualifiers they are both...
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...Operations management is about the transformation of production and operational inputs into outputs, that when distributed meet the needs of the customer. One problem from accepting the Chinese department stores order is a risk of a fall in product quality the department store wanted a large order of an ‘exclusive range of products’. In the Chinese factory in 2010, the percentage of defective products had risen to 7.5% compared to 5% in the UK factories in 2005, an increase of 50%. This can be seen as a significant problem as there is a larger than previous risk of poor quality products which would go against the Chinese stores specification of an ‘exclusive range of products’ and could damage the relationship between the store and Burkinshaw. It could also result in no more orders from the store due to a lack of trust and reliability. Another problem of accepting the offer would be the rise in cost levels due to the large order of the products related and diseconomies of scale. In the Chinese factory in 2010 the total output had increased to 10 million units compared to the UK factory total of 6 million in 2005, an increase of 4 million. This can be seen as a problem for the business as due to the move to China there has been a significant increase in costs. Such as the marketing budget rising from £15million to £25million from 2005 to 2010. This therefore suggests that the business will have to find an acceptable balance between the quality of their produced products...
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...The method: Comparable company analysis While the DCF is based on fundamentals, the comparable companies’ analysis is rather a relative approach. This relative approach values the company based on the market valuation of similar companies. This method consists of a process used to evaluate the value of a company using the metrics of other businesses in the same industry. The comparable company analysis operates under the assumptions that similar companies share the same risks, growth profile and capital structure. The comparable company analysis starts with establishing a peer group consisting of similar companies in the same industry and region. Then, a group of measures of value is chosen from which valuation ratios will be calculated. The analysis uses the valuation ratio of a publicly traded company and applies that ratio to the company being valued. The valuation ratio typically expresses the valuation as a function of a measure of financial performance such as Revenue, EBITDA, EBIT or Earnings per Share; occasionally, operating metrics such as number of employees, customers or register users are used in valuation ratios. The valuation figure used generally reflects either the enterprise value or the value of the equity in the business. The equity value is usually represented by the share price. Selection of comparable companies to HBC HBC is in the retail industry, department stores and apparel stores in Canada through Hudson Bay’s Company and in the United States...
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