Rob Archer: Soft Serve or School?

Frey, Sherwood C., Brownlee, Richard and Yemen, Gerry, "Rob Archer: Soft Serve or School?" . Darden Case No.: UVA-G-0560-SSRN.

Abstract:

CASE SETTING: 1991; small; food and beverage; Charlottesville, VA

Rob Archer, a successful regional marketing and sales representative at IBM, is confronted with a difficult choice: to stay at IBM, to complete preparations for the start-up of his own business, or to accept admission into an MBA-degree program. IBM offers security, but comes with constraints. His own business would satisfy his entrepreneurial spirit, but is a risky and unproven business plan. An MBA degree would better prepare him for the long term, but would be a two-year interruption in his career. The perspectives and influences of his parents and of his partner compound the complexity of the decision. He has the weekend to decide because the director of Admissions at the business school is expecting a phone call on Monday. This case requires a blend of qualitative and quantitative analyses to be applied to an entrepreneur's decision-making process.

Facts on IBM Software

WebSphere refers to a brand of IBM software products, although the term also popularly refers to one specific product: WebSphere Application Server (WAS).

It has been repeatedly alleged that in 1997 the NSA had backdoored the export version of Notes, but this is a mis-characterization of what actually happened. Prior to that year, Lotus had been restricted from exporting software that used encryption keys that were longer than 40 bits by United States law. Under an agreement with the US government, Lotus was allowed to start exporting 64 bit keys, so long as 24 bits of each key were recoverable using a special key issued by Lotus to the NSA. The result was that the newer version of Lotus Notes provided stronger protection against industrial espionage than any previous version had been allowed to provide, and it provided no less protection against decryption by the NSA than the previous versions had given. (US export regulations were changed in 2001, so current versions of Lotus products are able to use longer keys and they no longer provide NSA with access to any key bits.)

Rose, a software modeling program, arose from a few engineers formerly at GE in Waukesha, Wisconsin. After Rational acquired the product, it moved much of the development to California.

This site is growing and will contain info on subjects like anti spam for lotus note, weblogic websphere and uml tools.