-
information technology (IT) infrastructure
- the
- shared technology resources that provide the platform for the firm’s
- specific information system applications
-
DEFINING IT INFRASTRUCTURE
- IT infrastructure consists of a set of physical devices and software applications
- that are required to operate the entire enterprise.
-
“service platform"
- perspective makes it easier to understand the
- business value provided by infrastructure investments. fast computer and internet for high earners to make them more productive.
-
There have been five stages
- general-purpose
- mainframe and minicomputer computing, personal computers, client/server
- networks, enterprise computing, and cloud and mobile computing.
-
mainframe
- support
- thousands of online remote terminals connected to the centralized mainframe
- using proprietary communication protocols and proprietary data lines.
-
minicomputers
- powerful machines at far
- lower prices than IBM mainframes, making possible decentralized computing,
- customized to the specific needs of individual departments or business units
- rather than time sharing on a single huge mainframe.
-
Wintel PC
- Windows operating system software on a computer with an Intel
- microprocessor
-
client/server computing
- desktop or laptop computers called clients are
- networked to powerful server computers that provide the client computers
- with a variety of services and capabilities.
-
multitiered
- (often called N-tier) client/server architectures
- in which the work of the entire network is balanced over several
- different levels of servers, depending on the kind of service being requested
-
Web server
- will serve a Web page to a client
- in response to a request for service. Web server software is responsible for
- locating and managing stored Web pages
-
application server.
- Application server software handles all
- application operations between a user and an organization’s back-end business
- systems. The application server may reside on the same computer as the Web
- server or on its own dedicated computer
-
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)
- networking
- standard to tie their disparate networks together
- Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)
-
Cloud computing
- a model of computing that provides access to a
- shared pool of computing resources (computers, storage, applications, and
- services), over a network, often the Internet
-
Moore’s Law.
- manufacturing costs per component (generally transistors) had doubled each
- year. Moore later
- reduced the rate of growth to a doubling every two years
- 18 months, memory doubles, price is in half, power doubles
-
Nanotechnology
- uses individual
- atoms and molecules to create computer chips and other devices that are
- thousands of times smaller than current technologies permit
-
increasing returns to scale
- network members receive as more and more
- people join the network. As the number of members in a network grows
- linearly, the value of the entire system grows exponentially and continues to
- grow forever as members increase.
-
declining
cost of communication
- both over the Internet and over telephone networks
- (which increasingly are based on the Internet). As communication costs fall
- toward a very small number and approach 0, utilization of communication and
- computing facilities explodes.
-
technology standards
- Technology
- standards are specifications that establish the compatibility of products and the
- ability to communicate in a network
-
Blade servers
- ultrathin computers consisting of a circuit board
- with processors, memory, and network connections that are stored in racks
-
Storage area networks (SANs)
- connect multiple storage
- devices on a separate high-speed network dedicated to storage. The SAN
- creates a large central pool of storage that can be rapidly accessed and shared
- by multiple servers.
-
Legacy systems
- older transaction processing systems created for mainframe computers
- that continue to be used to avoid the high cost of replacing or redesigning
- them
-
Grid computing
- involves connecting geographically remote computers into a
- single network to create a virtual supercomputer by combining the computational
- power of all computers on the grid
-
Virtualization
- is the process of presenting a set of computing resources
- (such as computing power or data storage) so that they can all be accessed in
- ways that are not restricted by physical configuration or geographic location
-
On-demand self-service
- Individuals can obtain computing capabilities
- such as server time or network storage on their own.
-
Ubiquitous network access:
- Individuals can use standard network and
- Internet devices, including mobile platforms, to access cloud resources
-
Location independent resource pooling:
- Computing resources are pooled
- to serve multiple users, with different virtual resources dynamically assigned
- according to user demand. The user generally does not know where the computing
- resources are located.
-
Rapid elasticity:
- Computing resources can be rapidly provisioned,
- increased, or decreased to meet changing user demand.
-
Measured service
- Charges for cloud resources are based on amount of
- resources actually used.
-
utility computing
billed on a monthly or annual subscription basis
-
on-demand computing
billed on a monthly or annual subscription basis
-
Green computing or green IT
- practices and technologies
- for designing, manufacturing, using, and disposing of computers,
- servers, and associated devices such as monitors, printers, storage devices, energy consumption
-
Autonomic computing
- industry-wide effort to develop systems that can configure themselves,
- optimize and tune themselves, heal themselves when broken, and protect
- themselves from outside intruders and self-destruction
-
Open source software
- software produced by a community of several
- hundred thousand programmers around the world
-
XML
- foundation technology for Web services
- Extensible Markup Language
-
Hypertext Markup Language
(HTML)
- is a page description language for specifying how text, graphics, video,
- and sound are placed on a Web page document
-
service oriented
architecture (SOA)
- self-contained services that
- communicate with each other to create a working software application
-
software package
- is a prewritten commercially available set of
- software programs that eliminates the need for a firm to write its own
- software programs for certain functions, such as payroll processing or order
- handling
-
software as a service (SaaS).
- users paying
- either on a subscription or per-transaction basis. Services for delivering and
- providing access to software remotely as a Web-based service
-
service level agreement
(SLA)
- SLA is a formal contract between customers and their service
- providers that defines the specific responsibilities of the service provider and the
- level of service expected by the customer
-
mashups
- Individual
- users and entire companies mix and match these software components to
- create their own customized applications and to share information with others
-
Scalability
- ability of a computer, product, or system to expand to
- serve a large number of users without breaking down
-
total cost of ownership (TCO)
- analyze
- these direct and indirect costs to help firms determine the actual cost of specific
- technology implementations
-
Market demand for your firm’s services
- Make an inventory of the services
- you currently provide to customers, suppliers, and employees. Survey each
- group, or hold focus groups to find out if the services you currently offer are
- meeting the needs of each group
-
Your firm’s business strategy.
- Analyze your firm’s five-year business strategy
- and try to assess what new services and capabilities will be required to achieve
- strategic goals.
-
Your firm’s IT strategy, infrastructure, and cost
- Examine your firm’s information
- technology plans for the next five years and assess its alignment with
- the firm’s business plans. Determine the total IT infrastructure costs
-
Information technology assessment
- Is your firm behind the technology
- curve or at the bleeding edge of information technology?
-
Competitor firm services
- Try to assess what technology services competitors
- offer to customers, suppliers, and employees
-
Competitor firm IT infrastructure investments
- Benchmark your expenditures
- for IT infrastructure against your competitors
-
field
- A grouping of characters into a word, a group of
- words, or a complete number (such as a person’s name or age)
-
record
- A group of related fields, such as the student’s name, the course taken,
- the date, and the grade, comprises
-
file
- a group of records of the same
- type is called
-
database.
A group of related files makes up
-
entity
- person, place, thing, or event on
- which we store and maintain information
-
attribute
- Each characteristic or quality
- describing a particular entity
-
data inconsistency
where the same attribute may have different values.
-
Program-data dependence
- coupling of data stored in files and the
- specific programs required to update and maintain those files such that changes
- in programs require changes to the data
-
database
- collection of data
- organized to serve many applications efficiently by centralizing the data and
- controlling redundant data
-
database management system (DBMS)
- is software that permits an
- organization to centralize data, manage them efficiently, and provide access
- to the stored data by application programs
- find gross pay, it finds it
-
relational DBMS
- Relational databases represent data as two-dimensional tables (called
- relations). Tables may be referred to as files. Each table contains data on an
- entity and its attributes
-
tuples
Rows are commonly referred to as records, or in very technical terms tuples
-
key field
- uniquely identifies
- each record so that the record can be retrieved, updated,
-
primary key
- This key field is the unique identifier for all the
- information in any row of the table and this primary key cannot be duplicated
-
object-oriented DBMS
- stores the data and procedures that act on those
- data as objects that can be automatically retrieved and shared
-
data definition
- capability to specify the structure of the content
- of the database. It would be used to create database tables and to define the
- characteristics of the fields in each table.
-
data dictionary
- automated or
- manual file that stores definitions of data elements and their characteristics
-
data manipulation language
that is used to add, change, delete, and retrieve the data in the database
-
The most prominent data manipulation language today
Structured Query Language, or SQL
-
normalization
- The process of creating small, stable, yet flexible and
- adaptive data structures from complex groups of data
-
referential integrity
- rules to
- ensure that relationships between coupled tables remain consistent
-
entity-relationship
diagram
- This diagram illustrates the relationship
- between the entities SUPPLIER, PART, LINE_ITEM, and ORDER
-
data warehouse
- is a database that stores current and historical data of
- potential interest to decision makers throughout the company
-
data mart
- subset of a data warehouse
- in which a summarized or highly focused portion of the organization’s
- data is placed in a separate database for a specific population of users
-
online analytical processing
(OLAP)
- OLAP supports multidimensional data analysis, enabling users to
- view the same data in different ways using multiple dimensions
-
Predictive analytics
- use data mining techniques, historical data, and assumptions
- about future conditions to predict outcomes of events, such as the probability
- a customer will respond to an offer or purchase a specific product
-
Text mining
- able to extract key elements from large unstructured data sets, discover
- patterns and relationships, and summarize the information
-
Web mining
- understand customer behavior, evaluate the effectiveness of a particular
- Web site, or quantify the success of a marketing campaign
-
database server
- In a client/server environment, the DBMS resides on a
- dedicated computer called a database server
-
information policy
- specifies the organization’s rules for sharing,
- disseminating, acquiring, standardizing, classifying, and inventorying information
-
Data administration
- is responsible for the specific
- policies and procedures through which data can be managed as an organizational
- resource
-
data governance
- deals with the policies and
- processes for managing the availability, usability, integrity, and security of the
- data employed in an enterprise, with special emphasis on promoting privacy,
- security, data quality, and compliance with government regulations.
- A large organization will also have a database design and management
-
data
quality audit
- which is a structured survey of the accuracy and level of
- completeness of the data in an information system
-
Data cleansing
- also known as data scrubbing, consists of activities for
- detecting and correcting data in a database that are incorrect, incomplete,
- improperly formatted, or redundant
-
network interface card (NIC).
- Most personal computers today have this card
- built into the motherboard. The connection medium for linking network
- components can be a telephone wire, coaxial cable, or radio signal
-
network operating system (NOS)
- routes and manages communications
- on the network and coordinates network resources
-
Hubs
- are very simple devices that connect network
- components, sending a packet of data to all other connected devices
-
switch
- has more intelligence than a hub and can filter and forward data to a specified
- destination on the network
-
router
- communications processor
- used to route packets of data through different networks, ensuring that the data
- sent gets to the correct address
-
Packet switching
- method of slicing digital messages into parcels called
- packets, sending the packets along different communication paths as they
- become available, and then reassembling the packets once they arrive at their
- destinations
-
protocol
- set of rules and procedures
- governing transmission of information between two points in a
- network
-
ransmission Control Protocol/
Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)
- support U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
- (DARPA) efforts to help scientists transmit data among different types of
- computers over long distances.
-
local area network
- is designed to connect personal computers and other digital devices
- within a half-mile or 500-meter radius
-
peer-to-peer
- processors equally and is used primarily in small networks
- with 10 or fewer users. The various computers on the network can exchange
- data by direct access and can share peripheral devices without going through a
- separate server
-
topology
- There are three major LAN topologies:
- star, bus, and ring, how they are connected together.
-
star topology
all devices on the network connect to a single hub
-
bus topology
- one station transmits signals, which travel in both
- directions along a single transmission segment
-
ring topology
- connects network components in a closed loop. Messages
- pass from computer to computer in only one direction around the loop,
-
Wide area networks (WANs)
- span broad geographical distances—entire
- regions, states, continents, or the entire globe
-
metropolitan area network (MAN)
- is a network that spans a
- metropolitan area, usually a city and its major suburbs
-
Twisted wire
- consists of strands of copper wire twisted in pairs and is an older
- type of transmission medium
-
Microwave
- transmit highfrequency
- radio signals through the atmosphere and are widely used for
- high-volume, long-distance, point-to-point communication
-
Internet Protocol (IP) address
- which currently is a 32-bit number represented
- by four strings of numbers ranging from 0 to 255 separated by periods
-
Domain Name System (DNS)
- converts domain names to IP
- addresses
-
domain name
- English-like name that corresponds to the
- unique 32-bit numeric IP address for each computer connected to the Internet
-
Internet2
- are consortia representing
- 200 universities, private businesses, and government agencies in the United
- States that are working on a new, robust, high-bandwidth version of the
- Internet
-
Telnet, File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
- services include e-mail, electronic discussion groups, chatting and
- instant messaging,
-
Unified communications
- integrates disparate channels for voice communications,
- data communications, instant messaging, e-mail, and electronic conferencing
- into a single experience where users can seamlessly switch back and
- forth between different communication modes
-
virtual private network (VPN)
- is a secure, encrypted, private network
- that has been configured within a public network to take advantage of the
- economies of scale and management facilities of large networks, such as the
- Internet (see Figure 7-12).
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