MIS COURSE: CHAPTER 5 IT INFRASTRUCTURE AND EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES Composed by DUONG TO DUNG, FEB 2019

CONTENT What is IT infrastructure and what are the stages and drives of IT infrastructure evolution? What are the components of IT infrastructure? What are the current trends in computer hardware platforms? What are the current trends in computer software platforms? What are the challenges of managing IT infrastructure and management solutions?

What is IT infrastructure and what are the stages and drives of IT infrastructure evolution? IT Infrastructure (ITI) is defined as the shared technology resources that provide the platform for the firm’s specific IS applications. Includes: investment in hardware, software, and services – such as consulting, education, training – that are shared across the entire firm or across entire business units in the firm. A firm’s ITI provides the foundation for serving customers, working with vendors, and managing internal firm business processes.

What is IT infrastructure and what are the stages and drives of IT infrastructure evolution? Technical perspective is defined as the shared technology resources that provide the platform for the firm’s specific information system applications. It consists of a set of physical devices and software applications that are required to operate the entire enterprise. Service perspective is defined as providing the foundation for serving customers, working with vendors, and managing internal firm business processes. In this sense, IT infrastructure focuses on the services provided by all the hardware and software. IT infrastructure is a set of firm-wide services budgeted by management and comprising both human and technical capabilities.

What is IT infrastructure and what are the stages and drives of IT infrastructure evolution? EVOLUTION OF ITI

What is IT infrastructure and what are the stages and drives of IT infrastructure evolution? EVOLUTION OF ITI

What is IT infrastructure and what are the stages and drives of IT infrastructure evolution? TECHNOLOGY DRIVERS OF ITI EVOLUTION + Moore’s Law and Microprocessing Power: (1) the power of microprocessors doubles every 18 months; (2) computing power doubles every 18 months; (3) the price of computing falls by half every 18 months. + The Law of Mass Digital Storage: the amount of digital info. is roughly doubling every year, and the cost storing digital info. is falling at an exponential rate of 100% a year. (p. 203) + Metcalfe’s Law and Network Economics: As the number of members in a network grows linearly, the value of the entire system grows exponentially and theoretically continues to grow forever as members increase. (Metcalfe's law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n2))

What is IT infrastructure and what are the stages and drives of IT infrastructure evolution? TECHNOLOGY DRIVERS OF ITI EVOLUTION + Declining Communication Costs and the Internet + Standards and Network Effects: Growing agreement in the technology industry to use computing and communication standards that define specifications that establish the compatibility of products and the ability to communicate in a network. Technology standards unleash powerful economies of scale and result in price declines as manufacturers focus on the products built to a single standard. Without economies of scale, computing of any sort would be far more expensive than is currently the case.

What are the components of IT infrastructure?

What are the current trends in computer hardware platforms? + The Mobile Digital Platform + Consumerization of IT and BYOD (bring your own device): those devices and services originated in the consumer market spreads into business organizations. + Quantum Computing: Gains enormous processing power through the ability to be in many different states at once, allowing it to perform multiple operations simultaneously and solve scientific and business problems millions of times faster than can be done today. + Virtualization: a process of presenting a set of computing resources so that they can all be accessed in ways that are not restricted by physical configuration or geographical location.

What are the current trends in computer hardware platforms? + Cloud Computing: A model of computing where firms and individuals obtain computing capacity, data storage, and software applications over the Internet, rather than purchasing their own hardware and software. Data are stored on powerful servers in massive data centers, and can be accessed by anyone with an Internet connection and standard Web browser. Public clouds are maintained by external service providers while private clouds are restrained inside a proprietary network or a data center. * On-demand self-service * Ubiquitous network access * Location-independent resource pooling * Rapid elasticity: resources can be rapidly inc/dec * Measured service: charges are based on amount of resources actually used.

What are the current trends in computer hardware platforms? Cloud Computing consists of 3 different types of services: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS (p.215)

What are the current trends in computer hardware platforms? + Cloud Computing * Some drawbacks of cloud computing: data * Who are the “perfect” target users of cloud computing? * Hybrid-cloud computing model. + Green Computing: Businesses can minimize their impact on the environment by adopting better practices and technologies for designing, manufacturing, using, and disposing of computers, servers, and other computing devices. Reducing power consumption in data server centers is the leading practice in the green computing movement. + High-Performance and Power-Saving Processors: multi-core processors: an integrated circuit to which 2 or more processor cores attached for enhanced performance, reduced power consumption, and more efficient multitasks.

What are the current trends in computer software platforms? + Open Source Software + Software for the Web: Java, HTML, HTML5 * Java: is used for building applications that run on the Web and HTML is used for creating Web pages. Java is an operating system that is processor-independent. Its object-oriented programming language has become the leading interactive programming environment for the Web. Java enables users to manipulate data on networked systems using Web browsers, reducing the need to write specialized software * HTML: is a page description language for specifying how text, graphics, video, and sound are placed on a Web page and for creating dynamic links to other Web pages and objects. HTML programs can be custom written, but they also can be created using the HTML authoring capabilities of Web browsers or of popular word processing, spreadsheet, data management, and presentation graphics software packages. HTML editors are more powerful HTML authoring tool programs for creating Web pages.

What are the current trends in computer software platforms?

What are the current trends in computer software platforms? + Open Source Software + Software for the Web: Java, HTML, HTML5 * Java * HTML * HTML5: makes it possible to embed images, audio, video, and other elements directly into a document without processor-intensive add-ons. It also makes it easier for Web pages to function across different display devices, including mobile devices as well as desktops, and it will support the storage of data offline for apps that run over the Web. Web pages will execute more quickly, and look like smartphone apps.

What are the current trends in computer software platforms? + Open Source Software + Software for the Web: Java, HTML, HTML5 + Web Services and Service-Oriented Architecture Web services offer a standardized alternative for dealing with integration across various computer platforms. Web services are loosely coupled software components based on XML and open Web standards that are not product specific and can work with any application software and operating system. They can be used as components of Web-based applications linking the systems of two different organizations or to link disparate systems of a single company. Web services are not tied to a particular operating system or programming language. Different applications can use them to communicate with one another in a standard way without time-consuming custom coding.

What are the current trends in computer software platforms? + Web Services and Service-Oriented Architecture Businesses use Web services to tie their Web sites with external Web sites creating an apparently seamless experience for users. The benefit derives from not having to re-create applications for each business partner or specific functions within a single company. (see Fig. 5.11 on p. 223) XML (Extensible Markup Language) provides a standard format for data exchange, enabling Web services to pass data from one process to another. It performs presentation, communication, and storage of data whereas HTML simply describes how data is presented on Web pages. XML allows computers to manipulate and interpret data automatically and perform operations on data without human intervention.

EXAMPLES OF HTML & XML

What are the current trends in computer software platforms? + Web Services and Service-Oriented Architecture SOA (Service Oriented Architecture): is a set of self-contained services that communicate with each other to create a working software application. It’s the collection of web services that are used to build a firm’s software systems constitutes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service-oriented_architecture + Software Outsourcing and Cloud Services: rent instead of buy, outsource instead of in-house build. * Software Packages and Enterprise Software * Software Outsouring * Cloud-based Software Services and Tools * Mashups and Apps

What are the current trends in computer software platforms? Mashups are new software applications and services based on combining different online software applications. Users create new software applications and services by combining different online software applications into a new application. The idea is to take different sources and produce a new work that is “greater than” the sum of its parts. Web mashups combine the capabilities of two or more online applications to create a kind of hybrid that provides more customer value than the original sources alone.

What are the current trends in computer software platforms? For example, Housingmaps.com is a mashup that applies real estate information, such as apartments for rent or homes for sale, from Craigslist to Google Maps. The end result is a system that lets you sort available apartments and homes by price and location. You can also see each listing marked on an interactive map, allowing you to quickly and efficiently browse your many options. These kinds of mashups are possible because a multitude of Web sites, including Craigslist, use open APIs (application programming interfaces) that let innovative programmers retrieve data easily from a site using a standard set of programming rules. Then, with a bit of brilliant coding, programmers can piece together mashups that display that site's data in a multitude of ways.

+ Dealing with Platform and Infrastructure Change What are the challenges of managing IT infrastructure and management solutions? + Dealing with Platform and Infrastructure Change * Scalability refers to the ability of a computer, product, or system to expand to serve a larger number of users without breaking down. * Compatibility + Management & Governance + Making Wise Infrastructure Investment * Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): model can be used to analyze the direct and indirect costs to help firms determine the actual cost of specific technology implementation. (Table 5.4 on p.228)

Competitive Forces Model for ITI Investment

REVIEW SUMMARY What is IT infrastructure and what are the stages and drives of IT infrastructure evolution? What are the components of IT infrastructure? What are the current trends in computer hardware platforms? What are the current trends in computer software platforms? What are the challenges of managing IT infrastructure and management solutions?

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