CHAPTER 5 "IT Infrastucture and Emerging Technologies"
5.1 IT Infrastructure
IT infrastructure includes investment in hardware, software, and services -such as consulting, education, and training- that are shared across the entire firm of across entire business units in the firm.
Defining IT Infrastructure
IT Infrastructure consists of a set of physical devices and software applications that are required to operate the entire enterprise. But IT infrastructure is also a set of firmwide services budgeted by management and comprising both human and technical capabilities.
Evolution of IT Infrastructure
There have been five stages in this evolution, each representing a different configuration of computing power and infrastructure elements. The five eras are:
- General-purpose mainframe and minicomputer era (1959 to present)
- Personal computer era (1981 to present)
- Client/server era (1983 to present)
- Enterprise computing era (1992 to present)
- Cloud and mobile computing era (2000 to present)
Technology Drivers of Infrastructure Evolution
The changes in IT infrastructure we have just described have resulted from developments in computer processing, memory chips, storage devices, telecommunications and networking hardware and software, and software design that have exponentially increased computing power while exponentially reducing costs. The most important developments are:
- Moore's Law and Microprocessing Power
- The Law of Mass Digital Storage
- Metcalfe's Law and Network Economics
- Declining Communications Costs and The Internet
- Standards and Network Effects
5.2 Infrastructure Components
IT infrastructure today is composed of seven major components. These components constitute investments that must be coordinated with one another to provide the firm with a coherent infrastructure.
Computer Hardware Platforms
The marketplace for computer hardware has increasingly become concentrated in top firms such as IBM, HP, Dell, and Sun Microsystems, and three chip producers: Intel, AMD, and IBM. Mainframes have not disappeared. The mainframe market has actually grown steadily over the last decade, although the number of providers has dwindled to one: IBM.
Operating System Platforms
At the client level, 90 percent of PCs use some form of Microsoft Windows operating system to manage the resources and activities of the computer. However, there is now a much greater variety of operating systems than in the past, with new operating systems for computing on handheld mobile digital devices or cloud-connected computers.
Enterprise Software Applications
The largest providers of enterprise application software are SAP and Oracle. Also included in this category is middleware software supplied by vendors such as BEA for achieving firmwide integration by linking the firm's existing application systems.
Data Management and Storage
Enterprise database management software is responsible for organizing and managing the firm's data so they can be efficiently accessed and used. The leading database software providers are IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, and Sybase, which supply more than 90 percent of the U.S. database software marketplace.
Networking/Telecommunications Platforms
The leading networking hardware providers are Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent, Nortel, and Juniper Networks. Telecommunications platforms are typically provided by telecommunications/telephone services companies that offer voice and data connectivity, wide area networking, wireless services, and Internet access. Leading telecommunications service vendors include AT&T and Verizon.
Internet Platforms
The major Web software application development tools and suites are supplied by Microsoft, Oracle-Sun, and a host of independent software developers, including Adobe and Real Media.
Consulting and System Integration Services
Today, even a large firm does not have the staff, the skills, the budget, or the necessary experience to deploy and maintain its entire IT infrastructure. Software integration means ensuring the new infrastructure works with the firm's older, so-called legacy systems and ensuring the new elements of the infrastructure work with one another. Legacy systems are generally older transaction processing systems created for mainframe computers that continue to be used to avoid the high cost of replacing or redesigning them.
5.3 Contemporary Hardware Platform Trends
The exploding power of computer hardware and networking technology has dramatically changed how businesses organize their computing power, putting more of this power on networks and mobile handheld devices.
The Emerging Mobile Digital Platform
Chapter 1 pointed out that new mobile digital computing platforms have emerged as alternatives to PCs and larger computers. In a few years, smartphones, netbooks, and tablet computers will be the primary means of accessing the Internet, with business computing moving increasingly from PCs and desktop machines to these mobile devices.
Grid Computing
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. The business case for using grid computing involves cost savings, speed of computation, and agility.
Virtualization
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.
Business Benefits of Virtualization
By providing the ability to host multiple systems on a single physical machine, virtualization helps organizations increase equipment utilization rates, conserving data center space and energy usage. In addition to reducing hardware and power expenditures, virtualization allows businesses to run their legacy applications on older versions of an operating system on the same server as newer applications.
Cloud Computing
Cloud computing consists of three different types of services:
- Cloud infrastructure as a service
- Cloud platform as a service
- Cloud software as a service
A cloud can be private or public. A public cloud is maintained by an external service provider, such as Amazon Web Services, accessed through the Internet, and available to the general public. A private cloud is a proprietary network or a data center that ties together servers, storage, networks, data, and applications as a set of virtualized services that are shared by users inside a company.
Green Computing
Green computing, or green IT, refers to practices and technologies for designing, manufacturing, using, and disposing of computers, servers, and associated devices such as monitors, printers, storage devices, and networking and communications systems to minimize impact on the environment. Reducing computer power consumption has been a very high "green" priority.
Autonomic Computing
Autonomic computing is an 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.
High-Performance and Power-Saving Processors
Another way to reduce power requirements and hardware sprawl is to use more efficient and power-saving processors. A multicore processor is an integrated circuit to which two or more processor cores have been attached for enhanced performance, reduced power consumption, and more efficient simultaneous processing of multiple tasks.
5.4 Contemporary Software Platform Trends
There are four major themes in contemporary software platform evolution:
- Linux and open source software
- Java and Ajax
- Web services and service-oriented architecture
- Software outsourcing and cloud services
Linux and Open Source Software
Open source software is software produced by a community of several hundred thousand programmers around the world. According to the leading open source professional association, Opensource.org, open source software is free and can be modified by users.
Linux
Perhaps the most well known open source software is Linux, an operating system related to Unix. Linux applications are embedded in cell phones, smartphones, netbooks, and consumer electronics.
Software for The Web: Java and Ajax
Java is an operating system-independent, processor-independent, object-oriented programming language that has become the leading interactive environment for the Web. Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is another Web development technique for creating interactive Web applications that prevents all of this inconvenience.
Web Services and Service-Oriented Architecture
Web services refer to a set of loosely coupled software components that exchange information with each other using universal Web communication standards and languages. The foundation technology for Web services is XML, which stands for 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. The collection of Web services that are used to build a firm's software systems constitutes what is known as a service-oriented architecture. A service-oriented architecture (SOA) is set of self-contained services that communicate with each other to create a working software application.
Software Outsourcing and Cloud Services
There are three external sources for software:
- 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 outsourcing enables a firm to contract custom software development or maintenance of existing legacy programs to outside firms, which often operate offshore in low-wage areas of the world.
- Cloud-based software and the data it uses are hosted on powerful servers in massive data centers, and can be accessed with an Internet connection and standard Web browser.
- Individual users and entire companies mix and match these software components to create their own customized applications and to share information with others. The resulting software applications are called mashups. Apps are small pieces of software that run on the Internet, on your computer, or on your cell phone and are generally delivered over the Internet.
5.5 Management Issues
Creating and managing a coherent IT infrastructure raises multiple challenges.
Dealing With Platform and Infrastructure Change
As firms grow, they often quickly outgrow their infrastructure. As firms shrink, they can get stuck with excessive infrastructure purchased in better times. Scalability refers to the ability of a computer, product, or system to expand to serve a large number of users without breaking down. Firms using mobile computing and cloud computing platforms will require new policies and procedures for managing these platforms.
Management and Governance
A long-standing issues among information system managers and CEO's has been the question of who will control and manage the firm's IT infrastructure. Each organization will need to arrive at answers based on its own needs.
Making Wise Infrastructure Investment
IT infrastructure is a major investment for the firm. A related question is whether a firm should purchase and maintain its own IT infrastructure components or rent them from external suppliers, including those offering cloud services. The decision either to purchase your own IT assets or rent them from external providers is typically called the rent-versus-buy decision.
Total Cost of Ownership of Technology Assets
The total cost of ownership (TCO) model can be used to analyze these direct and indirect costs to help firms determine the actual cost of specific technology implementations.
Competitive Forces Model for IT Infrastructure Investment
- Market demand for your firm's services
- Your firm's business strategy
- Your firm's IT strategy, infrastructure, and cost
- Information technology assessment
- Competitor firm services
- Competitor firm IT infrastructure investments.
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source: "Management Information System" e-book, 12th edition, written by Kenneth C. Laudon and Jane P. Laudon.