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Infrastructures: sustainable
technologies
Technical architecture refers to the structured process of designing and
building software architecture, with focus on interaction with software and
hardware developers. Technical architecture is a part of software
architecture, which focuses on how to deal with certain aspects of the
software engineering process. It allows us to design better systems by:
Meeting system requirements and objectives: Both functional and
non-functional requirements can be prioritized as "must have", "should
have" or "want", where "must have" identi#es properties that the system
must have in order to be acceptable. Architecture allows us to evaluate
and make tradeo&s among requirements of di&ering priority. Though
system qualities (also known as non-functional requirements) can be
compromised later in the development process, many will not be met if
not explicitly taken into account at the architectural level.
Enabling +exible partitioning of the system: A good architecture enables
+exible distribution of the system by allowing the system and its
constituent applications to be partitioned among processors in many
different ways without having to redesign the distributable component
parts. This requires careful attention to the distribution potential of
components early in the architectural design process.
Reducing cost of maintenance and evolution: Architecture can help
minimize the costs of maintaining and evolving a given system over its
entire lifetime by anticipating the main kinds of changes that will occur in
the system, ensuring that the system's overall design will facilitate such
changes, and localizing as far as possible the e&ects of such changes on
design documents, code, and other system work products. This can be
achieved by the minimization and control of subsystem
interdependencies.
Increasing reuse and integration with legacy and third party software: An
architecture may be designed to enable and facilitate the (re)use of
certain existing components, frameworks, class libraries, legacy or
third-party applications, etc…
SECTION 5.1 – MIS INFRASTRUCTURES
The Business Bene#ts of a Solid MIS Infrastructure
Supporting Operations: In formation MIS Infrastructure
5
CHAPTER
Supporting Change: Agile MIS Infrastructure
SECTION 5.2 – BUILDING SUSTAINABLE MIS INFRASTRUCTURES
MIS and the Environment
Supporting the Environment: Sustainable MIS Infrastructure
SECTION 5.1
mis infrastructures
This section emphasizes Information technology (IT) architecture lies at the
heart of most companies' operating capabilities. Changes in IT lead therefore
to fundamental changes in how businesses operate. Since many companies
depend on these technologies, no longer is IT simply nice to have; no longer
is IT just value-adding. It has become vital.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Learning Outcome 5.1: Explain MIS infrastructure and its three
primary types.
The three primary areas where enterprise architects focus when maintaining
a #rm’s MIS infrastructure are:
Supporting operations: Information MIS infrastructure identi#es where and
how important information, such as customer records, is maintained and
secured.
Supporting change: Agile MIS infrastructure includes the hardware,
software, and telecommunications equipment that, when combined,
provides the underlying foundation to support the organization’s goals.
Supporting the environment: Sustainable MIS infrastructure identi#es
ways that a company can grow in terms of computing resources while
simultaneously becoming less dependent on hardware and energy
consumption.
Learning Outcome 5.2: Identify the three primary areas associated
with an information MIS infrastructure.
The three primary areas an information infrastructure provides to support
continuous business operations are:
Backup and recovery: A backup is an exact copy of a system’s
information. Recovery is the ability to get a system up and running in the
event of a system crash or failure that includes restoring the information
backup.
Disaster recovery plan: This plan provides a detailed process for
recovering information or a system in the event of a catastrophic disaster.
Business continuity plan: This details how a company recovers and
restores critical business operations and systems after a disaster or
extended disruption.
Learning Outcome 5.3: Describe the characteristics of an agile MIS
infrastructure.
Accessibility refers to the varying levels that de#ne what a user can
access, view, or perform when operating a system.
Availability refers to the time frames when the system is operational.
Maintainability (or +exibility) refers to how quickly a system can transform
to support environmental changes.
Portability refers to the ability of an application to operate on di&erent
devices or software platforms, such as di&erent operating systems.
Reliability (or accuracy) ensures a system is functioning correctly and
providing accurate information.
Scalability describes how well a system can “scale up” or adapt to the
increased demands of growth.
Usability is the degree to which a system is easy to learn and e:cient and
satisfying to use.
CLASSROOM OPENER
Top Ten Data Failure Stories
1. PhD Almost an F - A PhD candidate lost his entire dissertation when a
bad power supply suddenly zapped his computer and damaged the USB
Flash drive that stored the document. Had the data not been recovered,
the student would not have graduated.
2. Su/ering from Art - While rearranging her home o:ce, a woman
accidentally dropped a #ve pound piece of clay pottery on her laptop,
directly onto the hard drive area that contained a book she'd been
working on for #ve years and 150 year-old genealogy pictures that had
not yet been printed.
3. Domestic Dilemma - A husband deleted all of his child's baby pictures
when he accidentally hit the wrong button on his computer. His wife
hinted at divorce if he did not get the pictures back.
4. Bite Worse than Bark - A customer left his memory stick lying out and
his dog mistook it for a chew toy.
5. Don't Try this at Home - A man attempting to recover data from his
computer on his own found the job too challenging mid-way through and
ended up sending Ontrack his completely disassembled drive - with each
of its parts in a separate baggie.
6. Out of Time - A clockmaker su&ered a system meltdown, losing the
digital designs for all of its clocks. Ontrack literally beat the clock
recovering all their data just in time for an important international
tradeshow.
7. Drilling for Data - During a multi-drive RAID recovery, engineers
discovered one drive belonging in the set was missing. The customer
found the missing drive in a dumpster, but in compliance with company
policy for disposing of old drives, it had a hole drilled through it.
8. Safe at Home - After one of their executives experienced a laptop crash,
the Minnesota Twins professional baseball team called on Ontrack to
rescue crucial scouting information about their latest prospects. The team
now relies on Ontrack for all data recoveries within its scouting and
coaching ranks.
9. Hardware Problems - A frustrated writer attacked her computer with a
hammer. When the engineers received the computer, the hammer imprint
was clearly visible on the top cover.
10. La Cucaracha - In hopes of rescuing valuable company information, a
customer pulled an old laptop out of a warehouse where it had been
sitting unused for 10 years. When engineers opened the computer, it
contained hundreds of husks of dead and decaying cockroaches.
CLASSROOM OPENER
Drivers and Trends for Enterprise Architectures
Change is inevitable and unavoidable, but that does not need to cost your
business money, time, or resources. Aligning IT with business requirements
and being able to immediately respond to changes in those requirements is
what drives today's need for enterprise architecture.
TOP 5 DRIVERS OF IMPLEMENTING ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE
Planning is critical in today’s business climate as there are more computers
and complexity than ever before. The top 5 drivers of implementing
enterprise architecture include:
Aligning business with information technology
Enabling a more agile enterprise
Reducing the rising costs of IT development and maintenance
Technical adaptability
Service-oriented architecture
CLASSROOM OPENER
Why Macs Make Sense in the Corporate Market
Apple's market share has jumped to more than 10% in the consumer PC
market, according to IDC. And consumer applications, from chat to Facebook,
are seeping into o:ces. As more business folk consider notebook PCs for
personal as well as work activities, many choose Apples MacBooks.
Here is a slideshow to show how demographics and technology are aligning
in Apples favor.
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/05/0501_apple/index_01.htm?
chan=rss_topSlideShows_ssi_5
CLASSROOM OPENER
Neil Young: The Old Man Uses Java
In his 1972 hit song "Old Man," rock legend Neil Young sings out: "Old man
take a look at my life. I'm a lot like you ..." Indeed, it is Young who is now an
"old man" of sorts and has compiled 45 years of archives about his music
career on Blu-ray discs using Java technology.
Young joined Sun Microsystems CEO and President Jonathan Schwartz and
Rich Green, the company's executive vice president for software, on stage
during the JavaOne conference opening keynote to announce the new
archive project and demonstrate some of the interactive features of his
upcoming Blu-ray disc box set.
Young also announced his collaboration with Sun and Reprise/Warner Bros.
for the release of the upcoming Neil Young Archive series on Blu-ray disc,
powered by Java technology. Visit: www.java.com or www.neilyoung.com for
more information.
Young said the Blu-ray format delivers both unsurpassed 192/24 audio
quality and high-de#nition video, capturing the quality of the original analog
master recordings in the best digital format available today. The #rst Neil
Young Archive release will be a 10 Blu-ray disc set available this fall from
Reprise/Warner Bros. Records, covering Young's career from 1963-1972.
"Previously, there was no way to browse archival material on a disc and
listen to a song in high resolution at the same time," said Young. "The
technology had not yet evolved to that capability. It is important for me that
the user experience the high-resolution music along with the archival visual
material. Previous technology required unacceptable quality compromises. I
am glad we waited and got it right. "
Moreover, "We needed technology to go through this chronological thing like
a video game," Young said. "And Java technology made it possible to do
things we couldn't do just a few years ago. Java allows us to play the music
and walk through the archives. We wanted to do this in the '80s, but the DVD
wasn't good enough; we were defeated by the technology."
CLASSROOM EXERCISE
Backup and Recovery
Ask your students to answer the following questions:
Do you have a backup strategy for your computer?
How often do you backup?
What do you backup?
What type of format do you use for your backup?
Where do you save the backup?
How long do you save the backup?
Now ask your students that if you stole their computer or spilled a hot cup of
co&ee on their computer right now how much information would they lose?
Encourage your students to create a backup strategy.
CLASSROOM EXERCISE
Open Source on a Large Scale
Initially, open source was used deep within IT departments. These groups
have the technical prowess to manage and evaluate such technologies,
understanding where they should be widely deployed, and where they should
have limited use. The use of open source is not limited to a few companies
that want to be on the edge. Companies that are using open source, such as
Linux, for commercial applications include Winnebago Industries, Merrill
Lynch and Co, and L. L. Bean.
Fundamental issues with open source software development
While vast numbers of the current technology community members are
proponents of open source, there are also people on the other side of the
debate. The most obvious complaint against open source software involves
intellectual property rights. Some software development companies do use
the copyright and patent rights provided for software developers as their
primary source of income. By keeping their software source code hidden,
they can demand fees for its use. While most software is written for internal
use, the fees from sale and license of commercial software are the primary
source of income for companies which do sell software. Additionally, many
companies with large research and development teams often develop
extensive patent portfolios. These companies charge money for the use of
their patents in software, but having software be open source means that
there is a potential to have a nearly in#nite number of derived software using
patented technology, unbeknownst to the patent holder.
Another common argument, one that is more di:cult for open source
advocates to contradict with hard facts, is that closed source development
allows more control over the #nal product. The theory behind this argument
is that open source software is primarily a volunteer e&ort, while
closed-source development is typically a salary-driven e&ort. By having the
monetary resources to fund developers and management, and the ability to
force development in a given direction, closed source proponents argue that
development can be more e:cient and more focused.
Legal risks
The legal risks of adopting open source software may not be con#ned to
intellectual property problems. "Open source" describes a belief that
software is best written in an open collaborative process in which the
resulting product is freely available to others to use, improve, and distribute.
Early proponents of open source based it on moral principles of free access,
while later supporters have promoted it as a viable business model for
commercial developers and users.
Licensing issues
Open source comes with unusual license restrictions that may impact a
company's strategies, particularly the risk that its own proprietary software
may be "tainted" by a duty to open its source code to others. This risk is
di&erent from the infringement risk. Open source is not in the public domain
but instead is available for use only under one of a variety of licenses that
impose restrictions on users. These licenses di&er, and it is important to
know and observe their terms.
Linux has been distributed under the General Public License (GPL). One risk
under the GPL stands out: the possibility that a user's proprietary code will
be "tainted" by a duty to make its source code open. If a user of GPL code
decides to distribute or publish a work that in whole or in part contains or is
derived from the open source or any part thereof, it must make the source
code available and license the work as a whole at no charge to third parties
under the terms of the GPL (thereby allowing further modi#cation and
redistribution). In other words, this can be a trap for the unwary: a company
can unwittingly lose valuable rights to its proprietary code.
Areas (departments, companies, industries, etc.) where open source
makes most sense
Open source is most useful in areas of technology that are well understood.
Proprietary companies have the advantage in new technology realms due to
better information regarding real-world customer needs and their ability to
experiment in parallel regarding the satisfaction of those needs.
Open source also makes most sense in "infrastructure." Most contributors to
open source do so free of charge. This means that their work will tend to be
oriented towards areas of interest to themselves. Infrastructure is of
necessity oriented towards technical personnel, and thus the interests of the
open-source contributors and end users (technical personnel) align closely.
Open source is being used successfully in government, industry, and
education.
An assessment of the competition (e.g., open source vs. Microsoft)
A number of major software companies, such as Microsoft, oppose the GPL
due to its open nature. Microsoft has continually argued that the software
license makes it di:cult for a company to protect intellectual property
because it forces a company to expose to competitors the blueprints of any
code it uses that are licensed under the GPL. Here is an overview of the
current operating systems and the percentage of usage:
OS Group Percent
age Composition
Windows 49.6% Windows XP, 2000, NT4, NT3, Windows 95,
Windows 98
[GNU/]Linux 29.6% [GNU/]Linux
Solaris 7.1% Solaris 2, Solaris 7, Solaris 8
BSD 6.1% BSDI BSD/OS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD
Other Unix 2.2% AIX, Compaq Tru64, HP-UX, IRIX, SCO Unix, SunOS
4 and others
Other
non-Unix 2.4% MacOS, NetWare, proprietary IBM OSs
Unknown 3.0% Not identi#ed by Netcraft OS detector
Security issues
The reason viruses are written for Microsoft is because most people use it.
Therefore, if 90 percent of software was open source there would be just as
many attacks, only worse. Imagine smart hackers with access to source
code.
Those in favor of open source say that because everyone has access to the
code, bugs and vulnerabilities are found more quickly and thus are #xed
more quickly, closing up security holes faster. They also point out that any
and everyone is free to create a better, more secure version of the software.
Those on the other side maintain that a closed system in which only trusted
insiders debug the code makes it less likely that discovered vulnerabilities
will be exploited before they can be patched.
They also point out that there are many reasons (in addition to market share)
that are unrelated to the technical security of the software but that can
account for a larger number of attacks against proprietary software. One is
the nature of the “OS wars” – because open source software has traditionally
been more di:cult to use, those who gravitate toward it tend to be more
technically savvy. The larger number of self-proclaimed hackers who are
pro-open source and anti-Microsoft means there are more people out there
with the motive and the means to write malicious code targeting Windows
systems.
The need for standards
Open standards are published standards that are unimpeded by patents and
copyrights. They form the basis of all consumer electronics, including radio
encoding standards, #lm and music recording standards and even the power
supply standards used by the wall sockets.
Standards play a large role in the running of modern computer systems.
They allow users to purchase new hardware with con#dence that it will work
with their existing hardware. They allow users to connect their computers
together into a network in which the applications running on them can talk to
each other. They also support healthy competition, because if a computer or
program uses the correct standard, it can do tasks independently of who
made the hardware, who wrote the software, and even where in the world
the computer is operating.
Open standards (i.e., open protocols) are often quoted as being more
important than open source code. Yet, both are necessary, since open source
projects depend on open protocols (think Apache and HTTP, Mozilla and
HTML/CSS/JavaScript, Sendmail and SMTP), but that proprietary products do,
too (IIS, IE, Exchange Server).
CORE MATERIAL
The core chapter material is covered in detail in the PowerPoint slides. Each
slide contains detailed teaching notes including exercises, class activities,
questions, and examples. Please review the PowerPoint slides for detailed
notes on how to teach and enhance the core chapter material.
