978-0073402987 Chapter 5 Section 5.1 Mis Infrastructures

Type

Quiz

Book Title

Business Driven Information Systems 5th Edition

ISBN 13

978-0073402987

April 4, 2019

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 benefit of a Solid MIS Infrastructure

Supporting Operations: In formation MIS Infrastructure

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 efficient 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. suffering 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,

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 first 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 difficult for open source

advocates to contradict with hard facts, is that closed source development

allows more control over the final 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 difficult 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 identified 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 difficult 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 confidence 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.