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• This slide presents the major activities in the maintenance step of the
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CLOSING CASES
CLOSING CASE STUDY ONE (p. 218)
PUBLIC PERSONAL CLOUDS
In this first case study, your students will explore several of the more popular public clouds
designed for use by individuals.
QUESTIONS
1. Do some research on Amazon’s Cloud Drive. What is the amount of free storage space?
What is the annual cost for additional storage? What about Apple’s iCLoud? Is it still free?
Does Microsoft charge anything for use of its SkyDrive cloud service?
2. Putting all your personal information in the cloud means letting go of some control over
information like your tax files, personal photos that might not want anyone else to see,
term papers you’re currently writing, and so on. What is your level of concern for the
security of these personal digital assets in the cloud? Explain why your level of concern is
high or low.
DISCUSSION
3. As we move more of our personal storage needs to the cloud, will computers really need
disk storage space? Is it possible that we’re in the early stages of an outrageous industry
transformation? Who are the major manufacturers of disk storage for personal computers
and laptops?
DISCUSSION
4. If you choose to store all your personal information in the cloud, you’ll need a personal
continuity plan, much like organizations have business continuity plans in case of some sort
of disaster. Suppose that right now you begin storing all your personal information only in
the cloud. Of that information, what will you also backup onto a flash drive? How often
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would you perform the backup process? How often do you currently backup information
on your computer’s hard drive?
5. Do some research on personal cloud providers. What sort of service level agreement (SLA)
do they offer? Are you willing to store your information with a personal cloud provider that
offers no SLA? Why or why not?
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CLOSING CASE STUDY TWO (p. 219)
DENVER HEALTH OPERATES WITH A PRIVATE CLOUD AND THIN CLIENTS
In this second closing case study, your students will explore how Denver Health is taking
advantage of a private, internal cloud and other IT and IT-enabled innovations such as
virtualization, thin clients, virtual location awareness.
QUESTIONS
1. According to all sorts of privacy legislation, medical facilities must take measurable steps to
ensure the confidentiality of patient information. From this case study, what has Denver
Health done to ensure the confidentiality of its patient information?
2. Think about your school. How could it use the ThinIdentity solution to supports the
technology needs of (1) faculty and (2) students such as yourself?
3. In thinking about cloud computing (focusing on the public cloud), what role could it play in
business continuity planning for Denver Health? That is, how could the public cloud act as a
backup for Denver Health’s private cloud?
4. If Denver Health were to give each patient a smart card, log-on name, and password, what
functions, features, and information could be of benefit to patients? What security would
have to be in place to ensure that patients have access to only their information?
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5. How could Denver Health extend the ThinIdentity solution beyond its brick-and-mortar
walls? How would it work (i.e., need to change) to have doctors and nurses log–on from
home or use a mobile device such as a Blackberry or iPhone?
6. The reduction in physician log-on time is an efficiency metric. What are some effectiveness
metrics that Denver Health can use to justify the use of ThinIdentity?
DISCUSSION
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SHORT-ANSWER QUESTIONS (p. 220)
1. How can a service-oriented architecture (SoA) be used to guide the organization of the
future?
2. Why is interoperability important?
3. How does a client/server infrastructure work?
4. What are the four types of a tiered infrastructures?
5. What additional features does platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offer beyond software-as-a-
service (SaaS)?
6. What is the difference between a public cloud and a private cloud?
7. What are the benefits of cloud computing?
8. How do efficiency and effectiveness metrics differ?
9. What are some commonly used infrastructure-centric metrics?
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10. What are some commonly used Web-centric metrics?
11. What is a business continuity plan?
12. Why do organizations implement a disaster recovery plan before testing it?
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ASSIGNMENTS & EXERCISES (p. 221)
1. SECURITY METRICS In this chapter, we focused on metrics for measuring the success of
your IT systems including infrastructure-centric metrics, Web-centric metrics, call center
metrics, and financial metrics. Another important area of metrics is that of security metrics,
or how well you are doing at stopping viruses from coming in, protecting against identify
theft, and the like. Do some research on the Web and develop a list of commonly used
metrics in the area of security. Be sure to define each metric.
DISCUSSION
• There are many, many of these.
2. CREATING A CAMPUS IT INFRASTRUCTURE You have been assigned the role of student IT
infrastructure manager. Your first assignment is to approve the designs for the new on–
campus Internet infrastructure. You’re having a meeting at 9:00 A.M. tomorrow morning to
review the designs with the student IT employees. To prepare for the meeting, you must
understand the student requirements and their current use of the Internet, along with
future requirements. The following is a list of questions you must answer before attending
the meeting. Provide an answer to each question.
• Do you need to have a disaster recovery plan? If so what might it include?
• Does the system require backup equipment?
• When will the system need to be available to the students?
• What types of access levels will the students need?
• How will you ensure the system is reliable?
• How will you build scalability into the system?
• What are the minimum performance requirements for the system?
• How will the system handle future growth?
DISCUSSION
• Do you need to have a disaster recovery plan? If so, what might it include? The disaster
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• When will the system need to be available to the students? Student answers to this
question will vary. Typically, you would want your systems available 24×7 since students
• What are the minimum performance requirements for the system? Student answers to
3. EFFICIENCY AND EFFECTIVENESS METRICS Choose any of the Perspective boxes in this
chapter or the opening case. Then, identify and describe at least seven metrics that could
be used to measure the success of the IT systems in your chosen example. For each metric,
categorize it as either an efficiency or effectiveness metric. Justify your categorizations.
DISCUSSION
• Answers here will vary according to which Perspective box is chosen.
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4. SAAS PROVIDERS There are numerous SaaS providers that enable organizations to access
and use Web-based application software. We identified Salesforce.com as one such ASP.
Search the Web and find at least five other organizations that are SaaS providers. What are
the names of the companies? What application software do they provide over the Web?
What additional services do they provide, if any?
DISCUSSION
• There are many here, some are listed below.
5. PERSONAL BENCHMARKS AND BENCHMARKING How do you use benchmarks and
benchmarking in your personal life? Think about grades, making money, supporting
charities, and the like. Choose one significant way in which you use benchmarks and
benchmarking in your personal life and describe it? What are your benchmark values? How
were you able to derive your benchmark values? From where did they come?
DISCUSSION
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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS (p. 221)
1. On pages 209-210, we listed and defined numerous Web-centric metrics. Which of those
are efficiency metrics and which of those are effectiveness metrics? For each, provide
justification for your answer and an illustration using a real-life or hypothetical Web
business example.
DISCUSSION
• Efficiency – Unique visitors, total hits, page exposures, click-through, abandoned
2. What type of IT infrastructure does your school have? If it uses a client/server
infrastructure how does your school’s client/server network increase student productivity?
What recommendations, based on the contents of this chapter, could you recommend to
the IT people who manage the infrastructure?
DISCUSSION
3. How is the concept of interoperability an important aspect that you rely on in your daily
life? Think about the many devices, appliances, modes of transportation, and so on that
you use every day. Which of these support the concept of interoperability? How would
your life change if they didn’t support interoperability?
DISCUSSION
• Answers will vary greatly.
4. Many people say that efficiency and effectiveness metrics are interrelated and that you
can’t really have one without the other or that no organization can truly be successful
without both. How are efficiency and effectiveness metrics interrelated? Must you succeed
in one set before addressing the other? If so, which is first and why?
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DISCUSSION
• They are definitely related.
5. Consider an e-business like Amazon.com. Which Web-centric metrics on page 324 would be
most important to it? Justify your answers. Now consider a content provider like CNN
(www.cnn.com)? Which Web-centric metrics would be most important to it? Justify your
answers. Why would two e-businesses have such a different focus on Web-centric metrics?
DISCUSSION
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Chapter 07 – Infrastructure, Cloud Computing, Metrics, and Business Continuity Planning: Building and Sustaining
the Dynamic Enterprise
INDUSTRY & GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES
INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE – One View for Del Monte Foods (p. 202)
• Business acquisition drove Del Monte to overhaul its IT systems.
• It chose an ERP system to integrate all its U.S. and global operations.
INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE – Taking the Cloud Private at GE (p. 208)
• This perspective introduces the notion of a private cloud.
GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE – Facebook Shares Its Data Center Vision with the World (p. 211)
• This is something most private organizations don’t do
INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE – Business Continuity Planning: Why Not and What (p. 215)
• This is a good perspective because it includes many relevant statistics.
• The first set identifies why organizations find it hard to do business continuity planning.
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