- Information Infrastructure: Information infrastructure identifies how and where important information, such as a customer’s records, are maintained and secured. It is a general plan of how IT will be used within an organisation. This means having back-up systems in place to protect data from being lost, as lost data to an organisation can cost not only time, but money, with some of the data not able to be recovered.
- Infrastructure Architecture: Infrastructure Architecture relates to the hardware, software and telecommunications equipment that provide the underlying foundation to support the organisation’s goals. it is the implementation of the architecture that provides effective information.
2. Describe how an organisation can implement a solid information architecture.
An organisation can implement a solid information architecture through having backup and recovery systems, disaster recovery and information security.
A back-up system is an exact copy of an organisation’s information systems. Recovery is the ability for the business to get their systems back up and running after a system crash or failure. An organisation’s backup system should be in line with their business goals.
A disaster recovery plan is a detailed process that outlines how information on an IT system is to be recovered in the case of a disaster, such as a flood or fire. Many organisations have a backup information system stored offsite in the case of a disaster so that all information is able to be recovered.
Information security is about protecting the information that is stored on an organisations system. It is important for an organisation to have secure systems to prevent hackers, as well as having anti-virus software to prevent the attack of viruses on a systems, which can lead to loss of information.
3. List and describe the five requirement characteristics of infrastructure architecture.
The five primary characteristics of infrastructure architecture are:
a) Flexibility – The business structure put in place by an organisation must be flexible and able to adapt to business changes.
b) Scalability – Scalability refers to how able a system is to adapt to increased demands. This means being able to estimate how much a business is going to grow and being able to account for this growth in regards to the business systems. Capacity planning is a measure of ensuring your business systems are scalable.
c) Reliability – Reliability means ensuring that all of your systems are performing correctly and providing you with accurate information.
d) Availability – Availability refers to when the systems are able to be accessed by employees. A good system is one that is of high availability.
e) Performance – Performance measures how quickly a system performs a certain process or transaction.
4. Describe the business value in deploying a service oriented architecture.
Service oriented architecture is a business-driven IT architectural approach that supports integrating a business as a linked, repeatable tasks or services. It helps businesses to ensure their IT systems are able to adapt quickly, easily and economically to support the rapid changing business needs. It allows businesses to support and strengthen their IT architecture. Through using a service orientated architecture and using meta data and existing applications, these applications are able to be re-used for different tasks which allows development to become cheaper and more flexible.
5. What is an event?
An event is also known as the eyes and ears of a business. It is an electronic message that indicates something has gone wrong and identifies threats and opportunities and informs those who are able to act upon this information.
6. What is a service?
A service contains a set of related commands that are able to be re-used. It is more of a software product than a coding product. They describe a valuable business process.
7. What emerging technologies can companies can use to increase performance and utilise their infrastructure more effectively?
Virtualisation is one emerging technology that businesses can use to increase their performance. Virtualisation is about dividing the resources of a computer into multiple environments. It is about increasing the physical resources to get the most out of hardware. The logical functions of the computing system are removed from their physical function, which can then be automatically or manually allocated to meet the changing needs of the business. Virtualisation allows people, processes and technology to work together more efficiently to meet the increase in service levels. ‘System virtualisation’ (also referred to as ‘server virtualisation’ or ‘desktop virtualisation’) allows the resources of a single computer to be presented as though they are collection of separate computers, each with their own operating systems. The benefits of virtualisation are that it reduces hardware infrastructure to increase the utilisation of software, increase in security benefits, improved service-level management, the ability to run more legacy systems, greater flexibility in finding staff and reduced hardware and software costs.
Another emerging technology enabling businesses to improve their performance is grid computing. Grid computing uses virtualisation to gather computing and data resources to create a single system image. It helps to create a sustainable competitive advantage as the focus is placed on the core of the business. Some of the advantages of grid computing include:
- Improving productivity and collaboration of virtual organisations and respective computing and data resources
- Allowing widely separated departments and businesses to create virtual organisations to share data and resources
- Providing instant access to massive computer and data resources
No comments:
Post a Comment