Chapter 7
IT Infrastructures
Business-Driven Technology
7-1
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Presentation Overview








7-2
Organizational Goals and Strategies
Increase Employee Productivity
Enhance Decision Making
Improve Team Collaboration
Create Business Partnerships and Alliances
Enable Global Reach
Facilitate Organizational Transformation
IT Infrastructures and The Real World
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Opening Case Study
What’s The Difference Between Napster
and Gnutella?

Napster and Gnutella have similar
products that use different IT
infrastructures.

Why is it important that a company build a
solid IT infrastructure?
7-3
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Introduction

7-4
IT infrastructure includes the hardware,
software, and
telecommunications
equipment that, when
combined, provide the
underlying foundation to
support the
organization’s goals.
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Organizational Goals and
Strategies
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7-5
Increase employee productivity
Enhance decision making
Improve team collaboration
Create business partnerships and
alliances
Enable global reach
Facilitate organizational transformation
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Increase Employee Productivity

Client/server network - a network in which one
or more computers are servers and provide
services to the other computers which are called
clients.


7-6
Thin client - a workstation with a small amount of
processing power.
Global reach - the ability to extend a company’s
reach to customers anywhere there is an
Internet connection, and at a much lower cost.
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Increase Employee Productivity

Intranet - an internal organizational Internet that
is guarded against outside access by a special
security feature called a firewall.

Extranet – is an Intranet that is restricted to an
organization and certain outsiders, such as
customers and suppliers.

Backup and recovery
7-7
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Increase Employee Productivity
Disaster recovery plan - a detailed process for
recovering information or an IT system in the event
of a catastrophic disaster.



Hot site
Cold site
Disaster recovery cost curve – charts

1.
2.
7-8
The cost to your organization of the unavailability of
information and technology.
The cost to your organization of recovering from a
disaster over time.
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Increase Employee Productivity



Availability
Accessibility
Reliability



7-9
Data cleansing - the process of ensuring that
all information is accurate.
Scalability – how well your system can
adapt to increased demands
Flexibility
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Increase Employee Productivity

Performance - measures how quickly an IT
system performs a certain process.


Benchmark - a set of conditions used to
measure how well a product or system
functions.
Capacity planning - determines the future
IT infrastructure requirements for new
equipment and additional network capacity.
7-10
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Increase Employee Productivity
7-11
Team Work
On Your Own
IT Components
and Factors
(p. 339)
Increase Student
Productivity
(p. 340)
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Enhance Decision Making

Integration - allows
separate systems to
communicate directly
with each other by
automatically
exporting data files
from one system and
importing them into
another.
7-12
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Enhance Decision Making

Enterprise application integration (EAI) - the
process of developing an IT infrastructure that
enables employees to quickly implement new
or changing business processes.

Enterprise application integration
middleware (EAI Middleware) - supports
different levels of integration from the
information level to the business process level.
7-13
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Improve Team Collaboration

Document management system - manages a
document through its life cycle.

Enterprise information portals (EIPs) - allow
knowledge workers to access company information
via a Web interface.


7-14
Collaborative processing enterprise information
portal - access to workgroup information such as emails, reports, meeting minutes, and memos.
Decision processing enterprise information portal corporate information for making key business decisions.
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Improve Team Collaboration

Workflow - defines all of the steps or business
rules required for a process to run correctly.

Workflow systems - automate processes.


7-15
Messaging-based workflow systems - send work
assignments through an e-mail system.
Database-based workflow systems - store the
document in a central location and automatically asks
the knowledge workers to access the document.
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Improve Team Collaboration
On Your Own
Working Together
As A Team
(p. 345)
7-16
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Create Business Partnerships
and Alliances

Customer relationship management (CRM)
systems - use information about customers to
gain insights into their needs, wants, and
behaviors in order to serve them better.


7-17
Front office systems - the primary interface to
customers and sales channels.
Back office systems - used to fulfill and support
customer orders.
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Create Business Partnerships
and Alliances

A sample CRM infrastructure
7-18
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Create Business Partnerships
and Alliances

Sales force automation (SFA) systems automatically track all of the steps in the
sales process.

Electronic catalog - designed to present
products to customers or partners all over
the world via the Web.
7-19
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Create Business Partnerships
and Alliances

Supply Chain
Management
(SCM) Systems track inventory and
information among
business processes
and across
companies.
7-20
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Enable Global Reach

Internet service provider (ISP) - a company
that provides access to the Internet.

Application service provider (ASP) - a
company that provides an outsourcing service
for businesses software applications.

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) - define the
specific responsibilities of the service provider
and set the customer expectations.
7-21
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Enable Global Reach

7-22
A sample ASP infrastructure
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Enable Global Reach

Collocation - a company rents space and
telecommunications equipment from another
company, or a collocation vendor.

Server farm - the name of a location that stores
a group of servers in a single place.

Web farm – is either a Web site that has
multiple servers, or an ISP that provides Web
site outsourcing services using multiple servers.
7-23
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Facilitate Organizational
Transformation

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) - the
method of getting and keeping an overview of
every part of the business (a bird’s eye view, so
to speak), so that production, development,
selling, and servicing of goods and services will
all be coordinated to contribute to the company’s
goals and objectives.
7-24
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Facilitate Organizational
Transformation

Enterprise software - a suite of software that
includes:
1.
2.
3.

7-25
A set of common business applications.
Tools for modeling how the entire organization
works.
Development tools for building applications unique
to your organization.
Computer-aided software engineering
(CASE) tools - software suites that automate
systems development.
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Facilitate Organizational
Transformation

7-26
A sample enterprise software infrastructure
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Facilitate Organizational
Transformation

Legacy systems - are IT systems
previously built using older technologies
such as mainframe computers and
programming languages such as COBOL.

Business process reengineering (BPR)
- the reinventing of processes within a
business.
7-27
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
IT Infrastructures and the
Real World
Remember to ask yourself the following
questions before approving the IT
infrastructure design:







7-28
How big is your department going to grow?
Will the system be able to handle additional users?
How are your customers going to grow?
How much additional information do you expect to
store each year?
How long will you maintain information in the
systems?
How much history do you want to keep on each
customer?
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved