Week 6 Questions - Enterprise Architectures

Chapter 5 - Weekly Questions

1. What is information architecture and what is information infrastructure and how do they differ and how do they relate to each other?

Enterprise architectures (EA) include the plans for how an orgnaisation will build, deploy, use and share its data, processes and IT assets. A successful enterprise architect can make IT cheaper, strategic and responsive. Enterprise architectures contain three components: information architecture, infrastructure architecture, and application architecture.

i) Information architecture a general plan of how IT is to be used by an organisation in order to meet objectives and future goals. The three primary areas of information architecture: is backup and recovery, disaster recovery plan and information security.

ii) Information infrastructure the actual implementation that will provide effective Information Systems, including the hardware, software, services and people involved.

Thus, the information architecture is the planning for all resources, and how IT will be used primarily to achieve future goals and objectives. The information infrastructure is the use of hardware, software, services and people to reach these future goals and objectives of the business and providing an effective information system. Furthermore, both are fundamental steps in reaching an end target for the organization.

2. Describe how an organization can implement a solid information architecture

Information architecture - a general plan of how IT is to be used by an organisation in order to meet objectives and future goals.

Solid information architecture should focus on:

1. Backup and recovery - creating an exact copy of a systems information, and the ability for a system to recover from any failure. There are various backup and recovery media systems, which are available, including, storage serves, tapes, disks, CDs, DVDs. All these systems are available and reliable and the only difference is the speed and cost. An organization should choose the appropriate recovery and backup strategy that is inline with it’s business goals and objectives.

Available: http://media.techtarget.com/digitalguide/images/Misc/net_back_1.gif. backup systems

2. Disaster recovery - a detailed process for recovering information or an IT system in an event of a disaster eg flood, bushfire. (Natural disasters). A hot site is where an organization can move after a disaster, it is fully equipped and separate allowing a business to continue business. A cold site is an empty space without any facilities but a business can move there after a disaster.

3. Information security - managing user access such as updating and securing passwords, updating antivirus software and patches, implementing firewalls regularly.

These plans are used to ensure data and systems aren’t lost within an organization and are secure in the event of a failure in the system, or natural disaster. By implementing these systems, an organization can experience a solid information architecture through the use of backup, recovery systems and information security.

3. List and describe the five requirement characteristics of infrastructure architecture.

Infrastructure architecture includes the hardware, software, and telecommunications equipment that, when combined, provide the underlying foundation to support the organisation’s goals.

1. Flexibility – systems must meet all types of changes in a business, considering present and future changes. A flexible system might be one able to handle multiple currencies and languages, even if the company is not yet operating abroad. Ensuring systems are flexible will enable them to adapt to all changes within an organisation, to ensure the growth of the business continues.

2. Scalability – refers to how well a system can adapt to increased demands within the organisation. Growth of orgnisations can include; market, industry and economic factors.

3. Reliability – ensures all systems are functioning correctly and providing accurate information. Unreliable information puts the organisation at risk when making decisions based on the information.

4. Availability – whether systems can be can be accessed by employees, customers, and partners. High availability refers to a system or component that is continuously operating for a long length of time.

5. Performance – measures how quickly a system performs a certain process or transaction in terms of efficiency IT metrics of both speed and throughput. The faster the system the better the return output will be.

4. Describe the business value in deploying a service oriented architecture

Service oriented architecture (SOA) the architecture is the plan for how the organisation will build, deploy and manage it's IT assets to achieve business strategies. A service is a piece of software that performs a task, like a "credit check" for instance, this service can be re-used by many systems without having to completely develop new systems as market demands and business requirements change. So, the service orientated architecture is one that is built on by bringing various services together to meet a certain business requirement, as the business requirement changes, then different services can be pulled together to meet a new demand. SOA helps businesses ensure IT systems adapt quickly, easily and economically to support rapidly changing business needs. It helps businesses increase the flexibility of their processes, strengthen their underlying IT architecture, and reuse their existing IT investment by creating connections among disparate applications and information sources. Using meta-data and existing applications, users can re-use applications (services) many times for different tasks, making development cheaper and more flexible. The key technical concepts of SOA are; services, interoperability, loose coupling. Example www.peeptoeshoes.com.au sell their products through two channels: the web and retail shops. This makes an order or enquiry efficient for the consumer and the business.

This database/software has various services.

Available: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Bb264584.soartl05l(en-us,MSDN.10).gif.

5. What is an event?

Event – is an electronic message indicating that something has happened, detecting threats and opportunities and alerting those who can act on the information. For example; a credit monitoring system automatically alerts a credit supervisor and shuts down an account when the system processes a $7000 charge on a credit card with a $6000 limit.

6. What is a service?

Service – being a business task, such as checking a potential customer’s credit rating when opening a new account. A service is a set of related commands that can be re-used if they are going to have an impact on productivity. Once an event has been triggered then the service e.g. checks the person’s credit.

7. What emerging technologies can companies use to increase performance and utilise their infrastructure more effectively?

Virtual machine - Traditionally, one physical computer ran one copy of example, Windows (the operating system), and could be used by only one user. However, as computers have advanced and become so powerful, it is now possible for the computer to run many operating systems at the same time, for instance, the computer could run both Windows and Mac OSX at the same time, these run in virtual sessions - thus, its a collection of separate computers (virtual machines) on one physical computer. VMware are best known maker of business virtual computing products. Virtual machines reduces capital cost by increasing energy efficiency.

Available: http://www.kongtechnology.com/images/virtual-machines.jpg

Grid Computing - occurs when many remote computers are joined together via networks (like the internet) to work together to perform large computing tasks. Google works in this way, they have many servers around the planet that work together to perform searches. Grid computing allows for improved performance, higher quality of service, better utilisation, and easier access to data. Grids are usually used for solving complex business problems, requiring various computer processing cycles, for processing large amounts of data.

Available: http://www.nusacm.org/newsletter/v116.gif