Chapter 2

Information Systems, IT
Architecture, Data Governance, and
Cloud Computing
Information Technology

1
Chapter outline
 Introduction
 IS Concepts and Classification
 IT Architecture, and Enterprise Architecture
 Information Management and Data Governance
 Data Centers and Cloud Computing
 Cloud Services and Virtualization
Introduction

 The enterprise architecture (EA)

enterprisewide IT architecture, guides the
evolution, expansion, and integration of
information systems (ISs), digital technology,
and business processes.
 Information management guides the
acquisition, custodianship, and distribution of
corporate data and involves the management
of data systems, technology, processes, and
corporate strategy.
… Introduction

 Dirty data – bad decisions & transactions

 Data/information governance, controls
enterprise data through formal policies and
procedures. to provide employees and
business partners with high-quality data they
can trust and access on demand.
 Ex targeting wrong audience for advertisings
see Mediata case in ch02
IS Concepts and Classification

 Information systems (ISs) is a combination

of information technology and people’s
activities using the technology to support
business processes, operations,
management, and decision-making at
different levels of the organization.
 IPOS is the cycle of inputting, processing,
outputting, and storing information in an
information system. Then feedback to
improve the cycle & its components
Component of IS
 Hardware : physical devices such as (CPU),
sound card, video card, keyboard, … etc.
 Software: set of machine-readable codes
 People Any person involved in using an IS.
 Procedures: directions; Manuals;
Documentation; workflow for IS management
 Network A combination of lines, wires,
wireless; computers other hardware &
software connected to create a
telecommunications network.
 Data Raw or unorganized facts and figures
IS Concepts and Classification

 Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom

 Types of ISs
 Transaction Processing System (TPS)
 Management Information System (MIS)
 Decision Support System (DSS)
 Executive Information System (EIS)
 ISs Exist within Corporate Culture
Data, Information, Knowledge, & Wisdom
 Data raw facts that may describe products, customers,
events, activities, & transactions that are recorded,
classified, and stored.
 Information is data that have been processed, or put
into context so that they have meaning and value to a
person.
 Knowledge human intellectual properties that adds
understanding, experience, & learning as they apply to a
current problem or activity to information.
 Wisdom is a collection of values, ethics, moral codes,
and prior experiences that form an evaluated
understanding or common-sense judgment.
Types of ISs: Functional Typology

 Functional ISs are systems that support

business other departmental employees

 Marketing; Production; Accounting; Human

Resources; Logistics …. Information systems
Types of ISs: Organizational levels
Typology
Transaction Processing System
(TPS)
 Used for handling classical routine day-to-day
events & transactions at the operational level in
any organization
 for example, sales orders, reservations, stock
control, and payments by payroll, accounting,
financial, marketing, purchasing, inventory
control, and other functional departments
 Very critical & essential systems for work & data
quality
 Internal vs. external transactions
 Bach vs. on-line processing
Management Information System
(MIS)
 management-level systems that are used by
middle managers to help ensure the smooth
running of an organization in the short to
medium term.
 General-purpose reporting systems built on
the data provided by TPS: types of reports:
Periodic; Exception; & Ad hoc, or on demand
Decision Support System (DSS)
 knowledge-based system used by senior
managers to facilitate the creation of
knowledge and allow its integration into the
organization.
 A DSS can support the analysis and solution of a
specific problem in an interactive environment to
support unstructured and semistructured
decisions
 They may contain; models; sensitivity analyses,
what-if and goal seeking to support managers
understand problems & make decisions
Executive Information System
(EIS)
 EISs are strategic-level information systems
that help executives and senior managers
analyze the environment in which the
organization exists.
 For long-term trends; weakly structured
problems and comes from both internal and
external sources of data
 Using easy-to-use dashboard format
ISs Exist within Corporate Culture

 ISs are not isolated. They have a purpose

and a social (organizational) context. to
provide a solution to a business problem.
 The social context of the system consists of
the values and beliefs
 A culture of trust between the technology and
business employees should present.
IT Architecture, and Enterprise Architecture

 IT infrastructure is an inventory of the physical IT devices

that an organization owns and operates.
 IT architecture guides the process of planning, acquiring,
building, modifying, interfacing, and deploying IT
resources in a single department within an organization.
 Enterprise architecture (EA) reviews all the information
systems across all departments in an organization to
develop a strategy to organize and integrate the
organization’s IT infrastructures to help it meet the current
and future goals of the enterprise and maximize the value
of technology to the organization.
EA Helps to Maintain Sustainability
 EA cuts IT costs and increases productivity
 EA determines an organization’s
competitiveness, flexibility, and IT economics
for the future.
 EA helps align IT capabilities with business
strategy―to grow, innovate, and respond to
market demands
 EA can reduce the risk of buying or building
systems and enterprise applications that are
incompatible or unnecessarily expensive to
maintain and integrate.
EA Helps to Maintain Sustainability

 IT systems’ complexity IT systems have

become unmanageably complex and
expensive to maintain.

 Poor business alignment Organizations

find it difficult to keep their increasingly
expensive IT systems aligned with business
needs.
Developing an Enterprise Architecture
(EA)
 starts with the organization’s goals; &
identifies the strategic direction having a
single vision.
 This shared vision of the future will dictate
changes in all these architectures, assign
priorities to those changes, and keep those
changes grounded in business value.
 It is an ongoing process of aligning the
creation, operation, and maintenance of IT
across the organization with the ever-
changing business objectives
Information Management and
Data Governance
 data is the heart of the business and the
central component of an IS
 Information management is the use of IT
tools and methods to collect, process,
consolidate, store, and secure data from
sources that are often fragmented and
inconsistent.
 information management situations: clean;
timely; un-scattered; formatted; …
Information Management and
Data Governance
 Information Management Harnesses
Scattered Data
 Reasons for Information Deficiencies
 Factors Driving the Shift from Silos to Sharing
and Collaboration
 Business Benefits of Information
Management
 Data Governance: Maintaining Data Quality
and Cost Control
Information Management
Harnesses Scattered Data
 Business information is generally scattered
throughout an enterprise, stored in separate
systems dedicated to specific purposes
 As Data scattered, managers & workers often
struggle to find the information they need to
make sound decisions or do their jobs.
 We need to design & implement a sound data
governance program and a well-planned EA.
Reasons for Information
Deficiencies
 Data silos stand-alone data stores not
accessible by other ISs that need them
 Lost or bypassed data Data can get lost in
transit from one system to another.
 Poorly designed interfaces
 Nonstandardized data formats
 Difficult to hit moving targets or meet
users requirement & needs
Factors Driving the Shift from Silos
to Sharing and Collaboration
 The ―silo effect‖: inability to share data and/or
communicate effectively enough.
 Companies are struggling to integrate
thousands of siloed global applications, while
aligning them to business operations
Business Benefits of Information
Management
 Improves decision quality

 Reduces the time and cost

 Improves the accuracy and reliability of

management predictions

 Reduces the risk of noncompliance with

legal & government regulations
Data Governance: Maintaining
Data Quality and Cost Control
 Data governance is the control of enterprise
data through formal policies & procedures to
help ensure data can be trusted & are
accessible.
 Some industries depend on Data governance to
comply with regulations requirements. Ex. Food;
financial; & Health-care industries.
 Master data is critical information on customers,
products and services, vendors, …etc. needed
for operations & business transactions.
… Data Governance

 Data are used in two ways :

 For running the business Transactional or
operational use
 For improving the business Analytic use
 Master data management (MDM) links and
synchronizes all critical data from those
disparate systems into one file called a
master file, to provide a common point of
reference.
Data Centers and Cloud Computing

 Data Centers
 Integrating Data to Combat Data Chaos
 Cloud Computing
 Selecting a Cloud Vendor
 Cloud Infrastructure
 Issues in Moving Workloads from the
Enterprise to the Cloud
Data Centers

 Traditionally, data and database technologies

were kept in data centers that were typically
run by an in-house IT
 Today, companies may use a third party data
centers, such as in cloud computing,
virtualization, and software-as-a- service
arrangements department
 When a Data Center Goes Down, so Does
Business
Integrating Data to Combat Data Chaos

 An enterprise’s data are stored, partitioned,

duplicated in many different /remote locations.
 Disparate data must be unified or integrated in
order for the organization to function.
 Data virtualization in cloud-based infrastructures
involve abstracting, transforming, merging, and
delivering data from disparate sources.
 Compared to traditional data integration it achieves
greater agility; streamlined approach (time saving); &
better insight (instant access)
Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC)

 Traditional data centers had dedicated,

isolated hardware that results in poor
utilization of resources and very limited
flexibility.
 An SDDC facilitates the integration of the
various infrastructures of the SDDC silos
within organizations and maximizes
operational efficiency by dynamically
distributing workloads and provisioning
networks.
SDDC

 The SDDC isolates the application layer from

the physical infrastructure layer to facilitate
faster and more effective deployment,
management, and monitoring of diverse
applications.
 This is achieved by finding each enterprise
application an optimal home in a public or
private cloud environment or draw from a
diverse collection of resources.
Cloud Computing
 Cloud computing is the delivery of on-
demand computing resources from
applications to data centers—over the
Internet on a pay-for-use basis.
 It is Scalable - adjusted to meet changes
 a third party manages it
 Maybe shared with others unless private
cloud.
Selecting a Cloud Vendor
Vendor Management and Cloud
Service Agreements (CSAs)
Cloud Infrastructure

 Cloud computing is a valuable infrastructure

because it is dynamic as applications &
power are on demand & it is scalable & make
companies more agile
 Companies Move to Enterprise Clouds,
Instead of using software licenses that
support business processes, such as
licenses for Microsoft Office, Oracle database
management, …etc.
Issues in Moving Workloads from
the Enterprise to the Cloud
 Runs on a shared infrastructure maybe less
customized to a specific company’s
requirements.

 More difficult to get to the root of performance

problems

 In general The trade-off is cost versus control

Cloud Services and Virtualization
 Sustaining performance requires the
development of new business applications
and analytics capabilities, which comprise the
front end and the data stores and digital
infrastructure, or back end, to support them.
 Cloud services are outsourced to a third-party
cloud provider who manages the updates,
security, and ongoing maintenance.
 Cloud computing and virtualization are
inherently different
Cloud Services and Virtualization

 Anything as a Service (XAAS) Models

 Going Cloud

 Virtualization and Virtual Machines

Anything as a Service (XAAS)
Models
 Software as a service (SaaS) through a
subscription, a pay-as-you-go model, or free
of charge
 Platform as a service (PaaS) a computing
platform that enables the quick and easy
creation, testing, and deployment of web
applications
 Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
 Data as a service (DaaS)
Going Cloud

 Cloud can cut costs and add flexibility to the

performance of critical business apps. And, it
can improve responsiveness to end-
consumers, application developers, and
business organizations.
 But to achieve these benefits, there must be
IT, legal, and senior management oversight
Virtualization and Virtual Machines
 Ex. virtual storage devices, virtual desktops,
virtual OSs, and virtual servers
 A virtual machine is a software representation
of a computer, rather than an actual computer
and a virtual server sends and receives signals
just like a physical one.
 Users can set up multiple real computers to
function as a single PC through virtualization to
pool resources to create a more powerful VM.
… Virtualization

 Virtualization allows companies to pool

hardware resources―rather than dedicate
servers to applications―and assign those
resources to applications as needed.
 Different types of virtualization include:
Storage; Server; Desktop; Application;
Network; Hardware
 Benefits: Memory-intensive; Energy-efficient;
Scalability and load balancing