Saturday, May 29, 2010

Week 6: Enterprise Architectures

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

Information architecture identifies where and how important information, such as customer records, is maintained and secured. It is the overall strategy of how an organisation is going to structure its resources.

Information infrastructure includes the hardware, software and telecommunications equipment that, when combined, provides the underlying foundation to support the organisation's goals. It is the actual implementation of an effective information system.

The two concepts are related in that architecture plans what infrastructure is to be used by an organisation. They differ in that architecture is about planning, whilst infrastructure is about implementation.

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

An organisation can implement a solid information architecture via effectivley implemtning strong backup and recovery, disaster recovery and information security.

3. List and describe the five requisite characteristics of infrastructure architecture?

  • Flexibility: infrastructure architecture must be flexible enough to adapt to changes in the business environment, that must be able to grow and change with the business.
  • Scalability: it must be able to adapt to increased demands; must be able to scale to more products, customers, records and systems.
  • Reliability: ensures all systems are functioning correctly and providing accurate information (99.999% uptime).
  • Availability: systems must be widely accessible, inside and outside the business.
  • Performance: measures how quickly a system performs certain processes or transactions; should be faster and easier to use.
4. Describe the business value in deploying a service orientated architecture?

The value in deploying a service orientated architecture is the reuse of technology, being able to quickly and easily adapt to new situations. Allows for better information flows between systems. E.g. interoperability between Myspace and Facebook would mean a user only has enter their information once.

5. What is an event?

An event is something that tells the system something has happened, e.g. a new employee entered into the system. An event triggers a service. An event is the 'eyes and ears' of an organisation, alerting it to certain happenings.

6. What is a service?

A service is a series of commands that complete a task, eg. a credit check.

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

Virtualisation, which allows multiple computer systems to run on the same hardware, e.g. a computer being able to run both Windows 7 and Mac OS X.
Grid computing, which allows unused resources on remote computers to be used.

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