Week 6 Questions- Enterprise Architectures

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

Information Infrastructure - includes the hardware, software and telecommunications equipment that, when combines, provides the underlying foundation to support the organisation's goals. 

Information Architecture - identifies where and how important information, such as customer records, is maintained and secured. 

Describe how an organisation can implement a solid information architecture 

Back Up and Recovery: A backup is an exact copy of a system's information. Recovery is the ability to get a system up and running in the event of a system crash or failure and includes restoring the information backup.

Disaster Recovery Plan: a detailed process for recovering information or an IT system in the event of a catastrophic disaster such as a flood or fire. A comprehensive disaster plan considers the location of the backup information.

Describe the five requirement characteristics of infrastructure architecture.

1. flexibility- systems must be flexible enough to meet all types of business changes.

2. scalability- refers to how well system can adapt to increased demands.

3. reliability- ensures all sytems are functioning correctly and providing accurate information.

4. availability- addresses when systems can be accessed by users. 'High Availability' refers to a system or component that is continuously operational for a desirably 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).

Describe the business value in deploying a service oriented architecture 

Service Orientated Architecture (SOA) is a business-driven IT architectural approach that supports integrating a business as linked, repeatable tasks or services.

What is an event? 

Events are the eyes and ears of the business expressed in technology- they detect threats and opportunities and alert those who can act on the information.

What is a service? 

Services are the software products than they are coding projects.

They must appeal to a broad audience, and need to be reusable if they are going to have an impact on productivity.

Early forms of services were defined too low a level in the architecture to interest the business, such as a simple "Print" and "Save".

New services now are being defined at a higher level; such as "Credit Check" "Process Payment" etc.

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

Virtualisation is a framework for dividing the resources of a computer into multiple execution environments. Its is a way of increasing physical resources to maximise the investment in hardware. Generally, this process is done with virtualisation software, running on the one physical unit that emulates multiple pieces of hardware. 

Grid Computing is an aggregation of geographically dispersed computing, storage and network resources, coordinated to deliver improved performance, higher quality service, better utilisation and easier access to data. 

Organisations pay special attention to computing basics since these form the underlying foundation that supports a firm's information systems. A solid underlying infrastructure is a necessity for ensuring the security, reliability, quality and responsiveness of a firm's information systems. These systems are the tools that companies utilise and heavily rely upon to run their businesses and compete in today's competitive environment.