Week 6: Enterprise Architectures

What is Information Architecture and What is Information Infrastructure and How Do They Differ and How Do They Relate to Each Other?

As society begins to turn more and more to technology in order to do business, information architecture and infrastructure will remain at the heart of most common companies’ operating capabilities. In its simplest form, Information Architecture identifies and determines where and how important information, such as customer records and financial statements are maintained and secured. In this way, this form of architecture focuses on the three areas of;

·         Backup and Recovery

·         Disaster Recovery

·         Information Security

In comparison, Information Infrastructure refers to the hardware, software and telecommunication equipment that, when combined, provides the underlying foundation to support the organisation’s goals. Unlike Information Architecture where the focus is on the security of the data itself, solid infrastructure relies on its performance to deliver and hold these records. Therefore, following this reasoning, the five primary characteristics of a good Information Infrastructure are;

·         Flexibility

·         Scalability

·         Reliability

·         Availability

·         Performance

 

In this way, despite their differences, both Information Architecture and Infrastructure are shown to work hand-in-hand to help companies reach their goals. Where Information Architecture provides set guidelines regarding the handling and maintenance of data, without a solid infrastructure that provides the hardware and software needed to support these plans, the business’ best intention will most likely fail. The fact is, that the future of any organisation is greatly dependent on its ability to meet its partners and customers expectations and terms at their pace, at any time of the day and in any location. This is why strong and flexible infrastructure is crucial for any business.

Describe How an Organisation Can Implement a Solid Information Architecture

In order to implement a solid information architecture, an organisation  must focus on the three primary areas of;

·         Backup and Recovery

·         Disaster Recovery

·         Information Security

 

Backup and Recovery. In order to create any solid information architecture it is important to create a suitable back-up and recovery plan in order to minimise the damage of a system crash. In this way, all important information should be regularly backed up so that an exact copy is stored away if needed. Then, in the event of a system crash or failure, the organisation will be able to recover much more efficiently and quickly get the system back up and running.

Disaster Recovery. As seen in the work of such firms as Continuity Planners Australia, Disaster Recovery is of crucial importance to every business. In order to implement solid information architecture, a disaster recovery plan must be put in place, outlining the process of recovering information and IT systems in the event of a catastrophe. In doing this, the organisation should plan ahead and ensure that the architecture facilitates the location of backup information, and supports the use of a hot or cold site in the event of the main building being destroyed.

Information Security. When large amounts of confidential and private organisational information is stored using technology, breaches of security can be catastrophic. For this reason, solid information architecture should provide for strict management of user access and the regular installation of up-to-date antivirus software and patches. One of the biggest security risks to data protection is often the use of multiple passwords and usernames, especially when it causes employees to  write them down in order to keep track of all their login details. To counter this, password management strategies such as Single Sign On (SSO) can be incorporated into the organisation’s architecture so that only one set of credentials is needed per employee.

List and Describe the Five Requirement Characteristics of Infrastructure Architecture

As seen in the image above, Infrastructure architecture is made up of 5 main characteristics;

Flexibility. Systems must be flexible enough to meet all types of business changes without having to redesign all its systems

Scalability. An effective system is able to adapt to increased demands. If an organisation grows faster than anticipated it might experience significant degradations. For this reason, trying to anticipate future demands is the key to building scalable systems.

Reliability. An organisation’s systems should function correctly and provide accurate information. If it fails to do so, the inaccurate data could result in information corruption.

Availability. The characteristic that addresses when systems can be accessed by users. All organisations should ultimately aim towards ‘High Availability’, where the system is continuously operational for a desirably long length of time.

Performance. All effective systems should be able to be measured to determine how quickly they perform a certain process or transaction. Low performance capacity can have a devastatingly negative impact on a business, and so organisations should conduct capacity planning to help determine future IT infrastructure requirements.

Describe the Business Value in Deploying a Service Oriented Architecture

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a business driven approach that supports the integrating of a business as linked, repeatable tasks or services. In this way, SOA brings value to the business, encouraging innovation by ensuring that IT systems can adapt quickly, easily and economically to support rapidly changing business needs.

The fact is that in today’s business IT environment, enterprise architectures flow across operating systems, applications, system software and application infrastructure. For this reason, when applications become redundant it is not always possible to build a new architecture from scratch. It is in this way that SOA is particularly valuable. To be successful, all organisations must be able to quickly and efficiently respond to changes.  By allowing organisations to plug in new services or upgrade existing ones in a granular fashion, SOA ensures this requirement can be achieved. In doing this, it enables the business to address any new business requirements and provides the option to make the services consumable across different channels.

What is an Event?

An ‘Event’ is an electronic message indicating that something has happened. In many ways it is the eyes and ears of the business expressed in technology, detecting threats and opportunities, and alerting those who can act on the information.



What is a Service?

A service is a set of related commands that can be re-used to fulfil certain objectives such as ‘credit check’ and ‘process payment’.  In this way, it is more like a software product than a coding project, and must both appeal to a broad audience and be reusable if it is to have any kind of significant impact on company productivity.



What Emerging Technologies can Companies use to Increase Performance and Utilise their Infrastructure More Effectively? In order to keep business systems up and running, today’s organisations must continuously monitor the emergence of new technologies that can be used to increase performance and utilise their infrastructure more effectively. Two of these technologies are;

·         Virtualisation

·         Grid Computing

Virtualisation is a framework for dividing the resources of a computer into multiple execution environments. It is a way of increasing physical resources to maximise the investment in hardware and consolidate and reduce hardware infrastructure.

 
Grid Computing is an aggregation of geographically dispersed computing, storage and network resources, coordinated to deliver improved performance, higher quality of service, better utilisation and easier access to data. In this way, it enables the virtualisation of distributed computing and data resources such as processing, network bandwidth and storage capacity to create a single system image where users and applications are granted seamless access to vast IT capabilities.