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?

Information architecture identifies where and how important information, such as customer records, is maintained and secured. (Baltzen, Phillips, Lynch, Blakey 2010, p.214)
Information infrastructure refers to the communications networks and associated software that support interaction among people and organisations (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Information_infrastructure, August 2008).
Information Architecture is a field and approach to designing clear, understandable communications by giving care to structure, context, and presentation of data and information.  An information technology infrastructure however, is the base or foundation for the delivery of information to support programs and management (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091105224725AAFgLHi, 2011)

2. Describe how an organisation can implement a solid information architecture?
 An organisation can implement an information architecture through the following:
• Back up and recovery
• Disaster recovery
• Information security
• Making information architecture more responsive
• Improve productivity

3. List and describe the five requirement characteristics of infrastructure architecture? 
The five characteristics of infrastructure architecture iinclude:
1. Flexibility – In order to adapt to changes, businesses must be flexible.
2. Scalability – how well a sysetm can adapt to increase demands for e.g organisational growth and market and economic factors
3. Realiabilty - Ensures all systems 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 length of  time.
5. Performance - Measures how quickly a system performs a certain process or transactions
(Baltzen, Phillips, Lynch, Blakey 2010, pp. 221-222)

4. Describe the business value in delploying a service oriented architecture?
A service oriented architecture is using different systems to meet different demands. A service does the same thing over and over again and can be applied to many situations.

5. What is an event?An event 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.(Baltzen, Phillips, Lynch, Blakey 2010, p.224)


6. What is a service?
Services are more like software products then they are coding projects. They must appeal to a broad audience, and they need to be reusable if they are going to have an impact on productivity. (Baltzen, Phillips, Lynch, Blakey 2010, p.224)

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

There are two ways in which companies can use emerging technologies to increase performance and utilise their infrastructure in an organisation. These predominantly compose of virtualisation and grid computing. Virtualisation is described as structure for the portioning of computer resources into numerous implementation surroundings. Grid computering refers to the combining of geographically spreaded computering, storage and network resources that synchronise to bring enhanced performance abilities, better service quality, improved operations and data access in which can be effortlessly accessed.

References

Baltzan, Phillips, Lynch, Blakey. 2010. Business Driven Information Systems. McGraw Hill. Sydney, Australia.

Information Infrastructure - Sourcewatch n.d., viewed 31 March 2011, <www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=information_infrastructure>

Differentiate between information technology infrastructure and information technology architecture? 2011, viewed 31 March 2011, <http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091105224725AAFgLHi>