CHAPTER 4 IT INFRASTUCTURE : HARWARE AND SOFTWARE

CHAPTER OPENING CASE : CARS.COM’S INFRASTRUCTURE DRIVERS RAPID BUSINESS GROWTH

Cars.com is one of destination for online car shoppers . They give much information to the buyers, like pricing information, photo galleries, side by side comparison tools. Video, and a huge selection of new and used car inventory. These information, need to make confident buying decision by the buyers. That’s means Cars.com use information system and technology here to develop aggressive strategy and expansion. The core of this case is highlight the critical role that hardware and software investments can play in improving business performance.

IT INFRASTRUCTURE : COMPUTER HARDWARE

Business require a wide variety of computing equipment, software, and communication capabilities siply to operate and solve basic business problem. And related to all of that activities, it is need equipment, a computer. Employees need computer to do they work, they use Google to find many information. It is not just about employee, it is also about to all activities of people.

Each computer will require an operating system and a wide range application software capable of dealing with spreadsheets, documents and data files. Unless you are single person business, you will most likely want to have a network to link all the people in your business together and perhaps your customers and suppliers. Finally, IT infrastructure provide foundation, or platform, for supporting all the information system in the business.

Infrastructure Components

IT infrastructure is composed of five major components, they are :

1) Computer Hardware : Consist of technology for computer processing, data storage , input, and output. This components include large mainframes, serves, desktop, keyboard, and etc.

2) Computer software : includes both system software ( manages the resources and activities) and application software( applies the computer to specific task for an end user).

3) Data management technology : organizes data and make them available to business users.

4) Networking and telecommunication technology : provides data, voice, and video connectivity to employees, customers, and suppliers.

5) Technology services : computer is one of tools to apply technology for work.

Types of computer

Computer hardware can be classified based on the nature of the business challenge, are :

· If you are working alone or with a few other people in small business, you will probably, be using a desktop or laptop personal computer (PC).

· If you are doing advanced design or engineering work requiring powerful graphics or computational capabilities, you might use a workstation.

· A mainframe is a large capacity, high performance computer that can process large amounts of data very rapidly. One of example, mainframe use in airplane.

· A supercomputer is a specially designed and more sophisticated computer that used for task requiring extremely rapid and complex calculations with thousand of variables, millions of measurements, and thousands of equations.

· Grid computing involves connecting geographically remote computers into a single network to create a virtual supercomputer by combining the computational power of all computers on the grid.

Storage, Input, And Output Technology

The principal secondary storage technologies are magnetic disk, optical disk, and magnetic tape. Optical CD-ROM and DVD discs can store vast amounts of data compactly and some types are rewritable. Storage area networks connect multiple storage devices on separate high-speed network dedicated to storage.

· The principal input devices are keyboards, computer mice, touch screens, magnetic ink and optical characters recognition devices, pen based-instruments, digital scanners, sensors, audio input devices and radio-frequency identification devices.

· The principal output devices are display monitors, printers, and audio output devices.

Contemporary Hardware Trends

The exploding power of computer hardware and networking technology has dramatically changed how business organize their computing power, putting more of this power on the networks, The six trends are : the emerging mobile digital platform, nanotechnology, cloud computing, autonomic computing, virtualization, and multicore processors.

IT INFRASTRUCTURE : COMPUTER SOFTWARE

Computer software provides the detailed instructions that the direct the computer’s work. Computer software consist of :

1) System software : operating system, language translators , and utility programs.

2) Application software : programming languages and “fourth-generation” languages.

System software and application software are interrelated and can be thought as a set of nested boxes, each which must interact closely with the other boxes surrounding it. System software controls access to the hardware. Application software must work through the system to operate. The users interacts primaly with the application software.

System Software

Operating software is the system software that manages and controls the computer’s activities. The operating system is the computer system’s chief manager, enabling the system to handle many different task and users at the same time. The operating system allocates and assigns system resources, schedules the use of computer resources and computer jobs, and monitors computer system activities. The leading PC and server operating system includes Windows family of operating system ( Windows 7, Windows Vista. Windows Server 2008), UNIX, LINUX, and The Macintosh operating system.

Other system software consist of computer language translation programs that convert programming programming languages into machine language that can be understood by the computer and utility programs that perform common processing task such as copying, sorting, or computing a square root.

Application Software And Desktop Productivity Tools

The principal programming languages used in business application software include COBOL, C, C++, and Visual Basic. Fourth-generation languages are less procedural than conventional programming languages and enablw end users to perform many software tasks that previously required technical specialist. They include popular PC and cloud-based desktop productivity tools such as word processing, spreadsheet, data management, presentation graphics, and web browser software. Java is an operating-system and hardware-independent programming language that is the leading interactive programming environment for the web. HMTL is a page description language for creating Web pages.

Software Trends

Today there are many more sources for obtaining software and many more capabilities for users to create their own customized software applications. Expanding use of open source software and cloud-based software tools and services exemplify this trend.

MANAGING HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY

Selection and use of computer hardware and software technology has a profound impact on Business performance. Many important issues, will face when in managing hardware and software namely :

Capacity Planning And Scalability

From IT perspective, capacity planning is the process of predicting when a computer hardware systems become saturated. It considers factor such as the maximum numbers of users that the system can accommodate at one time, the impact of existing and the future software application and etc. Scalability refers the ability of a computer, product, or system to expand to serve a large number of users without breaking down.

Total Cost Of Ownership(TCO) of Technology Assets

The total cost model can be used to analyze these direct and indirect costs to help determine the actual costs of owning a specific technology.

Using Technology Service Provides

In the past,most companies ran their own computer facilities and develop their own source. Today, more and more companies are obtaining their hardware and software technology from external and service vendors.

Managing Mobile Platforms and Software Localization

Many Thousands of wireless devices to configure and monitor that firm have, will be challenge to integrate this new platform with the firm’s existing IT infrastructure and applications. Software localization is a entire process of converting software to operate in a second language.

HANDS-ON MIS PROJECT

Beside there is many way to developing solutions for managing IT infrastuctures an IT outsourching, using spreatsheet software to evaluate alternative desktop systems, and using Web reaseach to budget for a sales conference.