Infrastructure, Cloud Computing, Metrics, and Business Continuity Planning: Building and Sustaining the Dynamic Enterprise

1. McGraw-Hill/Irwin Copyright © 2013 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chapter 7
Infrastructure, Cloud
Computing, Metrics,
and Business
Continuity Planning:
Building and
Sustaining the
Dynamic Enterprise

2. 7-2
STUDENT LEARNING
OUTCOMES
1. Describe how an SoA can be used
as a philosophical approach to help
the organization of the future.
2. Define and describe the various
hardware and software
infrastructure considerations.
3. Describe cloud computing, its
various implementations, and its
advantages.

3. 7-3
STUDENT LEARNING
OUTCOMES
4. Compare and contrast commonly
used metrics for assessing the
success of IT systems.
5. Describe business continuity
planning (BCP) and its phases.

4. 7-4
MONEY WILL ALWAYS BE
MONEY
The use of
paper money is
on the decline;
the use of
electronic
money has
more than
doubled in the
past 10 years.

5. 7-5
Questions
1. Do you use an electronic form of
money such as Google wallet or a
smartphone app? If so, which one?
2. Which do you think is easier—the
counterfeiting of paper money or
the counterfeiting of electronic
money? Why?
3. Why does the government continue
to mint pennies when the process
costs more than a penny?

6. 7-6
CHAPTER ORGANIZATION
1. Introduction: SoA
 Learning outcome #1
2. Hardware and Software Infrastructure
 Learning outcome #2
3. Cloud Computing
 Learning outcome #3
4. IT Success Metrics
 Learning outcome #4
5. Business Continuity Planning
 Learning Outcome #5

7. 7-7
INTRODUCTION: SoA
 Service-oriented architecture
(SoA) - perspective that focuses on
the development, use, and reuse of
small self-contained blocks of code
(called services) to meet all
application software needs
 Software code is not developed solely
for a single application
 Rather services are built that can be
reused

8. 7-8
INTRODUCTION: SoA
 Can extend SoA to the entire
organization to be
 Lean and agile using resources in the
best way
 Proactive in addressing changes in the
market
 Quick to respond and adapt to advances
in technology
 Transformational in its processes,
structure and HR initiatives to match a
changing and dynamic workforce

9. 7-9
INTRODUCTION: SoA
 SoA focused specifically on IT
 Customers
 End users
 Software development
 Information needs
 Hardware requirements

10. 7-10
INTRODUCTION: SoA
Customers should be able to “plug and
play” into your organization and have the
same pleasurable experience regardless
of the channel

11. 7-11
INTRODUCTION: SoA
End users should have access to whatever
information and software they need
regardless of where they (the end users)
are

12. 7-12
INTRODUCTION: SoA
Software development should focus on reusable
components (services) to accelerate systems
development. This means using component-
based development methodologies and taking
advantage of exciting Web 2.0 applications.

13. 7-13
INTRODUCTION: SoA
Information would be treated appropriately as
a valuable organizational resource –
protected, managed, organized, and made
available to everyone who needs it.

14. 7-14
INTRODUCTION: SoA
Hardware is both integrated and transparent.

15. 7-15
HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE
INFRASTRUCTURE
 Infrastructure – the structure beneath
a structure
 IT infrastructure is the implementation of
your organization’s architecture

16. 7-16
ERP Revisited
 From Chapter 2, Enterprise
resource planning (ERP) system
– collection of integrated software for
business management, accounting,
finance, supply chain management,
inventory management, customer
relationship management, e-
collaboration, etc

17. 7-17
ERP and SoA
 For ERP to integrate everything,
everything must be plug-and-play
components or services
 All modules of an ERP vendor must
be interoperable
 Software from multiple ERP vendors
must be interoperable
 The infrastructure beneath must be
hidden from users and customers

18. 7-18
ERP and SoA

19. 7-19
Supporting Network
Infrastructures
 Computer network – fundamental
underlying infrastructure for any IT
environment
 Distributed
 Client/server
 Tiered

20. 7-20
Distributed Network
Infrastructure
 Distributed – distributing the
information and processing power
of IT systems via a network
 First true network infrastructure
 Processing activity is allocated to
the location(s) where it can most
efficiently be done

21. 7-21
Distributed Network
Infrastructure

22. 7-22
Client/Server Infrastructure
 Client/server infrastructure
(network) – one or more computers
that are servers which provide services
to other computers, called clients
 Servers and clients work together to
optimize processing, information
storage, etc
 When you surf the Web, the underlying
network infrastructure is client/server

23. 7-23
Client/Server Infrastructure

24. 7-24
Tiered Infrastructure
 Tiered (layer) – the IT system is
partitioned into tiers (layers) where each
tier performs a specific type of functionality
 1-tier – single machine
 2-tier – basic client/server relationship
 3-tier – client, application server, data or
database server
 N-tier – scalable 3-tier structure with more
servers

25. 7-25
Tiered Infrastructure

26. 7-26
CLOUD COMPUTING
 Hottest term in technology today
 Cloud computing – model in which
any and all IT resources are delivered
as a set of services via the Internet
 Application software
 Processing power
 Data storage
 Backup facilities
 Development tools
 Literally everything

27. 7-27
CLOUD COMPUTING

28. 7-28
Cloud Computing Goals
 Pay for only what you need and use
 Real-time scalability (up or down)
 Align computing costs with level of
business activity
 Reduce fixed costs in IT
infrastructure

29. 7-29
Many Implementations of the
Cloud
 Software-as-a-service (SaaS)
 Platform-as-a-service (PaaS)
 Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS)

30. 7-30
Software-As-A-Service
 SaaS - delivery model for software in
which you pay for software on a pay-
per-use basis instead of buying the
software outright.
 Most well known
 Supports multi-tenancy - multiple
people can simultaneously use a
single instance of a piece of
software.

31. 7-31
SaaS and Multi-Tenancy

32. 7-32
Platform-As-A-Service
 PaaS – delivery model for software
identical to SaaS with the additional
features of
1. The ability to customize data entry
forms, screens, reports, and the like
2. Access to software development tools
to alter the way in which the software
works by adding new modules
(services) and/or making modifications
to existing modules

33. 7-33
PaaS

34. 7-34
Infrastructure-As-A-Service
 IaaS - model in which you acquire all
your technology needs—storage
hardware and data, network
equipment, application software,
operating system software, data
backups, CPU processing capabilities,
anti-you-name-it software—in the
cloud.
 All you need – smartphone/tablet
and peripheral devices (e.g., printer)

35. 7-35
Public and Private Clouds
 Public cloud – comprises cloud
services that exist on the Internet
offered to anyone and any business.
 Amazon Web Services (AWS)
 Windows Azure
 Rackspace Cloud
 Google Cloud Connect
 ElasticHosts

36. 7-36
Public and Private Clouds
 Private cloud – cloud computing
services established and hosted by
an organization on its internal
network and available only to
employees and departments within
that organization.
 All benefits of cloud computing,
except held private within an
organization

37. 7-37
Advantages of the Cloud
 Lower capital expenditures
 Lower barriers to entry
 Immediate access to a broad
range of application software
 Real-time scalability

38. 7-38
IT SUCCESS METRICS
 To justify costs of technology, you
need to measure its success
 Metrics are also called benchmarks,
baseline values a system seeks to
attain.
 Benchmarking – process of
continuously measuring system
results and comparing them to
benchmarks

39. 7-39
Efficiency & Effectiveness
Metrics
 Efficiency – doing something right
 In the least time
 At the lowest cost
 With the fewest errors
 Effectiveness – doing the right
things
 Getting customers to buy when they
visit your site
 Answering the right question with the
right answer the first time

40. 7-40
Efficiency & Effectiveness
Metrics
Bottom-line initiatives typically focus on efficiency, while top-line initiatives
tend to focus on effectiveness.

41. 7-41
Types of IT Success Metrics
 Infrastructure-centric metrics
 Web-centric metrics
 Call center metrics

42. 7-42
Infrastructure-Centric Metrics
 Infrastructure-centric metric –
measure of efficiency, speed, and/or
capacity of technology
 Throughput – amount of information that
can pass through a system in a given
amount of time
 Transaction speed – speed at which a
system can process a transaction
 System availability – the average amount
of time a system is down or unavailable

43. 7-43
Infrastructure-Centric Metrics
 Infrastructure-centric metric (cont’d)
 Accuracy – measured inversely as error
rate, or the number of errors per
thousand/million that a system generates
 Response time – average time to
respond to a user-generated event like a
mouse click
 Scalability – conceptual metric related to
how well a system can be adapted to
increased demands

44. 7-44
Web-Centric Metrics
 Web-centric metric – success of
your Web and e-business initiatives
 Unique visitors – # of unique visitors
to a site
 Total hits – number of visits to a site
 Page exposures – average page
exposures to an individual visitor
 Conversion rate - % of potential
customers who visit your site and who
actually buy something

45. 7-45
Web-Centric Metrics
 Web-centric metric (cont’d)
 Click-through - # of people who click on
an ad and are taken to another site
 Cost-per-thousand – sales dollars
generated per dollar of advertising
 Abandoned registrations - # who start
to register at your site and then abandon
the process
 Abandoned shopping carts - # who
create a shopping cart and then abandon it

46. 7-46
Call Center Metrics
 Call center metric – measures the
success of call center efforts
 Abandon rate - % number of callers
who hang up while waiting for their call
to be answered
 Average speed to answer (ASA) –
average time, usually in seconds, that it
takes for a call to be answered by an
actual person

47. 7-47
Call Center Metrics
 Call center metric (cont’d)
 Time service factor (TSF) - % of calls
answered within a specific time frame,
such as 30 or 90 seconds
 First call resolution (FCR) - % of
calls that can be resolved without
having to call back

48. 7-48
BUSINESS CONTINUITY
PLANNING
 Business continuity planning (BCP)
– rigorous and well-informed
organizational methodology for
developing a business continuity
plan, a step-by-step guideline defining
how the organization will recover from
a disaster or extended disruption
 BCP is very necessary today given
terror threats, increased climate
volatility, etc

49. 7-49
BUSINESS CONTINUITY
PLANNING METHODOLOGY

50. 7-50
BCP METHODOLOGY
1. Organizational strategic plan
2. Analysis
3. Design
4. Implementation
5. Testing
6. Maintenance

51. 7-51
Organizational Strategic Plan
 It all starts here
 The strategic plan defines what is
and what is not important
 You must have a business continuity
plan for what is important

52. 7-52
Analysis
 Impact analysis – risk assessment,
evaluating IT assets, their importance,
and susceptibility to threat
 Threat analysis – document all possible
major threats to organizational assets
 Impact scenario analysis – build worst-
case scenario for each threat
 Requirement recovery document –
identifies critical assets, threats to
them, and worst-case scenarios

53. 7-53
Design
 Build disaster recovery plan,
detailed plan for recovering from a
disaster. May include
 Collocation facility – rented space
and telecommunications equipment
 Hot site – fully equipped facility where
your company can move to
 Cold site – facility where your company
can move to but has no computer
equipment

54. 7-54
Design
Disaster recovery plan should include a disaster recovery cost curve, which
charts the cost of unavailable information/technology compared to the cost to
recover from a disaster over time.

55. 7-55
Implementation
 Engage any businesses that will
provide collocation facilities, hot
sites, and cold sites
 Implement procedures for recovering
from a disaster
 Train employees
 Evaluate each IT system to ensure
that it is configured optimally for
recovering from a disaster

56. 7-56
Testing
 As opposed to traditional SDLC,
testing in BCP methodology occurs
after implementation
 Simulate disaster scenarios
 Have employees execute disaster
recovery plans
 Evaluate success and refine as
necessary

57. 7-57
Maintenance
 Perform testing annually, at a
minimum
 Change business continuity plan as
organizational strategic plan changes
 Evaluate and react to new threats
 No “system” is ever complete