Information Systems and Networks

Transcription

1 Information Systems and Networks by Samuel Rota Bulò Department of Management Università Ca' Foscari Venezia

2 Lesson 4 IT Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies

3 Case study: BART Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is a heavy-rail public transit system connects San Francisco to Oakland, California, and other neighboring cities to the east and south BART has provided fast, reliable transportation for more than 35 years and now carries more than 346,000 passengers each day over 104 miles of track and 43 stations. It provides an alternative to driving on bridges and highways, decreasing travel time and the number of cars on the Bay Area s congested roads It is the fifth busiest rapid transit system in the United States

4 Case study: BART BART recently embarked on an ambitious modernization effort overhaul stations, deploy new rail cars, and extend routes improve the information technology infrastructure BART s information systems were no longer state-of-the art they were starting to affect its ability to provide good service could no longer provide information rapidly enough for making timely decisions they were too unreliable to support its 24/7 operations

5 Case study: BART BART upgraded both its hardware and software they use grid computing technology to improve availability and better match computational and storage requirements Oracle s PeopleSoft Enterprise applications running on HP Integrity blade servers and the Oracle Enterprise Linux operating system if needed a new server can be easily added to the system they use virtualization to run multiple applications on the same server, increasing server capacity utilization to 50% or higher minimize the use of physical space and energy

6 Case study: BART

7 IT Infrastructure set of physical devices and software applications required to operate the entire enterprise set of firmwide services budgeted by management and comprising both human and technical capabilities computing platforms, telecommunication, data management, application software, physical facilities management, IT management, IT standards, IT education, IT research and development

8 IT Infrastructure services computing platforms connect employees, customers and suppliers into a coherent digital environment large mainframes, midrange computers, desktop and laptop computers, mobile handheld devices telecommunication services data management services store and manage corporate data and provide capabilities for analyzing the data application software provide data, voice and video connectivity to employees, customers and suppliers provide enterprise-wide capabilities such as enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, supply chain management, and knowledge management systems that are shared by all business units physical facilities management develop and manage the physical installations required for computing and telecommunication and data management services

9 IT Infrastructure services IT management services IT standards services provide the firm and its business units with policies that determine which information technology will be used, when, and how IT education services plan and develop the infrastructure, coordinate with the business units for IT services, manage accounting for the IT expenditure, and provide project management services provide training in system use to employees and offer managers training in how to plan for and manage IT investments IT research and development services provide the firm with research on potential future IT projects and investments that could help the firm differentiate itself in the marketplace

10 IT Infrastructure

11 Evolution of IT Infrastructure: Mainframe 1959 present IBM opens the era of commercial mainframes (IBM 1401, 7090, 360 series) centralized computing controlled by professional programmers and systems operators remote terminals connected to centralized mainframe using proprietary communication protocols and data lines. most elements of the infrastructure provided by a single vendor

12 Evolution of IT Infrastructure: IBM 360

13 Evolution of IT Infrastructure: Minicomputers 1965, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) introduces minicomputers (PDP-11 and later VAX machines) minicomputers were powerful machines (for that time) at far lower prices than IBM mainframes decentralized computing started to be possible customized to the needs of individual business units rather than time sharing on a huge mainframe

14 Evolution of IT Infrastructure: PDP-11

15 Evolution of IT infrastructure: Personal Computer (PC) Era 1981 present first PCs appeared in 1970 (Xerox Alto, MITS Atair 8800, Apple I and II,...) but limited distribution 1981 IBM PCs open the PC era as it was widely adopted by American businesses Initially, DOS operating system with text-based command language. Later Microsoft Windows OS. The Wintel computer (Windows on Intel processors) was the standard desktop PC Today, 1.5 billion computers use the Wintel standard Proliferation of PC between 80's and 90's launched a spate of personal desktop productivity software tools word processors, spreadsheets electronic presentation software, small data management programs PCs were standalone systems that in the 90s started to be linked into networks

16 Evolution of IT infrastructure: Personal Computer (PC) Era

17 Evolution of IT infrastructure: DOS Operating System

18 Evolution of IT infrastructure: Windows Operating System

19 Evolution of IT infrastructure: Client/Server (C/S) Era 1983 present server: powerful computer that provides client computers with a variety of serivces and capabilities processes and stores shared data, serves up web pages, manages network activities can be a mainframe, or more powerful versions of PCs based on inexpensive chips and multiple processors client: desktop or laptop computers networked to servers user point of entry

20 Evolution of IT infrastructure: Client/Server Era two-tiered C/S architecture simplest setting with a client computer networked to a server computer with processing split between the two types of machines multi-tiered (or N-tiered) C/S architecture the work of the entire network is balanced over several different levels of servers, depending on the kind of service being requested

21 Evolution of IT infrastructure: Enterprise Computing Era 1992 present in the 90's firms turned to networking standards and software tools that could integrate disparate networks and applications throughout the firm into an enterprise-wide infrastructure information can freely flow within and across the organization different types of computer hardware mainframes, PCs, mobile phones, hand-held devices includes public infrastructures such as telephone system, the Internet and public network services uses enterprise applications and Web services

22 Evolution of IT infrastructure: Enterprise Computing Era

23 Evolution of IT infrastructure: Cloud and Mobile Computing Era 2000 present cloud computing is a model of computing that provides access to a shared pool of computing resources (computers, storage, applications, and services), over a network (e.g., Internet). clouds can be accessed from any location on an as-needs basis from any connected device fastest growing form of computing global revenue in 2011: $89 billion. Expected for 2014: $149 billion IBM, HP, Dell, Amazon operate huge, scalable cloud computing centers providing computing power, data storage, high-speed internet connections to firms that want to maintain their IT infrastructure remotely.

24 Moore's Law (1965) and Microprocessing Power

25 Moore's Law and Microprocessing Power

26 The Law of Mass Digital Storage The amount of digital information is roughly doubling every year The cost of storing digital information is falling at an exponential rate

27 The Law of Mass Digital Storage

28 Metcalfe's Law (1970) and Network Economics Moore's Law and the Law of Mass Storage help us understand why computing resources are now so readily available Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet LAN technology claimed that the value or power of a network grows exponentially as a function of the number of network members

29 Declining Communications Costs and the Internet Rapid decline of the cost of communication Exponential growth in the size of the Internet Business should take advantage of this ongoing trend by expanding their internet connections, wireless connectivity, power of client/server networks, desktop clients and mobile computing devices

30 Standards and Network Effects Today's enterprise infrastructure and Internet computing would be impossible without agreements among manufacturers and widespread consumer acceptance of technology standards A technology standard is a specification that establishes the compatibility of products and the ability to communicate in a network Standards contributed to lowering prices and unleashed powerful economies of scale

31 Standards and Network Effects

32 Infrastructure components

33 Contemporary Hardware Platform Trends Mobile digital platform mobile phone have taken many functions of handheld computers: transmission of data, surfing the Web, transmitting , instant messaging, displaying digital content... netbooks: low-cost, lightweight notebooks digital ebook readers and tablets in few years, smartphones, netbooks, tablets will be the primary means of accessing internet with business computing moving from PCs to mobile devices

34 Contemporary Hardware Platform Trends Grid computing single network of remote computers that creates a virtual supercomputer by combining the computational power of all computers on the grid Computers use actively their central processing unit (CPU) only 25% of the time, on average. became possible after the establishment of high-speed internet connections requires special software to control and allocate resources on the grid client software communicates with a server software application, which breaks data and application code into chunks that are then parcelled out to the grid machines

35 Contemporary Hardware Platform Trends Virtualization process of presenting a set of computing resources (e.g., computing power or data storage) so that they can all be accessed in ways that are not restricted by physical configuration or geographic location multiple physical devices are abstracted as a single logical resource a company can handle its computer processing and storage using computer resources housed in remote locations allows to increase the equipment utilization rates and reduce the number of computer required facilitates centralization and consolidation of hardware administration e.g., VMWare, Ms Virtual Server

36 Contemporary Hardware Platform Trends Cloud Computing individuals can obtain computing capabilities such as server time or network storage on-demand (on-demand self-service) individuals can use standard network and Internet devices, including mobile platforms, to access cloud resources (ubiquitous network access) computer resources are pooled to serve multiple users, with different virtual resources dynamically assigned according to user demand (location independence resource pooling) computing resources can be rapidly provisioned, increased, or decreased to meet changing user demand (rapid elasticity) charges for cloud resources are based on amount of resources actually used (measured service)

37 Contemporary Hardware Platform Trends Cloud Computing customers use processing, storage, networking and other computing resources from cloud service to run their IS (cloud infrastructure as a service) customers use infrastructure and programming tools hosted by the service provider to develop their own applications (cloud platform as service) customers user hosted by the vendor on the vendor's hardware and delivered over the network (cloud software as a service) can be public maintained by an external service provider, or private maintained inside a company

38 Contemporary Hardware Platform Trends Cloud Computing organizations using cloud computing do not own the infrastructure so they don't have to make large investments, but they pay only for the amount of computing power used (utility computing) drawback: unless users make provisions for storing their data locally, the responsibility for data storage and control is in the hands of the provider. data security issues and risk of service unavailability appealing to small and medium-sized companies, lacking resources to purchase their own infrastructure

39 Contemporary Hardware Platform Trends Green computing practice and technologies for designing, manufacturing, using, and disposing of computers, servers, and associated devices to minimize impact on the environment reducing computer power consumption is a green priority companies spend almost as much on electricity to power and cool their systems as they did on purchasing the hardware data centers used more than 2% of all US electrical power in 2011 IT is believed to contribute about 2% of the world's greenhouse gases

40 Contemporary Hardware Platform Trends Autonomic computing industry-wide effort to develop systems that can configure, optimize and tune themselves, heal themselves when broken, and protect themselves from outside intruders and self-destruction e.g., antivirus and firewall protection software IBM and other vendors are starting to build autonomic features into products for large systems

41 Contemporary Hardware Platform Trends High-performance and power-saving processors another way to reduce power requirements and hardware sprawl is to use more efficient and power-saving processors multi-core processors is an integrated circuit to which two or more processor cores have been attached for enhanced performance, reduced power consumption, and more efficient simultaneous processing of multiple tasks Intel and other chip makers have developed microprocessors that minimize power consumption, which increase e.g. the battery life in smartphones, netbooks and other mobile digital devices. the A4 processors used in iphone and ipad consumes milliwatts, about 1/50 to 1/30 the power consumption of a laptop dual-core processor

42 Contemporary Software Platform Trends Open source software software produced by a community of several hundred thousand programmers around the world is free and can be modified by users works derived from the original code must also be free and the software can be redistributed by the user without additional licensing not restricted to any specific operating system or hardware technology e.g., Linux OS, Apache HTTP Web server, Mozilla Firefox Web browser, Oracle Open Office,...

43 Contemporary Software Platform Trends Linux the most well known open source software operating system originated from Unix and created by Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds linux is embedded in cell phones, smartphones, netbooks and consumer electronics available in free versions downloadable from the Internet it has profound implications for corporate software platforms: cost reduction, reliability and resiliance, and integration, as Linux works on all the major hardware platforms from mainframes to servers to clients

44 Software for the web Java operating-system-independent, hardware-independent, object-oriented programming language that has become the leading interactive environment for the Web Created in 1992 at Sun Microsystems Became open source software in 2007 the Java platform has migrated into mobile phones, smartphones, cars, music players, game machines, cable television systems can run on any computer or computing device regardless of microprocessor or operating system because it relies on a machine abstraction called Virtual Machine can be embedded in web pages as applets and run on web browsers at enterprise level, Java is used for the development of more complex e-commerce and e-business applications

45 Software for the web Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) Web development technique that allows a client and server to exchange small pieces of data behind the scene so that entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user requests a change Ajax uses Javascript programs (Javascript is different from Java) that are downloaded on the client to maintain a near-continuous conversation with the server, making the user experience more seamless

46 Software for the web

47 Software for the web

48 Web services Web services refer to a set of loosely coupled software components that exchange information with each other using universal Web communication standards and languages allow to link systems of two different organizations or disparate systems within a single company based on standards independent of operating system or programming language

49 Web services XML (extensible Markup Language) foundation technology for Web services language developed in 1996 by the WWW Consortium (W3C, international body that oversees the development of the Web) more powerful and flexible markup language than HyperText Markup Language (HTML) used for Web pages HTML is a page description language specifying how text, graphics, video, sounds, etc., are placed on a Web page document XML instead can perform presentation, communication and storage of data XML allows to surround data with tags specifying their meaning, which can be processed by computers in order to manipulate and interpret data automatically and perform operations on the data without human intervention XML provides a standard format for data exchange, enabling Web services to pass data from one process to another

50 HTML vs XML HTML:

51 HTML vs XML Rendered HTML in a browser

52 HTML vs XML XML:

53 Web services Web services communicate through XML messages over standard Web protocols SOAP: Simple Object Access Protocol WSDL: Web Services Description Language set of rules for structuring messages that enables applications to pass data and instructions to on another describes the tasks performed by a Web service and the commands and data that it will accept so that it can be used by other applications UDDI: Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration enables a Web service to be listed in a directory of Web services so that it can be easily accessed

54 Web services

55 SOAP example

56 Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Service-Oriented Architecture: collection of web services that are used to build a firm's software systems set of self-contained services that communicate with each other to create working software application Business tasks are accomplished by executing a series of these services Software developer reuse these services in other combinations to assemble other applications as needed

57 Service-Oriented Architecture

58 Software outsourcing Many firms continue to operate legacy systems that still meet a business need and that would be extremely costly to replace they will also purchase or rent most of their new software applications from external sources: software packages from a commercial software vendor outsourcing custom application development to external vendor cloud-based software services and tools

59 Software outsourcing

60 Software outsourcing: software packages A software package is a commercially available set of software programs that eliminates the need for a firm to write its own software programs for certain functions, e.g., payroll processing or order handling. Enterprise application software vendors (e.g., SAP, Oracle-PeopleSoft) have developed powerful software that can support the primary business processes of a firm worldwide from warehousing, customer relationship management, supply chain management, and finance to human resources. Buying the system costs much less than developing it by themselves

61 Software outsourcing development of custom software or maintenance of existing legacy programs contracted to outside firms, which often operate offshore in low-wage areas of the world (e.g., India)

62 Cloud-based software services and tools cloud-based software and the data is uses is hosted on powerful servers in massive data centers, and can be accessed with an Internet connection and standard Web browser we find free or low-cost tools for individuals and small businesses provided by Google or Yahoo! enterprise software and other complex business functions are available as services from the major commercial vendors users pay either on a subscription or per-transaction basis services for delivering and providing access to software remotely as a Web-based service are referred to as software as a service (SaaS) e.g., Salesforce.com to manage the relationship with an outsourcer or technology service provider, firms need a contract including a service level of agreement reporting responsibilities and expected levels of service

63 Management Issues: dealing with platform and infrastructure change as firm grows they quickly outgrow their infrastructure as firm shrink they get stuck with excessive infrastructure Scalability refers to the ability of a computer, product, or system to expand to serve a large number of users without breaking down firms using mobile and cloud computing platforms will require new policies and procedures for managing these platforms inventory, tracking, updating and securing mobile devices new contractual agreements with remote vendors to make sure that the hardware and software for critical applications are always available when needed and that they meet corporate standards for information security

64 Total cost of ownership of Technology assets Hardware acquisition Software acquisition cost to provide training for information systems specialists and end users Support cost to install computers and software Training purchase or license of software for each user Installation purchase price of computer hardware equipment, including computers, terminals, storage and printers... cost to provide ongoing technical support, help desk, and so forth

65 Total cost of ownership of Technology assets... Maintenance Infrastructure cost to acquire, maintain, and support related infrastructure, such as networks and specialized equipment Downtime cost to upgrade the hardware and software cost of lost productivity due to system unavailability caused by hardware or software failures Space and energy real estate and utility costs for housing and providing power for the technology