IT Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies

Defining IT Infrastructure

IT infrastructure consists of a set of physical devices and software applications that are required to operate the entire enterprise. But IT infrastructure is also a set of firmwide services budgeted by management and comprising both human and technical capabilities.

 

Fig. Connection Between The Firm, IT Infrastructure, and Business Capabilities

 

Evolution of IT Infrastructure

The IT infrastructure in organizations today is an outgrowth of over 50 years of evolution in computing platforms. There have been five stages in this evolution, each representing a different configuration of computing power and infrastructure elements. The five eras are general-purpose mainframe and minicomputer computing, and cloud and mobile computing.

General-Purpose Mainframe and Minicomputer Era: (1959 to Present)

The introduction of the IBM 1401 and 7090 transistorized machines in 1959 marked the beginning of widespread commercial use of mainframe computer. The mainframe era was a period of highly centralized computing under the control of professional programmers and systems operators (usually in a corporate data center), with most elements of infrastructure provided by a single vendor, the manufacturer of the hardware and the software. This pattern began to change with the introduction of minicomputers produced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1965. In recent years, the minicomputer has evolved into a midrange computer or midrange server and is part of a network.

Personal Computer Era: (1981 to Present)

The appearance of the IBM PC in 1981 is usually considered the beginning of the PC era because this machine was the first to be widely adopted by American businesses. The Wintel PC computer (Windows operating system software on a computer with an Intel microprocessor) became the standard desktop personal computer. Today, 95 percent of the world’s estimated 1.5 billion computers use the Wintel standard.

Client/Server Era: (1982 to Present)

In client/server computing, desktop or laptop computers called clients are networked by powerful server computers that provide the client computers with a variety of services and capabilities. Simple client/server networks can be found in small businesses, most corporations have more complex, multitiered (often called N-tier) client/server architectures in which the work of the entire network is balanced over several different levels of servers, depending on the kind of service being requested.

At first level, a Web server will serve a Web page to a client in response to a request for service. Application server software handles all application operations between a user and an organization’s back-end business systems.  Novell NetWare was the leading technology for client/server networking at the beginning of the client/server era. Today, Microsoft is the market leader with its Windows operating systems.

Enterprise Computing Era: (1992 to Present)

In the early 1990s, firms turned to networking standards and software tools that could integrate disparate networks and applications throughout the firm into an enterprise-wide infrastructure. The enterprise infrastructure also requires software to link disparate applications and enable data to flow freely among different parts of the business, such as enterprise applications.

Cloud and Mobile Computing Era: (2000 to Present)

The growing bandwidth power of the Internet has pushed the client/server model one step further, towards what is called the “Cloud Computing Model,” refers to a model of computing that provides access to a shared pool of computing resources over a network, often the Internet.

Technology Drivers of Infrastructure Evolution

Moore’s Law and Microprocessing Power

 

The first microprocessor chip was introduced in 1959, the number of components on a chip with the smallest manufacturing costs per component (generally transistors) had doubled each year. This assertion became the foundation of Moore’s Law.  This law would later be interpreted in multiple ways. There are at least three variations of Moore’s Law, none of which Moore ever stated: (1) the power of microprocessors doubles every 18 months (2) computing power doubles every 18 months; and (3) the price of computing falls by half every 18 months.

 

 

 

 

 Fig. Moore's Law and Microprocessor Performance

 

Nanotechnology uses individual atoms and molecules to create computer chips and other devices that are thousands of times smaller than current technologies permit.

 

 

Fig. Examples of Nanotubes

 

 

The Law of Mass Digital Storage

 

A second technology driver of IT infrastructure change is the Law of Mass Digital Storage. The world produces as much as 5 exabytes of unique information per year. The amount of digital information is roughly doubling every year. Fortunately, the cost of storing digital information is falling at an exponential rate of 100 percent a year.

 

 

 Fig. Falling Cost of Chips

 

Metcalfe’s Law and Network Economics

 

Robert Metcalfe – inventor of Ethernet local area network technology – claimed in 1970 that the value or power of a network grows exponentially as a function of the number of network members. Demand for information technology has been driven by the social and business value of digital networks, which rapidly multiply the number of actual and potential links among network members.

 

Declining Communications Costs and the Internet

A fourth technology driver transforming IT infrastructure is the rapid decline in the costs of communication and the exponential growth in the size of Internet. As communication costs fall toward a very small number and approach 0, utilization of communication and computing facilities explodes.

 

 

Operating System Platforms

 

At the client level, 90 percent of PCs use some form of Microsoft Windows operating system to manage the resources and activities of the computer. Google’s Chrome OS provides a lightweight operating system for cloud computing using netbooks. Android is a mobile operating system developed by Android, Inc. and later the Open Handset Alliance as a flexible, upgradeable mobile device platform. Multitouch interface, where users use their fingers to manipulate objects on the screen.

 

Enterprise Software Applications

The largest providers of enterprise application software are SAP and Oracle (which acquired PeopleSoft).  Microsoft is attempting to move into the lower ends of this market by focusing on small and medium-sized businesses that have not yet implemented enterprise applications.

 

Data Management and Storage

Enterprise database management software is responsible for organizing and managing the firm’s data so that they can be efficiently accessed and used. The leading database software providers are IBM (DB2), Oracle, Microsoft (SQL server), and Sybase (Adaptive Server Enterprise), which supply more than 90 percent of the U.S. database software marketplace. Storage area networks (SANS) connect multiple storage devices on a separate high-speed network dedicated to storage.

 

Contemporary Hardware Platform Trends

 

The exploding power of computer hardware and networking technology has dramatically changed how businesses organize their computing power, putting more of this power on networks and mobile handheld devices.

 

The Emerging Mobile Digital Platform

Cell phones and smartphones such as the BlackBerry and iPhone have taken on many functions of handheld computers, including transmission of data, surfing the Web, transmitting email and instant messages, displaying digital content and exchanging data with internal corporate systems. The new mobile platform also includes small low-cost lightweight subnotebooks called netbooks optimized for wireless communication and Internet access, with core computing functions such as word processing; tablet computers such as the iPad; and digital e-book readers such as Amazon’s Kindle with some Web access capabilities.

 

Grid Computing

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.  Grid computing requires software programs to control and allocate resources on the grid.

 

Virtualization

Virtualization is the process of presenting a set of computing resources (such as computing power or data storage) so that they can all be accessed in ways that are not restricted by physical configuration or geographic location.

 

Business Benefits of Virtualization

By providing the ability to host multiple systems on a single physical machine, virtualization helps organizations increase equipment utilization rates, conserving data center space and energy usage. Most servers run at just 15-20 percent of capacity, and virtualization can boost server utilization rates to 70 percent or higher. Higher utilization rates translate into fewer computers required to process the same amount of work.

 

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is which firms and individuals obtain computer processing, storage, software, and other services as a pool of virtualized resources over a network, primarily the Internet. These resources are made available to users, based on their needs, irrespective of their physical location or the location of the users themselves. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines cloud computing as having the following essential characteristics

• On-demand self-service – individual can obtain computing capabilities such as server time or network storage on their own.
• Ubiquitous network access – individuals can use standard network and Internet devices, including mobile platforms, to access cloud resources.
• Location independent resource pooling – Computing resources are pooled to serve multiple users, with different virtual resources dynamically assigned according to user demand. The user generally does not know where the computing resources are located.
• Rapid elasticity – computing resources can be rapidly provisioned, increased, or decreased to meet changing user demand.
• Measured service – charges for cloud resources are based on amount of resources actually used.

Green Computing

Green computing or green IT refers to practices and technologies for designing, manufacturing, using, and disposing of computers, servers, and associated devices such as monitors, printers, storage devices and networking and communications systems to minimize impact on the environment.

 

Autonomic Computing

Autonomic computing is an industry-wide effort to develop systems that can configure themselves, optimize and tune themselves, heal themselves when broken, and protect themselves from outside intruders and self-destruction.

 

Contemporary Software Platform Trends

Linux and Open Source Software

Open source software is software produced by a community of several hundred thousand programmer around the world. It is by definition not restricted to any specific system or hardware technology, although most open source software is currently based on a Linux or Unix operating system.

 

Linux

Perhaps the most well known open source software is Linux, an operating system related to Unix. The rise of open source software, particularly Linux and the applications it supports, has profound implications for corporate software platforms: cost reduction, reliability and resilience, and integration, because Linux works on all the major hardware platforms from mainframes to servers to clients.

 

Software for the Web: Java and Ajax

Java is an operating system-independent, processor-independent, object-oriented programming language that has become the leading interactive environment for the Web. Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is another Web development technique for creating interactive Web applications that prevents all of this inconvenience.

 

Web Services and Service-Oriented Architecture

Web services refer to a set of loosely coupled software components that exchange information with each other using universal Web communication standards and languages. The foundation technology for Web services is XML (Extensible Markup Language), developed in 1996 by the World Wide Web Consortium as a more powerful and flexible markeup language than hyper text marke up language (HTML) for Web pages. HTML is a page description language for specifying how text, graphics, video, and sound are placed on a Web page document. A service oriented architecture (SOA) is set of self-contained services that communicate with each other to create a working software application.

 

Management Issues

Dealing with Platform and Infrastructure Change

 

As firms grow, they often quickly outgrow their infrastructure. As firms shrink, they can get stuck with excessive infrastructure purchased in better times. It is up to business management to determine acceptable levels of computer response time and availability for the firm’s mission-critical systems to maintain the level of business performance they expect.

 

Management and Governance

A long-standing issue among information system managers and CEOs has been the question of who will control and manage the firm’s IT infrastructure.  Each organization will need to arrive at answer based on its own needs.

 

Making Wise Infrastructure Investments

IT infrastructure is a major investment for the firm. If too much is spent on infrastructure, it lies and constitutes a drag on firm financial performance. If too little is spent, important business services cannot be delivered and the firm’s competitors will outperform the under-investing firm. Cloud computing may be a low-cost way to increase scalability and flexibility, but firms should evaluate this option carefully in light of security requirements and impact on business processes and work flows.

 

Competitive Forces Model for IT Infrastructure Investment

 

Market demand for your firm’s services – make an inventory of the services you currently provide to customers, suppliers, and employees.

 

Your firm’s business strategy – analyze your firm’s five-year business strategy and try to assess what new services and capabilities will be required to achieve strategic goals.

Your firm’s IT strategy, infrastructure, and cost – Examine your firm’s information technology plans for the next five years and assess its alignment with the firm’s business plans.

 

Information technology assessment – is your firm behind the technology curve or at the bleeding edge of information technology? Both situations are to be avoided.

Competitor firm services – try to assess what technology services competitors’ offer to customers, suppliers, and employees.

 

 

Competitor firm IT infrastructure investments – benchmark your expenditures for IT infrastructure against your competitors. Many companies are quite public about their innovative expenditures on IT.

 

 

 

Summary

 

 

IT infrastructure consists of a set of physical devices and software applications that are required to operate the entire enterprise. But IT infrastructure is also a set of firm wide services budgeted by management and comprising both human and technical capabilities. The IT infrastructure in organizations today is an outgrowth of over 50 years of evolution in computing platforms. There have been five stages in this evolution, each representing a different configuration of computing power and infrastructure elements. The five eras are general-purpose mainframe and minicomputer computing, and cloud and mobile computing; General-Purpose Mainframe and Minicomputer Era: (1959 to Present), Personal Computer Era: (1981 to Present), Client/Server Era: (1982 to Present), Enterprise Computing Era: (1992 to Present), and Cloud and Mobile Computing Era: (2000 to Present). Major challenges include dealing with platform and infrastructure change, infrastructure management and governance, and making wise infrastructure investments. Solution guidelines include using a competitive forces model to determine how much to spend on IT infrastructure and where to make strategic infrastructure investments, and establishing the total cost of ownership (TCO) of information technology assets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

Technology can be a double-edged sword. It can be the source of many benefits but it can also create new opportunities for invading your privacy, and enabling the reckless use of that information in a variety of decisions about you.

Understanding Ethical and Social Issues Related to Systems

In the past 10 years, we have witnessed, arguably, one of the most ethically challenging periods for U.S. and global business.  In today’s new legal environment, managers who violate the law and are convicted will most likely spend time in prison.  Ethics refers to the principles of right and wrong that individuals, acting as free moral agents, use to make choices to guide their behaviors. When using information systems, it is essential to ask, “What is the ethical and socially responsible course of actin?”

A Model for Thinking about Ethical, Social and Political Issues

Ethical, social, and political issues are closely linked. The ethical dilemma you may face as a manager of information systems typically is reflected in social and political debate.

Fig. The Relationship Between Ethical, Social, and Political Issues In An Information Society

Five Moral Dimensions Of The Information Age

The major ethical, social, and political issues raised by information systems include the following moral dimensions:

Information rights and obligations.  What information rights do individuals and organizations possess with respect to themselves? What can they protect?

Property rights and obligations.  How will traditional intellectual property rights be protected in a digital society in which tracing and accounting for ownership are difficult and ignoring such property rights is so easy?

Accountability and control.  Who can and will be held accountable and liable for the harm done to individual and collective information and property rights?

System quality.  What standards of data and system quality should we demand to protect individual rights and the safety of society?

Quality of Life.  What values should be preserved in an information- and knowledge-based society?

Key Technology Trends that Raise Ethical Issues

Profiling – the use of computers to combine data from multiple sources and create electronic dossiers of detailed information on individuals.

Nonobvious relationship awareness (NORA) – a more powerful profiling capabilities technology, can take information about people from many disparate sources, such as employment applications, telephone records, customer listings, and “wanted” lists, and correlated relationships to find obscure hidden connections that might help identify criminals or terrorists.

Fig. Nonobvious relationship awareness (NORA)

 

 

Ethics In An Information Society

Basic Concepts: Responsibility, Accountability, and Liability

Ethical choices are decisions made by individuals who are responsible for the consequences of their actions. Responsibility is a key element and means that you accept the potential costs, duties, and obligations for the decisions you make. Accountability is a feature of systems and social institutions and means mechanisms are in place to determine who took responsible action, and who is responsible. Liability is a feature of political systems in which a body of laws is in place that permits individuals to recover the damages done to them by other actors, systems, or organizations. Due process is a related feature of law-governed societies and is a process in which laws are known and understood, and there is an ability to appeal to higher authorities to ensure that the laws are applied correctly.

 

The Moral Dimensions of Information Systems
Information Rights: Privacy And Freedom In The Internet Age

Privacy is the claim of individuals to be left alone, free from surveillance or interference from other individuals or organizations, including the state. Most American and European privacy law is based on a regime called Fair Information Practices (FIP) first set forth in a report written in 1973 by a federal government advisory committee (U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1973).

The European Directive on Data Protection

In Europe, privacy protection is much more stringent than in the United States. Unlike the United States, European countries do not allow businesses to use personally identifiable information without consumers’ prior consent. Informed consent can be defined as consent given with knowledge of all the facts needed to make a rational decision. 

Working with the European Commission, the U.S. Department of Commerce developed a safe harbor framework for U.S. firms. A safe harbor is a private self-regulating policy and enforcement mechanism that meets the objectives of government regulators and legislation but does not involve government regulation or enforcement.

Internet Challenges to Privacy

Internet technology has posed new challenges for the protection of individual privacy. Information sent over this vast network of networks may pass through many different computer systems before it reaches its final destination. Each of these systems is capable of monitoring, capturing, and storing communications that pass through it.

Cookies are small text files deposited on a computer hard drive when a user visits to the web sites. Cookies identify the visitor’s web browser software and track visits to the website. Web beacons, also called web bugs, are tiny objects invisibly embedded in e-mail messages and Web pages that are designed to monitor the behavior of the user visiting a web site or sending e-mail. Spyware can secretly install itself on an Internet user’s computer by piggybacking on larger applications. Once installed, the spyware calls out to Web sites to send banner ads and other unsolicited material to the user, and it can also report the user’s movements on the Internet to other computers.

Property Rights: Intellectual Property

Intellectual property is considered to be intangible property created by individuals or corporations. Information technology has made it difficult to protect intellectual property because computerized information can be so easily copied or distributed on networks. Intellectual property is subject to a variety of protections under three different legal traditions: trade secrets, copyright, and patent law.

Trade Secrets

Any intellectual work product – a formula, device, pattern, or compilation of data-used for a business purpose can be classified as a trade secret, provided it is not based on information in the public domain.

Copyright

Copyright is a statutory grant that protects creators of intellectual property from having their work copied by others for any purpose during the life of the author plus an additional 70 years after the author’s death.

 

Patents
A patent grants the owner an exclusive monopoly on the ideas behind an invention for 20 years. The congressional intent behind patent law was to ensure that inventors of new machines, devices, or methods receive the full financial and other rewards of their labor and yet make widespread use of the invention possible by providing detailed diagrams for those wishing to use the idea under license from the patent’s owner.

System Quality: Data Quality and System Errors

Three principle sources of poor system performance are (1) software bugs and errors (2) hardware or facility failures caused by natural or other causes and (3) poor input data quality. The software industry has not yet arrived at testing standards for producing software of acceptable but not perfect performance.

 

Quality of Life: Equity, Access, and Boundaries

Balancing Power: Center Versus Periphery

Lower level employees many be empowered to make minor decisions but the key policy decisions may be as centralized as in the past.

Rapidity of Change: Reduced Response Time to Competition

Information systems have helped to create much more efficient national and international market. The now-more-efficient global marketplace has reduced the normal social buffers that permitted businesses many years to adjust to competiton. We stand the risk of developing a “just-in-time society” with “just-in-time jobs” and “just-in-time” workplaces, families, and vacations.

Maintaining Boundaries: Family, Work, and Leisure

The danger to ubiquitous computing, telecommuting, nomad computing, and the “do anything anywhere” computing environment is that it is actually coming true. The traditional boundaries that separate work from family and just plain leisure have been weakened. The work umbrella now extends far beyond the eight-hour day.

Dependence and Vulnerability

Today our businesses, governments, schools, and private associations, such as churches are incredibly dependent on information systems and are, therefore, highly vulnerable if these systems fail. The absence of standards and the criticality of some system applications will probably call forth demands for national standards and perhaps regulatory oversight.

Computer Crime and Abuse

New technologies, including computers, create new opportunities for committing crimes by creating new valuable items to steal, new way to steal them, and new ways to harm others. Computer crime is the commission illegal acts through the use of a computer or against a computer system. Simply accessing a computer system without authorization or with intent to do harm, even by accident, is now a federal crime.

Computer abuse is the commission of acts involving a computer that may not illegal but that are considered unethical. The popularity of the Internet and e-mail has turned one form of computer abuse – spamming – into a serious problem for both individuals and businesses. Spam is junk e-mail sent by an organization or individual to a mass audience of Internet users who have expressed no interest in the product or service being marketed.

 

Employment: Trickle-Down Technology and Reengineering Job Loss

Reengineering work is typically hailed in the information systems community as a major benefit of new information technology. It is much less frequently noted that redesigning business processes could potentially cause millions of mid-level managers and clerical workers to lose their jobs. One economist has raised the possibility that we will create a society run by a small “high tech elite of corporate professionals…in a nation of permanently unemployed” (Rifkin, 1993).  Careful planning and sensitivity to employee needs can help companies redesign work to minimize job losses.

 

Equity and Access: Increasing Racial and Social Class Cleavages

Several studies have found that certain ethnic and income groups in the United States are less likely to have computers or online Internet access even though computer ownership and Internet access have soared in the past five years. A similar digital divide exists in U.S. schools, with schools in high-poverty areas less likely to have computers, high-quality educational technology programs, or internet access availability for their students. Public interest groups want to narrow this digital divide by making digital information services – including the Internet – available to virtually everyone, just as basic telephone service is now.

 

Health Risks: RSI, CVS, and Technostress

The most common occupational disease today is repetitive stress injury (RSI). RSI occurs when muscle groups are forced through repetitive actions often with high-impact loads (such as tennis) or tens of thousands of repetitions under low-impact loads (such as working at a computer keyboard).

The single largest source of RSI is computer keyboards. The most common kind of computer-related RSI is carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS), in which pressure on the median nerve through the wrist’s bony structure, called a carpal tunnel, produces pain. Millions of workers have been diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome. Computer vision syndrome (CVS) refers to any eyestrain condition related to display screen use in desktop computers, laptops, e-readers, smart-phones, and hand-held video games. Its symptoms, which are usually temporary, include headaches, blurred vision, and dry and irritated eyes.

The newest computer-related malady is technostress, which is stress induced by computer use. Its symptoms include aggravation, hostility toward humans, impatience, and fatigue. Technostress is thought to be related to high levels of job turnover in the computer industry, high levels of early retirement from computer-intense occupations, and elevated levels of drug and alcohol abuse.

 

 

 

Summary

Technology can be a double-edged sword. It can be the source of many benefits but it can also create new opportunities for invading your privacy, and enabling the reckless use of that information in a variety of decisions about you. The computer has become a part of our lives – personally as well as socially, culturally, and politically. It is unlikely that the issues and our choices will become easier as information technology continues to transform our world. The growth of the Internet and the information economy suggests that all the ethical and social issues we have described will be heightened further as we move into the first digital century.

 

 

Information Systems, Organizations, and Strategy

In order to operate, businesses must deal with many different pieces of information about suppliers, customers, employees, invoices and payments, and of course their products and services.

Business Processes

Business processes are the collection of activities required to produce a product or service. These activities are flows of material, information, and knowledge among the participants in business processes. Business processes also refer to unique ways in which organizations coordinate work, information, and knowledge, and the ways in which management chooses t coordinate work. To a large extent, the performance of a business firm depends on how well its business processes are designed and coordinated.

How Information Technology Improves Business Processes

Today, information technology can do much more. New technology can actually change the flow of information, making it possible for many more people to access and share information, replacing sequential steps with tasks that can be performed simultaneously, and eliminating delays in decision making. New information technology frequently changes the way in business works and supports entirely new business models.

Types of Information Systems

A typical business organization has systems supporting processes for each of the major business functions - systems for sales and marketing, manufacturing and production, finance and accounting, and human resources. It also has different systems supporting the decision-making needs of each of the main management groups.

Systems for Different Management Groups

Transaction Processing Systems
Operational managers need systems that keep track of the elementary activites and transactions of the organization, such as sales, receipts, cash deposits, payroll, credit decisions, and the flow of materials in a factory. Transaction processing systems (TPS) provide this kind of information.

Business Intelligence Systems for Decision Support
Management information systems (MIS) summarizes and reports on the company's basic operations using data supplied by transaction processing systems. The basic transaction data from TPS are compressed and usually presented in reports that are produced on a regular schedule. Today, many of these reports are delivered online. In contrast, decision-support systems (DSS) support more non-routine decision making. They focus on problems that are unique and rapidly changing, for which the procedure for arriving at a solution may not be fully predefined in advance. Business intelligence is a contemporary term for data and software tools for organizing, analyzing, and providing access to data to help managers and other enterprise users make more informed decisions.

Fig. How Management Information Systems Obtain Their Data From The Organization's TPS

Executive support systems (ESS) help senior management make these decisions. A digital dashboard displays on a single screen graphs and charts of key performance indicators for managing a company. Digital dashboards are becoming an increasingly popular tool for management decision makers.

Systems for Linking the Enterprise
Enterprise Applications

Enterprise applications which are systems that span functional areas, focus on executing business processes across the business firm, and include all levels of management. Enterprise applications help businesses become more flexible and productive by coordinating their business processes more closely and integrating groups of processes so they focus on efficient management of resources and customer service.

Enterprise Systems Firms use enterprise systems, also know as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, to integrate business processes in manufacturing and production, finance and accounting, sales and marketing, and human resources into a single software system. Supply Chain Management Systems Frims use supply chain management (SCM) systems to help manage relationships with their suppliers. Customer Relationship Management Systems Firms use customer relationship management (CRM) systems to help manage their relationships with their customers. Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) enable organizations to better manage processes for capturing and applying knowledge and expertise.

Fig. Enterprise Application Architecture

E-Business, E-Commerce, and E-Government

The systems and technologies we have just described are transforming firm's relationships with customers, employees, suppliers, and logistic partners into digital relationships using networks and the Internet. Electronic business or e-business, refers to the use of digital technology and the Internet to execute the major business processes in the enterprise. It also includes electronic commerce or e-commerce. E-government refers to the application of the Internet and networking technologies to digitally enable government and public sector agencies' relationships with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government.

Systems For Collaboration and Teamwork

Collaboration is working with others to achieve shared and explicit goals. It focuses on task or mission accomplishment and usually takes place in a business or other organization, and between businesses. Collaboration can be short-lived, lasting a few minutes, or longer term, depending on the nature of the task and the relationship among participants. It can be one-to-one or many-to-many. Teams have a specific mission that someone in the business assigned to them. They have a job to complete. Teams are often short-lived, depending on the problems they tackle and the length of time needed to find a solution and accomplish the mission.

Tools and Technologies for Collaboration and Teamwork

A collaborative, team-oriented culture won't produce benefits if there are no information systems in place to enable collaboration. 

Table 2-3 Fifteen Categories of Collaborative Software Tools
E-mail and instant messaging	White boarding
Collaborative writing	Web presenting
Collaborative reviewing/editing	Work scheduling
Event scheduling	Document sharing (including wikis)
File sharing	Mind mapping
Screen sharing	Large audience Webinars
Audio conferencing	Co-browsing
Video conferencing

Checklist for Managers: Evaluating and Selecting Collaboration Software Tools

With so many collaboration tools and services available, how do you choose the right collaboration technology for your firm? To answer this question, you need a framework for understanding just what problems these tools are designed to solve. One framework that has been helpful for us to talk about collaboration tools is the time/space collaboration matrix developed in the early 1990s by a number of collaborative work scholars.

 

Fig. The Time/Space Collaboration Tool Matrix

The time/space matrix focuses on two dimensions of the collaboration problem: time and space. Place (location) also inhibits collaboration in large global or even national and regional firms. Assembling people for a physical meeting is made difficult by the physical dispersion of distributed firms, the cost of travel, and the time limitations of managers. Using this time/space framework will help you to choose the most appropriate collaboration and teamwork tools for your firm. 

The Information Systems Functions in Business

In all but the smallest of firms, the information systems department is the formal organizational unit responsible for information technology services. It is responsible for maintaining the hardware, software, data storage, and networks that comprise the firm's IT infrastructure. 

In many companies, the information systems department is headed by a chief information officer (CIO) who oversees the use of information technology in the firm. The chief security officer (CSO) is in charge of information systems security for the firm and is responsible for enforcing the firm's information security policy. A chief privacy officer (CPO) is responsible for ensuring that the company complies with existing data privacy laws. The chief knowledge officer (CKO) is responsible for the firm's knowledge management program who helps design programs and systems to find new sources of knowledge or to make better use of existing knowledge in organizational and management processes.

Programmers are highly trained technical specialists who write the software instructions for computers. Systems analysts constitute the principal liaisons between the information systems groups and the rest of the organization. Information systems managers are leaders of teams of programmers and analysts, project managers, physical facility managers, telecommunications managers, or database specialists. 

Organizing The Information Systems Function

There are many types of business firms, and there are many ways in which the IT function is organized within the firm. The question of how the information systems department should be organized is part of the larger issue of IT governance. IT governance includes the strategy and policies for using information technology within an organization. It specifies the decision rights and framework for accountability to ensure that the use of information technology supports the organization's strategies and objectives. 

Summary

Business processes are the collection of activities required to produce a product or service. These activities are flows of material, information, and knowledge among the participants in business processes. Today, information technology can do much more. New technology can actually change the flow of information, making it possible for many more people to access and share information, replacing sequential steps with tasks that can be performed simultaneously, and eliminating delays in decision making. New information technology frequently changes the way in business works and supports entirely new business models. A typical business organization has systems supporting processes for each of the major business functions - systems for sales and marketing, manufacturing and production, finance and accounting, and human resources. It also has different systems supporting the decision-making needs of each of the main management groups.

In all but the smallest of firms, the information systems department is the formal organizational unit responsible for information technology services. It is responsible for maintaining the hardware, software, data storage, and networks that comprise the firm's IT infrastructure. The information systems department consists of specialists, such as programmers, systems analysts, project leaders, and information systems managers and is managed by chief information officer (CIO).