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Key Concepts: IT architecture, infrastructure and applications

8 九月, 2015 - 16:42

In this section, we rely heavily on the work of Weill and Broadbent (1998) in their study of IT infrastructure and its relationship to business performance. While their research primarily focuses on the competitive advantages derived from effective IT infrastructure investment, their conceptualization of IT infrastructure, as distinguished from business applications, can be usefully applied within a variety of organizations. Just as with virtually any financial investment, they view IT investments as consisting of numerous individual investment decisions "... each with different objectives -- each with different risk-return profiles to be balanced to meet the goals of the firm" (p. 24). In evaluating potential IT investments, they find it useful to distinguish between IT infrastructure and IT applications. Business applications represent the software developed specifically to automate or inform business activities. For example, for airlines, the ticket sales and seat reservation system is considered a critical business application of IT. As you have seen in the many of the preceding chapters, there is a tremendous variety of applications that an organization can adopt to achieve its objectives. Throughout the chapter, when we refer to IS services, we are generally speaking of the services provided by business applications. However, what is relevant to our discussion here is that since business applications tend to directly support the needs of the organization, it is typically not too difficult to obtain management involvement in making investment decisions relevant to purchase or development of IT applications.

In contrast, IT infrastructure represents a foundation or platform which is needed to support the business applications. Weill and Broadbent conceptualize IT infrastructure as including:

  • IT Components: the computers (desktops, servers, specialized storage devices), system software, and networking hardware, software and communications links,
  • Human IT Infrastructure: the human resources required to configure, operate and maintain the IT components and applications,
  • Shared IT Services and Applications: an array of shared IT services oriented more toward enabling the organization to function more effectively, but not directly related to the support of specific business processes, e.g., email, SPAM filtering, even widely adopted Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems.

We have taken the space to distinguish between IT applications and IT infrastructure, because organizational management has too often failed to appreciate the critical relationship that exists between IT infrastructure investment and the performance, reliability and security of its business applications. Organizational management is primarily concerned with the failure of the business applications on which they have grown to depend. It is important to recognize the extent to which these business applications depend upon a secure and reliable IT infrastructure.