1 Computer h/w & s/w represent valuable org assets that must be managed properly Issues to be considered when managing these assets: Understanding the.

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Computer h/w & s/w represent valuable org assets that must be

managed properly

Issues to be considered when managing these assets:• Understanding the technology requirements for e-commerce & the

digital firm• Determining the TCO of technology assets• Determining whether to own & maintain technology assets or use

external technology service providers for the firm’s IT infrastructure

Managing Hardware & Software AssetsManaging Hardware & Software Assets

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Hardware technology requirements for e-commerce & the digital firm• E-commerce & e-business are placing heavy new demands on hardware technology

because orgs are replacing manual & paper based processes with electronic ones.• Larger processing & storage facilities required to cope with the huge number of digital

transactions in the firm internally as well as suppliers & customers• (coupled with web pages with data-intensive graphics or video)

Capacity Planning & Scalability

Capacity Planning: process of predicting when a computer h/w system

becomes saturated. It ensures that the firm has enough computing power

for its current & future needs.

Takes into a/c:• Max no. of users that the system can accommodate at one time• Impact of existing & future s/w appl.• Performance measure such as minimum response time for processing business transactions


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Capacity Planning and Scalability

Capacity Planning

Although this is performed by IS specialists, i/p from buss. mgrs is

essential to ensure that that we have acceptable levels of response time &

availability

Scalability: ability of a computer, product or system to expand to serve a

large number of users without breaking down.

• E-commerce and e-business need scalable IT infrastrucutes that have the capacity to grow with the business as the size of a Web site and number of visitors increase

• Orgs must make sure that they have sufficient computer processing, storage, and network resources to handle surging volumes of digital transactions and to make such data immediately available online

Hardware technology requirements for e-commerce and the digital firm

Managing Hardware and Software AssetsManaging Hardware and Software Assets

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Determining the TCO of technology assets

The cost issue is becoming more important to businesses and

companies as computer technology and networks grow.

What's most important to remember is that the Total Cost of Ownership

(TCO) should extend past the hard dollars spent on hardware and

software. TCO can be used to assess direct & indirect costs to help firms

determine the actual cost of specific technology implementations.

TCO includes:

• Cost of acquiring & installing computers & h/d

• Ongoing administration cost for h/w & s/w upgrades

• Maintenance & technical support

• Utility & real estate costs for running & housing the technology


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TCO includes (cont’n):• employee training• their ability to perform necessary functions given the network configuration• and lost productivity when the network is down. • the amount of money spent on communications wiring (telephone wires, fiber optic cable,

etc)• security and access issues

Hidden costs for support staff & additional n/w mgmt can make distributed

client/server architectures more expensive than centralised mainframe

architectures

H/w & s/w acquisition account for only about 20 % of TCO.

It is possible to reduce administration costs through better mgmt.


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How to calculate TCO of technology assets:

• Hardware acquisition• Software acquisition• Installation• Training• Support• Maintenance• Infrastructure• Downtime• Space & Energy


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Determining whether to own & maintain technology assets or use external technology service providers for the firm’s IT infrastructure – Rent or Build Decision

• How should we acquire and maintain our technology assets?• Should we build an run them ourselves or lease them from outside

sources?

Egs of Technology Service Providers:• Storage Service Provider• Application Service Provider• Management Service Provider• Business continuity Service Provider


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Rent or Build Decision

On-line Storage Service Provider : • Provides online access over networks to storage devices and storage

area network technology• Customers don’t have to purchase and maintain their own storage

infrastrucure & storage support staff• To be successful SSPs must provide very high availability and reliability

& also keep up with latest technology• They are responsible for monitoring stored data and for managing their

own capacity, response time & reliability


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Rent or Build Decision

Application Service Provider : • Uses centrally managed facilities to host and manage access to package

applications delivered over networks on a subscription basis.• Instead of buying and installing software programs, subscribing companies can

rent the same functions from these services.• Users pay for the use of this s/w either on a subscription or per transaction basis• The ASP’s solution combines package software applications and all of the

related h/w, system s/w, n/w and other infrastructure services that the customer would have to purchase, integrate and manage on its own

• The ASP customer interacts with a single entity instead of an array of technologies and service vendors

• Think about the benefits and challenges… ??


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Rent or Build DecisionManagement Service Provider : • Manages combinations of applications, networks, systems, storage and

security as well as providing Web site amd systems performance monitoring to subscribers over the Internet

Business Continuity Service Provider : • Defines and documents procedures for planning and recovering from system

malfunctions that threaten vital business operations• Offers disaster recovery and Web availability services to help firms continue

essential operations when their system malfunctions

One more term… Utility Computing:• Model of computing in which companies only pay for the IT resources they

actually use during a specified time period. • Also called on-demand computing Or Usage-based pricing


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Database TrendsMultidimensional Data Analysis• As technology improves, so does our

ability to manipulate information maintained in databases.

• Have you ever played with a Rubik Cube - one of those cute little multicolored puzzle boxes you can twist around and around to come up with various color combinations? That's a close analogy to how multidimensional data analysis or on-line analytical processing (OLAP) works

• Multidimensional analysis enables users to view the same data in different ways using mutiple dimensions

Multidimensional data model.

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Data Warehouses & Data MiningDate Warehouse• As organizations want and need more information about the company,

the products, and the customers, the concept of data warehousing has become very popular.

• Data warehouses are not great big buildings with shelves and shelves of bits and bytes stored on them. They are huge computer files that store old and new data about anything and everything a company wants to maintain information on.

• The data are standardised into a common data model and consolidated so that they can be used across the enterprise for management analysis and decision making. The data are available for anyone to access as needed but can’t be altered

Database Trends

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Data Warehouse• Since the data warehouse can be cumbersome, a company can break

the information into smaller groups called data marts. It's easier and cheaper to sort through smaller groups of data.

• Data Mart:– Subset of data warehouse – Contains summarized or highly focused portion of data for a

specified function or group of users

• It's still useful to have a huge data warehouse, though, so that information is available to everyone who wants or needs it. You can let the user determine how the data will be manipulated and used. Using a data warehouse correctly can give management a tremendous amount of information that can be used to trim costs, reduce inventory, put products in the right stores, etc.

Database Trends

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• Supports reporting and query tools• Stores current and historical data • Consolidates data for management analysis and

decision making

Data Warehouse

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Datamining

• Datamining uses a variety of techniques to find hidden patterns and relationships in large pools of data and infer rules from them that can be used to predict future behavior and guide decision making

• Often sued to provide info for targeted marketing where personalised or individualised messages can be created bsed on individual preferences

• These systems can perform high-level analyses of patterns or trends, but they can also drill into more detail when needed

• Datamining is a powerful & profitable tool but it poses threats to individual privacy

Database Trends

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Benefits of Data Warehouses• Improved and easy accessibility to information • Ability to model & remodel data• Many legacy systems use hierarchical DBMS or even older

nondatabase files where info in diff for users to access• Data warehouse enable decision makers to access data as often as

the need without affecting the performance of the underlying operational systems

Database Trends

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Databases & the WebObject-Oriented and Hypermedia Databases• Many companies are steering away

from strictly text-based database systems. Data as objects can be pictures, groups of text, voice, audio, etc. Object-oriented databases bring the various objects from many different sources and get them all working together.

• As we move away from strictly text-based information systems and incorporate video and sound, graphics and text, the hypermedia database will become more common.

• The attraction to this type of database is that it allows the user to decide which path to follow from one node to another.

Database Trends

The concept of a hypermedia database: how the various elements are networked. Relationships b/w recs less structured than tranditional DBMS

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Hypermedia databaseHypermedia database

• Organizes data as network of nodesOrganizes data as network of nodes

• Links nodes in pattern specified by userLinks nodes in pattern specified by user

• Supports text, graphic, sound, video and executable programsSupports text, graphic, sound, video and executable programs

Database Trends

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Linking Internal Databases to the Web• Even though Web browsers have been around for only a few years,

they are far easier to use than most of the query languages associated with the other programs on mainframe computer systems.

• That's why many companies are starting to link their databases to a Web-like browser. They are finding out that it's easier to provide their "road warriors" with Web-like browsers attached to the computer at the main office.

• Employees anywhere can have up-to-the-minute access to any information they need. It's also proving cheaper to create browser applications that can more easily link information from disparate systems than to try to combine all the systems.

Database Trends

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Linking Internal Databases to the Web

Database Trends

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Linking Internal Databases to the Web• A customer with a Web browser might want to search an online retailer’s

database for pricing information• The user would access the retailer’s website over the Internet using web

browser s/w on his PC• The user’s web browser s/w would request data from the org’s db using

HTML commands to communicate with the Web server• Since many bach-end dbs can’t interpret commands written in HTML, the

Web server would pass these requests for data to special s/w that would translate HTML commands into SQL so they could be processed by the DBMS working with the db

• The DBMS received the SQL requests & provides required data• The middleware would transfer info form the org’s internal db back to the

web server for delivery in the form of a web page to the user

• In a client/server env, the DBMS often resides on a special dedicated computer called a database server

Database Trends

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Linking Internal Databases to the Web

• In a client/server env, the DBMS often resides on a special dedicated computer called a database server

• The s/w working between the Web server & the DBMS could be an application server, a custom programs or a series of scripts.

• Application server: s/w that handles all application operations, including transaction processing and data access, between browser-bases computers and a company’s back-end business applications or dbs.

What are the advantages of using the Web to access an organisation’s internal database??

Also Work on the Case study on Pg 241 – Public Databases for Sales

Database Trends

1 Computer h/w & s/w represent valuable org assets that must be managed properly Issues to be considered when managing these assets: Understanding the.

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