Planning Information Technology Architectures

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Planning Information Technology Architectures
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Planning Information Technology Architectures

• An IT architecture consists of the combination
  of hardware, software, data, personnel, and
  telecommunications elements within an
  organization, along with procedures to employ
  them.

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Centralized Architecture
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Noncentralized Architecture

• Noncentralized computing architectures are
  either decentralized or distributed.

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Decentralized Computing

• Decentralized computing breaks centralized
  computing into functionally equivalent parts,
  with each part essentially a smaller, centralized
  subsystem.

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Distributed Computing

• Distributed computing breaks centralized
  computing into many computers that may not be
  (and usually are not) functionally equivalent.

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Client / Server Architecture

• Client
• Server
• Specialization
• Client / server responsibilities

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Client

• A client is generally agreed to be any system or
  process that can request and make use of data,
  services, or other systems provided by the server.

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Server

• A server is generally agreed to be any system or
  process that provides data, services, or access
  to other systems for clients, most often for
  multiple clients simultaneously (as a shared
  resource).

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Choosing Among Architecture Options

• Business goals should guide
• Both a Managerial and Technological issue
• Centralized computing
• Economies of scale
• Distributed computing
• Scope, Flexibility, Redundancy
• Blending centralized and distributed computing
• Most modern architectures mix the two

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End-User Computing Architecture Issues

• Key issue to provide architecture support for
  a division of responsibilities agreed on by IS
  and user groups
• What is important?
• Control of data?
• Control of costs?
• Data access and data sharing?
• Creativity?

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Reengineering Legacy Systems

• Reverse engineering
• Upsizing/Downsizing/Rightsizing
• BPR