Week 6 Blog Questions

1. What is information architecture and what is information infrastructure and how do they differ and how do they relate to each other?

Information architecture identifies where and how important information is maintained, stored, organized and to put it use in a database system or in an organisation. Its three main areas are backup and recovery, disaster recovery and information security.

Information infrastructure includes hardware, software, telecommunications equipment and aims to execute and support an organisations goals. It has 5 main characteristics:

1. flexibility,
2. scalability,
3. availability,
4. reliability
5. performance.

Infrastructure supports architecture. It is in relation to how well a system is able to adapt in order to meet the different changes a business may face and describes how well the architecture will cater for change.

2. Describe how an organisation can implement a solid information architecture 

An organisation can implement a solid information architecture by looking at the three points;

• backup,
• disaster recovery
• information security
  

3. List and describe the five requirement characteristics of infrastructure architecture. 

1. Flexibility: ability to adapt to situations
2. Scalability: how well a system can adapt to increasing demands
3. Reliability: all systems are functioning correctly and providing accurate information
4. Availability: efficiency it provides to multiple users
5. Performance: how quickly a system performs a certain process or transaction

4. Describe the business value in deploying a service oriented architecture 

A service oriented architecture is a business driven IT architectural approach that supports integrating a business as linked, repeatable tasks or services. By using a service orientated architecture businesses are able to innovate by ensuring that IT systems can adapt quickly, easily and economically to support rapidly changing business needs

5. What is an event? 

An event are the expressions of business technology. they identify threats and opportunities and inform the appropriate people who are able to act upon this information.

6. What is a service?

Services are more like software products than they are coding projects. They must appeal to a broad audience, and they need to be reusable if they are going to have an impact on productivity. Services include credit checks, customer information, process payments and print/save.

7. What emerging technologies can companies use to increase performance and utilise their infrastructure more effectively?

The emerging technologies that companies can use to increase performance and utilise their infrastructure more efficiently are Virtualisation and Grid Computing
Virtualisation: The framework for ‘dividing the resources of a computer into multiple execution environments’. It can increases physical resources to maximise the investment in hardware. It is  the creation of a virtual (rather than actual) version of something, such as a hardware platform, operating system(OS), storage device, or network resources.

Grid Computing: An ‘aggregation of geographically dispersed computing, storage and network resources, coordinated to deliver improved performance, higher quality of service, better utilisation and easier access to data’.