Chapter 5: IT Infrastructure and Emerging

Technologies

IT Infrastructure and Its Services

An IT infrastructure consists of a set of physical devices and software applications
that are required to operate the entire enterprise. But IT infrastructure also
includes a set of firm wide services budgeted by management and composed of
both human and technical capabilities. These services include the following:

 Computing platforms used to provide computing services that connect

employees, customers, and suppliers into a coherent digital environment,
including large mainframes, midrange computers, desktop and laptop
computers, and mobile handheld and remote cloud computing services.

 Telecommunications services that provide data, voice, and video connectivity

to employees, customers, and suppliers.

 Data management services that store and manage corporate data and
provide capabilities for analyzing the data.

 Application software services, such as enterprise resource planning,

customer relationship management, supply chain management, and
knowledge management systems that are shared by all business units.

 IT management services that plan and develop the infrastructure, coordinate

with the business units for IT services.

Evolution of IT Infrastructure- Client/Server Era

In client/server computing, desktop or laptop computers called clients are
networked to powerful server computers that provide the client computers with a
variety of services and capabilities. Computer processing work is split between
these two types of machines. The client is the user point of entry, whereas the
server typically processes and stores shared data, serves up web pages, or manages
network activities.

A web server will serve a web page to a client in response to a request for service.
Web server software is responsible for locating and managing stored web pages. If
the client requests access to a corporate system (a product list or price information,
for instance), the request is passed along to an application server. Application
server software handles all application operations between a user and an
organization’s back-end business systems. The application server may reside on
the same computer as the web server or on its own dedicated computer.

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Technology Drivers of IT Infrastructure Evolution

 Moore’s Law and Micro processing Power: There are at least three
variations of Moore’s Law: (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.

 Nanotechnology: Nanotechnology creates computer chips that are

thousands of times smaller than current technologies permit. Chip
manufacturers are trying to develop a manufacturing process to produce
nanotube processors economically.

 The Law of Mass Digital Storage: 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.

 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 the Internet. As
communication costs fall toward a very small number, utilization of
communication and computing facilities explode.

 Standards and Network Effects: Technology standards unleash powerful

economies of scale and result in price declines as manufacturers focus on
the products built to a single standard.

IT Infrastructure Ecosystem
In the past, technology vendors supplying these components offered purchasing
firms a mixture of incompatible, proprietary, partial solutions that could not work
with other vendor products. Increasingly, vendor firms have been forced to
cooperate in strategic partnerships with one another in order to keep their
customers. Another big change is that companies are moving more of their IT
infrastructure to the cloud or to outside services, owning and managing much less
on their premises. Firms’ IT infrastructure will increasingly be an amalgam of
components and services that are partially owned, partially rented or licensed.

Components of IT infrastructure Ecosystem

A) Computer Hardware Platforms

Servers, PCs, and smartphones- all these devices constitute the computer
hardware platform for corporate and personal computing worldwide. Most business
computing has taken place using microprocessor chips manufactured or designed
by Intel Corporation and, to a lesser extent, AMD Corporation.

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The computer platform changed dramatically with the introduction of mobile
computing devices. Worldwide, 2 billion people use smartphones. You can think of
these devices as a second computer hardware platform, one that is consumer
device–driven. Processors for mobile devices are manufactured by a wide range of
firms, including Apple, Samsung, and Qualcomm.

B) Operating System Platforms

The leading operating systems for corporate servers are Microsoft Windows Server,
Unix, and Linux, an inexpensive and robust open source relative of Unix. Microsoft
Windows Server is capable of providing enterprise-wide operating system and
network services and appeals to organizations seeking Windows based IT
infrastructures. Unix and Linux are scalable, reliable, and much less Expensive.
The major providers of Unix operating systems are IBM, HP, and Oracle-Sun.

Nearly 90 percent of PCs use some form of the Microsoft Windows operating system
for managing the resources and activities of the computer. Google’s Chrome OS
provides a lightweight operating system for cloud computing using a web-connected
computer. Programs are not stored on the user’s computer but are used over the
Internet and accessed through the Chrome web browser.

Android is an open source operating system for mobile devices such as

smartphones and tablet computers, developed by the Open Handset Alliance led by
Google. It has become the most popular smartphone platform worldwide, competing
with iOS, Apple’s mobile operating system for the iPhone.

C) Enterprise Software Applications

The largest providers of enterprise application software are SAP and Oracle. Also
included in this category is middleware software supplied by vendors such as IBM
and Oracle.

D) 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).

E) Networking and Telecommunications Platforms

Windows Server is predominantly used as a local area network operating system,
followed by Linux and Unix. Cisco and Juniper Networks are leading networking
hardware providers. Telecommunications platforms are typically provided by
telecommunications/telephone services companies that offer voice and data
connectivity.

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F) Internet Platforms
Internet platforms include hardware, software, and management services to
support a firm’s website, including web hosting services, routers, and cabling or
wireless equipment. A web hosting service maintains a large web server, and
provides fee-paying subscribers with space to maintain their websites. The Internet
hardware server market has become increasingly concentrated in the hands of IBM,
Dell, Oracle, and HP, as prices have fallen dramatically. The major web software
application development tools and suites are supplied by Microsoft (Microsoft
Visual Studio and the Microsoft .NET development platform).

I) Consulting Services
Today, even a large firm does not have the staff, the skills, the budget, or the
necessary experience to deploy and maintain its entire IT infrastructure.
Implementing a new infrastructure requires significant changes in business
processes and procedures, training and education, and software integration.
Leading consulting firms providing this expertise include Accenture, IBM Services,
HP, Infosys, and Wipro.

Current Trends in Computer Hardware Platform:

A) The Mobile Digital Platform
New mobile digital computing platforms have emerged as alternatives to PCs and
larger computers. The iPhone and Android smartphones have taken on many
functions of PCs, including transmitting data, surfing the web, transmitting e-mail
and instant messages, displaying digital content, and exchanging data.
Smartphones and tablets are becoming the primary means of accessing the
Internet and are increasingly used for business computing as well as for consumer
applications.
For example, senior executives at General Motors are using smartphone
applications that drill down into vehicle sales information, financial performance,
manufacturing metrics, and project management status. Wearable computing
devices are a recent addition to the mobile digital platform. These include smart
watches, smart glasses, smart ID badges, and activity trackers. Wearable
computing technology has many business uses, and it is changing the way firms
work.

B) Quantum Computing
Quantum computing uses the principles of quantum physics to represent data and
perform operations on these data. A quantum computing can process units of data
as 0, 1, or both simultaneously. A quantum computer would gain enormous
processing power through this ability to be in multiple states at once, allowing it to
solve some scientific and business problems millions of times faster than can be
done today. IBM has made quantum computing available to the general public
through IBM Cloud. Google’s Alphabet, Microsoft, Intel, and NASA are also working
on quantum computing platforms. Quantum computing is still an emerging
technology, but its real-world applications are growing.

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C) 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. Virtualization
enables a single physical resource (such as a server or a storage device) to appear
to the user as multiple logical resources. For example, a server or mainframe can
be configured to run many instances of an operating system (or different operating
systems) so that it acts like many different machines. Virtualization also enables
multiple physical resources (such as storage devices or servers) to appear as a
single logical resource, as in software-defined storage (SDS).

E) 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 to minimize impact on the environment.

F) Cloud Computing
It is now possible for companies and individuals to perform all of their computing
work using a virtualized IT infrastructure in a remote location, as is the case with
cloud computing. Cloud computing is a model of computing in which computer
processing, storage, software, and other services are provided as a shared pool of
virtualized resources over a network, primarily the Internet. These “clouds” of
computing resources can be accessed on an as-needed basis from any connected
device and location.

Types of Clouds:
 A public cloud is owned and maintained by a cloud service provider, such as
Amazon Web Services, and made available to the general public or industry
group. Public cloud services are often used for websites developing and
testing new applications, and consumer services such as online storage of
data, music, and photos. Google Drive, Dropbox, and Apple iCloud are
leading examples of these consumer public cloud services.

 A private cloud is operated solely for an organization. It may be managed by

the organization or a third party and may be hosted either internally or
externally. Like public clouds, private clouds are able to allocate storage,
computing power, or other resources seamlessly to provide computing
resources on an as-needed basis.

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Current Computer Software Platforms and Trends
There are four major themes in contemporary software platform evolution:

A) Open Source Software and Linux

Open Source Software: Open source software is software produced by a

community of several hundred thousand programmers around the world. Open
source software is free and can be modified by users. Works derived from the
original code must also be free. Popular open source software tools include the
Linux operating system, the Mozilla Firefox web browser, and the Apache
OpenOffice desktop productivity suite. Google’s Android mobile operating system
and Chrome web browser are based on open source tools.

Linux: Perhaps the most well-known open source software is Linux. Linux is
available in free versions downloadable from the Internet or in low cost commercial
versions that include tools and support from vendors such as Red Hat. Although
Linux is not used in many desktop systems, it is a leading operating system for
servers, mainframe computers, and supercomputers. IBM, HP, Intel, Dell, and
Oracle have made Linux a central part of their offerings to corporations. Linux has
profound implications for corporate software platforms—cost reduction, reliability.

B) Software and Programming Language for the Web

Java: Java is an object oriented programming language created by Sun

Microsystems that has been a popular interactive programming environment for
the web. The Java platform has also migrated into mobile phones, tablets, and
consumer electronic devices. Java software is designed to run on any computer or
computing device, regardless of the specific microprocessor or operating system the
device uses.

Web Browser: A web browser is an easy to-use software tool with a graphical user
interface for displaying web pages and for accessing the web and other Internet
resources. Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Apple Safari
browsers are examples.

HTML: Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is a page description language for

specifying how text, graphics, video, and sound are placed on a web page and for
creating dynamic links to other web pages and objects. Using these links, a user
need only point at a highlighted keyword or graphic, click on it, and immediately be
transported to another document.

HTML5: The next evolution of HTML, called HTML5, solves this problem by making
it possible to embed images, audio, video, and other elements directly into a
document without processor-intensive add-ons. HTML5 makes it easier for web
pages to function across different display devices, including mobile devices as well
as desktops.

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