Chapter 5: Information Infrastructure

Grid Computing

A collection of computers, often geographically dispersed, that are coordinated to solve a common problem

Data Center

A facility used to house management information systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. Also called server farms.

Cloud Security Alliance (CSA)

A nonprofit organization that promotes research into best practices for securing cloud computing and cloud delivery models

Business Impact Analysis

A process that identifies all critical business functions and the effect that a specific disaster may have upon them.

Hot Site

A separate and fully equipped facility where the company can move immediately after a disaster and resume business

Cold Site

A separate facility that does not have any computer equipment, but is a place where employees can move after a disaster

Warm Site

A separate facility with computer equipment that requires installation and configuration

Vulnerability

A system weakness that can be exploited by a threat; for example, a password that is never changed or a system left on while an employee goes to lunch.

Backup

An exact copy of a system's information

Corporate Social Responsibility

Companies' acknowledged responsibility to society

Sustainable, or "green," MIS

Describes the production, management, use, and disposal of technology in a way that minimizes damage to the environment

Serviceability

How quickly a third-party can change a system to ensure it meets user needs and the terms of any contracts, including agreed levels of reliability, maintainability, or availability

Carbon Emissions

Includes the carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide produced by business processes and systems

Moore's Law

Refers to the computer chip performance per dollar doubling every 18 months

Sustainable MIS Disposal

Refers to the safe disposal of MIS assets at the end of their life cycle

Accessibility

Refers to the varying levels that define what a user can access, view, or perform when operating a system

System Virtualization

The ability to present the resources of a single computer as if it is a collection of separate computers ("virtual machines"), each with its own virtual CPUs, network interfaces, storage, and operating system.

Usability

The degree to which a system is easy to learn and efficient and satisfying to use

Cloud Fabric

The software that makes possible the benefits of cloud computing, such as multi-tenancy

Network

a communication system created by linking two or more devices and establishing a standard methodology in which they can communicate

Green PC

a computer built using environmentally friendly materials and designed to save energy

Server

a computer dedicated to providing information in response to requests

Client

a computer designed to request information from a server

Disaster Recovery Plan

a detailed process for recovering information or a system in the event of a catastrophic disaster

Enterprise Architect

a person grounded in technology, fluent in business, and able to provide the important bridge between MIS and the business

Multi-Tenancy

a single instance of a system serves multiple customers

Fail Over

a specific type of fault tolerance, occurs when a redundant storage server offers an exact replica of the real-time data, and if the primary server crashes, the users are automatically directed to the secondary server or backup server

Emergency

a sudden, unexpected event requiring immediate action due to potential threat to health and safety, the environment, or property

Cloud Fabric Controller

an individual who monitors and provisions cloud resources, similar to a server administrator at an individual company

Emergency Notification Service

an infrastructure built for notifying people in the event of an emergency

Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)

brings together people from industry, disability organizations, government, and research labs from around the world to develop guidelines and resources to help make the web accessible to people with disabilities, including auditory, cognitive, neurological, physical, speech, and visual disabilities

Disaster Recovery Cost Curve

charts (1) the cost to the company of the unavailability of information and technology and (2) the cost to the company of recovering from a disaster over time

Storage Virtualization

combines multiple network storage devices so they appear to be a single storage device

Network Virtualization

combines networks by splitting the available bandwidth into independent channels that can be assigned in real time to a specific device

Server Virtualization

combines the physical resources, such as servers, processors, and operating systems, from the applications

Hardware

consists of the physical devices associated with a computer system

Incident Record

contains all of the details of the incident

Virtualization

creates multiple virtual machines on a single computing device. An example is a virtualized computer printer that functions as a fax machine, answering machine, and copy machine all on one physical machine, thereby reducing costs, power requirements, and ewaste.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

delivers applications over the cloud using a pay-per-use revenue model

Smart Grid

delivers electricity using two-way digital technology, making it more efficient and reliable by adding the ability to monitor, analyze, and control the transmission of power remotely.

Scalability

describes how well a system can scale up, or adapt to the increased demands of growth

Business Continuity Plan (BCP)

details how a company recovers and restores critical business operations and systems after a disaster or extended disruption. - BCP contains disaster recovery plans along with many additional plans, including prioritizing business impact analysis, emergency notification plans, and technology recovery strategies.

Capacity Planning

determines future environmental infrastructure requirements to ensure high-quality system performance

Single-Tenancy

each customer or tenant must purchase and maintain an individual system

Emergency Preparedness

ensures a company is ready to respond to an emergency in an organized, timely, and effective manner

Reliability (accuracy)

ensures a system is functioning correctly and providing accurate information

Data as a Service (DaaS)

facilitates the accessibility of business-critical data in a timely, secure, and affordable manner

Technology Recovery Strategies

focus specifically on prioritizing the order for restoring hardware, software, and data across the organization that best meets business recovery requirements - hardware, software, data centers, and networking (connectivity)

Sustainable MIS Infrastructure

identifies ways that a company can grow in terms of computing resources while simultaneously becoming less dependent on hardware and energy consumption - Supporting environment

Information MIS Infrastructure

identifies where and how important information, such as customer records, is maintained and secured - Supporting operations

Agile MIS Infrastructure

includes the hardware, software, and telecommunications equipment that, when combined, provides the underlying foundation to support the organization's goals. - Supporting change

MIS Infrastructure

includes the plans for how a firm will build, deploy, use, and share its data, processes, and MIS assets. A solid MIS infrastructure can reduce costs, improve productivity, optimize business operations, generate growth, and increase profitability.

Hybrid Cloud

includes two or more private, public, or community clouds, but each cloud remains separate and is only linked by technology that enables data and application portability

Security as a Service (SECaaS)

involves applications such as anti-virus software delivered over the Internet with constant virus definition updates that are not reliant on user compliance

Web Accessibility

means that people with disabilities can use the web

Dynamic Scaling

means the MIS infrastructure can be automatically scaled up or down based on needed requirements

Performance

measures how quickly a system performs a certain process or transaction

High Availability

occurs when a system is continuously operational at all times

Technology Failure

occurs when the ability of a company to operate is impaired because of a hardware, software, or data outage

Fail Back

occurs when the primary machine recovers and resumes operations, taking over from the secondary server

Big Data as a Service (BDaaS)

offers a cloud-based Big Data service to help organizations analyze massive amounts of data to solve business dilemmas

Utility Computing

offers a pay-per-use revenue model similar to a metered service such as gas or electricity

Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)

offers backup services that use cloud resources to protect applications and data from disruption caused by disaster

Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS)

offers enterprise communication and collaboration services over the Internet such as instant messaging systems, online meetings, and video conferencing

Public Cloud

promotes massive, global, and industrywide applications offered to the general public

Noisy Neighbor

refers to a multi-tenancy co-tenant that monopolizes bandwidth, servers, CPUs, and other resources that cause network performance issues

Ewaste

refers to discarded, obsolete, or broken electronic devices

Maintainability (or flexibility)

refers to how quickly a system can transform to support environmental changes

Portability

refers to the ability of an application to operate on different devices or software platforms, such as different operating systems

Clean Computing

refers to the environmentally responsible use, manufacture, and disposal of technology products and computer equipment

Availability

refers to the time frames when the system is operational

Capacity

represents the maximum throughput a system can deliver. For example, the capacity of a hard drive represents its size or volume

Upcycle

reuses or refurbishes ewaste and creates a new product

Community Cloud

serves a specific community with common business models, security requirements, and compliance considerations

Private Cloud

serves only one customer or organization and can be located on the customer's premises or off the customer's premises

Cloud Computing

stores, manages, and processes data and applications over the internet rather than on a personal computer or server

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

supports the deployment of entire systems including hardware, networking, and applications using a pay-per-use revenue model

Fault Tolerance

the ability for a system to respond to unexpected failures or system crashes as the backup system immediately and automatically takes over with no loss of service

Recovery

the ability to get a system up and running in the event of a system crash or failure that includes restoring the information backup

Energy Consumption

the amount of energy consumed by business processes and systems

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

the delivery of computer hardware capability, including the use of servers, networking, and storage, as a service

Incident Management

the process responsible for managing how incidents are identified and corrected

Software

the set of instructions the hardware executes to carry out specific tasks

Incident

unplanned interruption of a service

Administrator Access

unrestricted access to the entire system

Hybrid Cloud Storage

uses both on-site and off-site resources to store corporate data

Cloud Bursting

when a company uses its own computing infrastructure for normal usage and accesses the cloud when it needs to scale for peak load requirements, ensuring that a sudden spike in usage does not result in poor performance or system crashes

Unavailable

when a system is not operating or cannot be used