Review Chapter 4 IT infrastructure : Hardware and Software

Infrastructure Components
Today’s IT infrastructure is composed of five major components: computer hardware, computer software, data management technology, networking and telecommunications technology, and technology services. These components must be coordinated with each other.
• Computer hardware consists of technology for computer processing, data storage, input, and output. This components includes large mainframes, servers, desktop, and laptops computers. And mobile devices for accessing corporate data and the internet.
• Computer software includes both system software and application software. System software manages the resources and activities of the computer and also coordinate the various parts of the computer system and mediates between application software and computer hardware. Application software applies the computer to a spesific task for an and user, such processing an order or generating a mailing list. Application software is used to develop specific business applications. The system software that manages and controls the computer is called the operating system.
• Data management technology, in addition to physical media for storing the firm’s data, businesses need specialized software to organize the data and make them available to business users.
• Networking and telecommunications technology provides data, voice and video connectivity to employees, customers and suppliers. It includes technology for running a company’s internal networks, services from telecommunications/telephone services companies, and technology for running Web sites and linking to other computer systems through the internet.
• Technology services, businesses need people to run and manage the other infrastructure components we have just described and to rain employees in how to use these technologies for their work. Today, many business supplement their in house information systems staff with external technology consultants.

Types of computers or computational
If you’re working alone with a few other people in a small business. You’ll probably be using a desktop or laptop personal computer ( PC). If you’re doing advanced design or engineering work requiring powerfull graphics capabilities, you must use a workstation. If you’re business has a numbers of computers networked together or maintains a web site, it will need a server. Server computers are specifically optimized to support a computer network, enabling users to share files, software, peripheral devices, or other network resources. A mainframe is a large capacity, high performance computer that can process large amounts of data very rapidly. A supercomputer is a specially designed and more sophisticated computer that is used for tasks requiring extremely rapid and complex calculations with thousands of variables, millions of measurements, and thousands of equations. Grid computing involves connecting geographically remote computers into a single network to create a “virtual supercomputer” by combining the computational power of all computers on the grid.

The major computer hardware, data storage, input, and outpur technologies used in business : computers categorized as mainframes, midrange computers, PCs, workstations, or supercomputers. Manframes are the larges computers, midrages computers are servers, PCs are desktop or laptop machines, workstation are desktop machines with powerful mathematical and graphic capabilities, and supercomputers are sophisticated, powerful computers that can perform massive and complex computations rapidly. Computing power can be further increased by creating a computational grid that combines the computing power of all the computers on a network. In the client/server model of computing, computer processing is split between “clients” and “servers” connected via a network.
The principal secondary storage technologies are magnetic disk, optical disk, and magnetic tape. Optical CD-ROM and DVD discs vast amounts of data compactly and some types are rewritable. Storage area networks (SANs) connect multiple storage devices on a separate high-speed network dedicated to storage. The principal input devices are keyboards, computer mice, touch screen, magnetic ink and optical character recognition devices, pen-based instruments, digital scanners, sensors, audio input devices, and radio-frequency identification devices. The principal output devices are display monitors, printers, and audio output devices.
The most important contemporary hardware and software trends:
Increasingly, computing is taking place on a mobile digital platform. Cloud computing provides hardware and software resources as services delivered over the internet. In autonomic computing, computer systems have capabilities for automatically configuring and repairing themselves. Open source software is proliferating because it allows users to modify the software at will and use it as a platform for new derivative applications.

The principal issues in managing hardware and software technology:
Managers and information systems specialists need to pay special attention to hardware capacity planning and scalability to ensure that the firm has enough computing power for its current and future needs. Businesses also need to balance the costs and benefits of building and maintaining their own hardware and software versus outsourcing or using an on-demand computing model. The total cost of ownership (TCO) of the organization’s technology assets includes not only the original cost of computer hardware and software upgrades, maintenance, technical support, and training, including the costs for managing and maintaining mobile devices. Companies with global operations need to manage software localization.