1. Information Systems Planning

2. Distributed Systems Architecture1
Information Systems Planning 2
Distributed Systems Architecture

3. Paradox of IS Planning Most organization's survival now depends on IT
Planning of its effective use is a matter of organizational life and death
IT is changing so fast
Is it useless to do IS planning?
A variety of approaches, tools and mechanisms available for IS planning
No best way to do it.

4. Mindset for Planning Traditional view A better view
Determining what decisions to make in the future
A better view
Developing a view of the future that guides decision making today
Difference : strategy making instead of planning
Strategy: stating the direction in which you want to go and how you intend to get there

5. Types of Planning Horizon Focus Issues Primary Responsibility
3 - 5 years
Strategic
Vision, architecture, business goals
Senior management, CIO
1 - 2 years
Tactical
Resource allocation, project selection
Middle management, IS line partners, Steering committees
6 month -1 year
Operational
Project management, meeting time and budget targets
IS professionals, Line managers, partners

6. Why Planning Is So Difficult? (1)
Business goals and systems plans need to align
Strategic systems plans need to align with business goals and support those objectives
Will be difficult if CIO is not part of senior management
Technologies are rapidly changing
Continuous planning based on monitoring and experimenting new technologies
Advanced technology groups

7. Why Planning Is So Difficult? (2)
Companies need portfolios rather than projects
Evaluation on more than their individual merit
How they fit into other projects and how they balance the portfolio of projects
Infrastructure development is difficult to fund
Often done under the auspices of a large application project
Challenge: develop improved applications and improve infrastructure over time
Mainframe C/S ERP Web application Web Services

8. Why Planning Is So Difficult? (3)
Responsibility Needs to be Joint
Systems planning has become business planning, not just a technology issue
It is better done by a full partnership of C-level officers
Other planning issues
Top-down Vs. bottom-up
Radical change Vs. continuous
Planning culture in which the systems planning must fit

9. Tradition Strategy Making
Step 1
Where is the business going and why?
Business Strategy
Assumptions:
The future can be predicted
Time is available to do these 3 parts
IS supports and follows the business
Top management knows best (broadest view of firm)
Company: like an "Army"
Business decision
Objectives and direction
Change
Supports
business
Direction
For IS
System Strategy
Step 2
What is required?
Business-based
Demand-oriented
Application-focused
Infrastructure and services
Needs and priorities
IT Strategy
Step 3
How can it be delivered?
Activity-based
Supply-oriented
Technology-focused

10. A World of Rapid Change (1)
Today, due to the Internet and other technological advances, these assumptions no longer hold true:
The future cannot be predicted
Discontinuous change
Who predicted Internet, Amazon, eBay etc.?
Time is not available for the sequence
Never enough time in Internet Age
IT implementation planning needs to go ahead of business strategizing

11. A World of Rapid Change (2)
IS does not JUST support the business anymore
Top management may not know best
Inside out Vs. outside in approach
An organization is not like an army
Industrial era metaphor no longer always applies
Customer
and
Suppliers
Partners
Front
Line
Core

12. Today's Sense-and-Response Approach (1)
Old-era strategy
One big choice, long commitment
Let strategies unfold rather than plan them:
A sense-and-respond approach when predictions are risky
Sense a new opportunity and immediately respond by testing it
Myriad of small experiments
Time
New-era strategy
Many small choices, short commitments
Time
Strategic envelop

13. Case Example: Microsoft
Abandoned proprietary network despite big investment when it did not capture enough customers
Moved on to buying Internet companies as well as aligning with Sun to promote Java
Over time, they moved into a variety of technologies:
Web, Cable news, Digital movies, Cable modems, Handheld OS, Video server, Music, Xbox, .Net, Search engines...
Not all strategies came from top management
e.g. first server came from a rebel's unofficial project
Getting its fingers into every pie that might become important

14. Today's Sense-and-Response Approach (2)
Formulate strategy closest to the action:
Close contact with the market
Employees who interact daily with customers, suppliers and partners (organizational edges)
Employees who are closest to the future should become prime strategists.
In the Internet Age, this means younger employees

15. Today's Sense-and-Response Approach (3)
Guide strategy-making with a “strategic envelope":
Having a myriad of potential corporate strategies being tested in parallel could lead to anarchy without a central guiding mechanism
Top management set the parameters for the experiments, and then continually manage that context
Experiment by territory (as Microsoft did)
Strategic conversation
Meet regularly with the experimenters

16. Today's Sense-and-Response Approach (4)
Be at the Table
IS executives should be actively involved in business strategizing
The IS function needs to be strategy-oriented
CIO need to make their departments credible and outsource most operational work
Test the Future
Need to test potential futures before the business is ready for them (thinking ahead of the business)
Provide funding for experiments
Work with research organizations
Have an emerging technologies group

17. Today's Sense-and-Response Approach (5)
Put the Infrastructure in Place:
Moving quickly in Internet commerce means having the right IT infrastructure in place.
IT experiments are recommended to include those that test painful infrastructure issues
Create and maintain common, consistent data definitions
Create and instill mobile commercial standards among handheld devices
Implement e-commerce security and privacy measures
Determine operational platforms (ERP, Supply Chain Management …)

18. Stages of Growth (1)
Richard Nolan et al observed four stages in the introduction and assimilations of a new technology
Early Successes
Increased interest and experimentation
Contagion
Interest grows rapidly; growth is uncontrolled; learning period for the field
Control
Efforts begun toward cost reduction and standardization
Integration
Dominant design mastered; setting the stage for newer technology

19. Stages of Growth (2) Network Era Organizational Learning Micro Era
Technological discontinuity
Network Era
Organizational Learning
Micro Era
Stage 2:
Contagion
Stage 3:
Control
Stage 4:
Integration
DP Era
Stage 3:
Control
Stage 4:
Integration and Stage 1 of Micro Era
Stage 2:
Contagion
Stage 4:
Integration and Stage 1 of Network Era
Stage 3:
Control
Stage 1:
Initiation
Stage 2:
Contagion
1960
1980
Time
1995
2010

20. Stages of Growth (3)
The importance of the theory is understanding where a technology or company resides on the organizational learning curve
e.g. Web Service is currently in Stage 2, too much control at the learning and experimentation stage can kill off new uses of technology
Management principles differ from stage to stage
Different technologies are in different stages at any point in time

21. Competitive Forces Model (1)
Michael Porter's Five Forces Model
A model that determines the relative attractiveness (competition) of an industry.
Five forces
Bargaining power of customers and buyers
High when buyers have many choices of whom to buy from, and low when the choices are few.
Bargaining power of suppliers
High when buyers have few choices of whom to buy from, and low when there are many choices.

22. Competitive Forces Model (2)
Threat of substitute products or services
Low if there are very few alternatives to replace the product or service.
Switching costs
Costs that can make customers reluctant to switch to another product or service.
Threat of new entrants
High when it is easy for competitors to enter the market
The intensity of rivalry among competitors
High when the industry is less attractive.

23. Competitive Forces Model (3)
How will the business react to threats (and opportunities)?
Potential Entrants
Threat of new entrants
Industry Competitors
Bargaining power of suppliers
Bargaining power of buyers
Customers and Buyers
Suppliers   
Rivalry among existing firms
Threat of substitute products or services 
Substitutes

24. Competitive Forces Model (4)
Potential Entrants
Threat of new entrants
Industry Competitors
The strategy and actions an organization adopts depend upon its perceptions of itself and these threats.
Bargaining power of suppliers
Bargaining power of buyers
Customers and Buyers
Suppliers
Porter’s strategies:
Product differentiation (non-duplicable product or service)
Low-cost producer
Market niche (market segment or geographical market)
Three strategies for dealing with these competitive forces:
Differentiate product and services - make them “better” in the eyes of the consumer
Probably the most popular of the 3 strategies
Be the lowest-cost producer - not just a low-cost producer
Find a niche - e.g.: geographical market   
Rivalry among existing firms
Threat of substitute products or services 
Substitutes

25. Five Forces Analysis of the Internet
The Internet tends to dampen the profitability of industries
Increases the bargaining power of buyers
Decreases barriers to entry
Increases the bargaining power of suppliers
Increases the threat of substitute products and services
Intensifies rivalry among competitors
Success depends on offering distinct value
Firms should focus on their strategic position in an industry and how they will maintain profitability

26. Distributed Systems Architecture1
Information Systems Planning 2
Distributed Systems Architecture

27. Definition: IT Architecture VS. IT Infrastructure
An IT architecture is a blueprint showing how the parts will interact and interrelate.
System, information, departments...
Multiplicity of structures and views
An IT infrastructure is the implementation of an architecture.
processors, software, databases, electronic links, data centers, standards, skills, electronic processes...
We now tend to divide computing into applications and infrastructures

28. The Evolution of Distributed Systems
Mainframes: with dumb terminals
Minicomputers moved computing into departments
The master-slave computing model persisted and processing was mainly centralized
Microcomputer moved processing power into desktop, briefcase and handhelds
Client/server computing
Internet: a globally distributed system
Interesting twist: power returning to a type of centralized processing with networks of servers

29. Four Attributes of Distributed Systems
The degree to which a system is distributed can be determined by answering four questions:
Where is the processing done?
How are the processors and other devices interconnected?
Where is the information stored?
What rules or standards are used?

30. Distributed Processing
Limited processing power of a single node VS. increasing application demands
Balance the load and improve overall performance
Let machines handle the work they do best
Interoperability: information exchange between heterogeneous computing platforms
Protocols
Two-way message passing between user applications

31. Connectivity Among Processors
Data exchanges through electronic communication links
TCP/IP
Ethernet, ATM, FDDI, Frame relay...
Planned Redundancy for reliability
Two or more independent paths between two nodes to provide automatic alternate routing
Topology and reliability of the Internet

32. Distributed Databases
Two distributed database schemes
Divide a database and distribute its portions throughout a system without duplicating the data
Transparent user access
Store the same data at several different locations, with one site containing the master file
Synchronization issue
E.g. edge servers

33. System-wide Rules
Rules governing communication between nodes, security, data accessibility, program and file transfers, and common operating procedures
Open standards after 1990s
OSI Reference Model
SQL
API: standardized interface
TCP/IP
Open source

34. Internet---A Scale-free Network (1)
Internet is not designed, but evolved
Internet is a scale-free network
Scale-free networks are very common and a very important category of real networks.
Scale-free networks are the direct result of self-organized growth
Growth: networks continuously expand by the addition of new nodes
Special type of growth called preferential attachment
Preferential Attachment : The attachment is NOT uniform
A node is linked with higher probability to a node that already has a large number of links

35. Internet---A Scale-free Network (2)
They have strongly connected vertices (hubs) which play a key role in the network properties.
Random/
Five nodes with most links
First neighbors of red nodes
27% reach
60% reach

36. Internet---A Scale-free Network (3)
Poisson distribution
Exponential Network
Power-law distribution
Scale-free Network
P(k)~k-γ

37. Internet is not designed by evolved
Internet is extremely reliable to failure yet vulnerable to targeted attack.

39. Internet---Topological Robustness
Topological robustness: the Internet is robust in the presence of random failures.
At any given time hundreds of routers are down but the performance is not impacted
It will function even if we remove randomly 80% of the nodes.
Theoretical and experimental investigations show that scale-free networks are topologically robust

40. Internet---Vulnerability to Targeted Attacks
Scale-free networks such as Internet are vulnerable to attacks.
If a malicious attack could simultaneously remove 5% of hubs (the highly connected nodes) the network would disintegrate

41. Internet---Virus
Scale-free networks like internet are vulnerable to spreading viruses
Hubs are passing them massively to the connected multiple nodes.
This suggests immunizing hubs.

42. When to Distribute Computing Responsibilities (1)
The decision of distributing computing responsibilities is rather managerial than technical
People deciding how their portion of business operates should also decide how they use IT

43. When to Distribute Computing Responsibilities (2)
Systems responsibilities can be distributed unless the following are true:
Are the operations interdependent?
For interdependent, their planning, development, resources, and operations must be centrally coordinated
Are the businesses really homogenous?
Processing may be distributed, but planning and hardware selection should be centralized
Does the corporate culture support decentralization?
Corporate culture might centralize finance, HR, and systems planning

44. An Organizational Framework
Business Ecosystem
Systems may be needed for all 7 levels
Inter-organizational links can occur at all six internal levels
The current hot levels
Level1: inter-enterprise computing
Leve5: where business processes reside 1
Enterprise 2
Country or Region 3
Plant or Site 4
Department or Process 5
Now we address the issue how to distribute systems in business organizations, which is complicated as practices and processes varies greatly in different organizations. We will use two guiding framework, one focuses on the organizational structure, the other focuses on technological structures.
Work Group or Team 6
Individual 7

45. A Technical Framework (1)
The SUMURU architecture developed in 1982, has stood the test of time.
It provides a clear conceptual framework for understanding various components of a distributed architecture.

46. A Technical Framework (2)

47. A Technical Framework (3)
Processors
Services
Single-user systems (SU)
Terminal access
Multiple-user systems (MU)
File transfer
Remote utility systems (RU)
Computer mail
Networks
Standards
Local network (LN)
Operating system
Remote network (RN)
Communications protocols
Database systems