1. Understanding IT Infrastructure
Chapter 5

2. Key Learning Objectives
Recognize the core components of modern IT infrastructure and understand the management issues associated with these components
Understand the business opportunities and challenges associated with pervasive internetworked computing power

3. 75% of al IT dollars go to infrastructure (2001)
Half of all capital expenditures in many companies
What is IT infrastructure?
Past IT infrastructure decisions severely impact the current business capabilities
Leave it to the techies?

4. Agenda The drivers of changes: better chips, bigger pipes
The basic components of internetworking infrastructures
The rise of internetworking: business implications

5. The drivers of change: better chips, bigger pipes
1965, Gordon Moore
The performance of memory chips doubled every 18 to 24 months
Size and cost roughly constant

6. Moore‘s Law

7. The Evolution of Corporate IT Infrastructure

8. 1960s and 1970s
Centralized computing architecture
In batches

9. 1980s-1990s Personal computer (early 1980) Local area network (LAN)
Client-server
Front and back office
Internet in businesses (early 1990s)

10. History of Internet 1960s, cold war U.S. Department of Defense (DOD)
No critical communication lines or nodes could be targeted by an enemy
Open standards (e.g. TCP/IP)
Not owned by any person or company

11. Metcalfe’s Law
The usefulness of a network increases with the square of the number of users connected to the network n2

12. Metcalfe’s Law

13. The Bandwidth Explosion

14. The result of better chips and bigger pipes?
Reduction in the cost of computing power
Reduction in the cost of exchanging information between computers
How to mix old and new?
The function of mainframes?

15. Basic components of internetworking infrastructures
Technologies (HW and SW) that permit exchange of information between organizations
Processing system
HW and SW proved an organization’s ability to handle business transactions
Facilities
The physical systems that house and protect computing and network devices
Many more degrees of freedom in how components can be arranged and managed

16. Network Core technologies Key management issues
Fibre optics, cable systems, DSL, satellite, wireless, internetworking hardware (routers switches, firewalls), content delivery software, identity and policy management, monitoring
How to select technologies and standard
How to select partners
How to manage partner relationships
How to assure reliability
How to maintain security

17. Processing systems Core technologies Key management issues
Transaction software (enterprise systems offered by companies such as SAP and Oracle or more targeted solutions, sometimes home-grown), servers, server appliances, client devices (PCs, handhelds), mobile phones
What to keep internal and what to outsource
How to deploy, grow, and modify
Enterprise system or best-of-breed hybrid
Relationships with legacies
How to manage incidents
How to recover after a “disaster”

18. Facilities Core technologies Key management issues
Corporate data centres, collocation data centres, managed services data centres, data closets
Internal or external management
Choosing a facilities model suited to one’s company
How to assure reliability
How to maintain security
How to maximize energy efficiency and reduce environmental impact
Source:

19. The technology elements of networks
Local area networks (LANs)
Define the physical features of solution to local communication problems and the protocols (rules)
Token Ring protocol
Speak when you have the token
Ethernet
computer speak out whenever they 1) have something to say, and 2) hear silence on the network for a moment
What is a collision?

20. A Simple LAN

21. Wireless access points Network adapters
Hubs, switches
Serve as central junctions into which cable from the computers on a LAN are connected
Wireless access points
Connect wireless devices into hubs and switches
Network adapters
Are physically fitted into the computers on a LAN
Translate the computer’s communications into a language that can be broadcast over the LAN and understood by listening computers

22. Wide area network
Provide a way for computers physically distant from each other to communicate
Networks of networks
Enable LANs to connect and communicate
Intranet
A WAN inside the boundaries of a company’s physical premises
Extranet
A WAN that extends outward from a company’s physical premises to business partners

23. An Example of a WAN

24. Firewalls and other security systems and devices
Routers
Routing stations for cars analogy…
Firewalls and other security systems and devices
Firewalls act as security sentries within and at the boundaries of an organizations internal network to protect it from intrusion from the outside
HW and SW
Intrusion detection systems, IDSs
Sensors and probes
Virtual private networks (VPNs)

25. Caching, content acceleration
Accelerate the delivery of information across the network
Caching/storing information in a location close to the destination machine
content acceleration, media servers, and other specialized network devices

26. The technological elements of processing systems
Client devices and systems
PCs and handheld devices
Perform front-end processing (interaction with users)
Server devices and system
Servers are the source of many of the IT services that clients receive from across the network
Perform back-end processing (heavy computation or interaction with other back-end computers)
Often physically located in data centres
Special functions: database servers, web servers, application servers

27. Servers in a Possible E-commerce Configuration

28. Mainframe devices and systems
Do business-critical transaction processing
Develop systems that enable interaction between legacy mainframes and internetworks
Middleware
Help clients, servers, mainframes, and their systems coordinate activities in time and across networks
Often runs on servers

29. Infrastructure management systems
Systems for managing its computing infrastructure
Monitor the performance of processing systems, devices, and networks
Examples
Helpdesk, deliver new software to computers throughout an organization, load balancing
Business applications
Computer users interact with this layer
ERP, off-the-shelf packages (spreadsheet…)

30. The technological elements of facilities
Buildings and physical spaces
Size, physical features
Minimize the environmental impact
Network conduits and connections
Speed, cost, performance, availability and security
Power
Uninterruptable power supplies (UPSs)

31. A Modern Data Center

32. Temperature and humidity controls Security
Protect from malicious attacks, both physical and network-based
Security guards, cages, locks (control access to machines)
Network…much more complex

33. Operational characteristics of internetworks
Based on open standards
TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) standards define how computer send and receive data packets
Hypertext transport protocol (HTTP)
Prices are lower, and performance better than proprietary technologies

34. Operate asynchronously
Unlike a telephone call, no dedicated link
Internetwork communications have inherent latency
Not all packages of a single message arrive in the same moment
New routing technologies provide options
Move high-priority packets to the top of the queues

35. Decentralized
Scalable
Routed along multiple paths

36. The rise of internetworking: business implications
The emergence of real-time infrastructures
Better data, better decisions
Improve process visibility
View the progress of filling an order
Improved process efficiency
Hold less buffer stock improves return on investment (ROI)
From make-and-sell to sense-and-respond
Response to actual customer demand rather than forecasted customer demand

37. Broader exposure to operational threats
Allow access unless someone intervenes to disallow it
New models of service delivery
Physical location of computer less important
Telephone answering machines vs. voice mail
Machine vs. subscription
Managing legacies
Legacy systems, processes, organizations and cultures

38. Questions to be asked
What does the public infrastructure of the Internet mean to our business operations?
Are we leveraging this infrastructure to maximum advantage?
How dependent are we still on proprietary technologies?
How close do our company operations come to running in real time?
What value creation opportunities can still be obtained by moving more in the direction of real-time value capture?

39. Are we exploring new service delivery models aggressively enough?
Has our company taken appropriate advantage of the many degrees of architectural and operational freedom offered by internetworking technologies?
Have we thought through the inherent complexities and risks in those additional degree of freedom?
Are we exploring new service delivery models aggressively enough?
Have we re-examined our management frameworks in light of the new and more adaptive capabilities that internetworking technologies offer?
Most important, do senior business managers play and active and informed role in infrastructure design and planning decisions?