Information Systems Planning

Transcription

1 Information Systems Planning

2 1 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 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 1-2 years 6 month -1 year Strategic Vision, architecture, business goals Tactical Resource allocation, project selection Operational Project management, meeting time and budget targets Senior management, CIO Middle management, IS line partners, Steering committees 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? Step 2 What is required? Business Strategy Business decision Objectives and direction Change Supports business Infrastructure and services Step 3 How can it be delivered? System Strategy Business-based Demand-oriented Application-focused IT Strategy Activity-based Supply-oriented Technology-focused Direction For IS Needs and priorities 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"

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 Core

12 Today's Sense-and-Response Approach (1) 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 Old-era strategy One big choice, long commitment Time Time New-era strategy Many small choices, short commitments 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) Organizational Learning Stage 1: Initiation DP Era Stage 2: Contagion Stage 3: Control Technological discontinuity Stage 4: Stage 2: Integration Contagion and Stage 1 of Micro Era Micro Era Stage 2: Stage 3: Contagion Control Stage 4: Integration and Stage 1 of Network Era Network Era Stage 3: Control Stage 4: Integration Time

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 Bargaining power of suppliers Suppliers Industry Competitors Rivalry among existing firms Threat of new entrants Bargaining power of buyers Customers and Buyers Substitutes Threat of substitute products or services

24 Competitive Forces Model (4) Potential Entrants Suppliers Industry Competitors Threat of new entrants The strategy and actions an organization adopts depend upon its Bargaining perceptions power of of itself and these threats. Bargaining power of buyers suppliers Porter s strategies: Product differentiation (non-duplicable product or service) Low-cost producer Rivalry among Market niche (market segment existing or geographical firms market) Customers and Buyers Substitutes Threat of substitute products or services

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 1 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: 1. Where is the processing done? 2. How are the processors and other devices interconnected? 3. Where is the information stored? 4. 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 selforganized 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) Random/ Five nodes with most links First neighbors of red nodes 27% reach 60% reach

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

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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 Enterprise Country or Region Plant or Site Department or Process Work Group or Team Individual 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

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