IT IN FR A S TR U C TU R E:

H ARD W ARE AN D
S O FTW A R E

IT infrastructure
IT infrastructure: Provides platform
for supporting all information systems
in the business
Computer hardware
Computer software
Data management technology
Organizes, manages, and processes

business data concerned with

inventory, customers, and vendors

Networking and

telecommunications
technology
Technology services
E.g. consultants for systems

integration with legacy systems

Types of Com puters

Computers come in different sizes with

varying capabilities for processing

information

Performance of a computer
FLOPS (Floating point operations per second)

PCs
Laptops
Server
Mainframe
Workstation
Supercomputer etc

M icrocom puters:
A computer with a microprocessor

and its central processing unit is

known as a microcomputer.
They do not occupy space as much
as mainframes do. When
supplemented with a keyboard and
a mouse, microcomputers can be
called personal computers.
A monitor, a keyboard and other
similar input-output devices,
computer memory in the form of
RAM and a power supply unit come
packaged in a microcomputer.
These computers can fit on desks
or tables and prove to be the best
choice for single-user tasks.

D esktop Com puters:

A desktop computer is

intended to be used on a
single location.
The spare parts of a desktop
computer are readily available
at relatively lower costs.
Power consumption is not as
critical as that in laptops.
Desktop computers are widely
popular for daily use in the
workplace and households.

Laptops
Similar in operation to desktop computers,

laptop computers are miniaturized and

optimized for mobile use.
Laptops run on a single battery or an external
adapter that charges the computer batteries.
They are enabled with an inbuilt keyboard,
touch pad acting as a mouse and a liquid
crystal display.
Their portability and capacity
to operate on battery power
have proven to be of great
help to mobile users.

W orkstations
These are high-end, expensive

computers that are made for

more complex procedures and
are intended for one user at a
time.
Some of the complex procedures
consist of science, math and
engineering calculations and are
useful for computer design and
manufacturing.
Enhanced capabilities for
performing a special group of
task, such as 3D Graphics or
game development.

Server
Type of midrange computer
Support computer network, sharing files and

resources
They are computers designed to provide services to
client machines in a computer network.
They have larger storage capacities and powerful
processors.
Running on them are programs that serve client
requests and allocate resources like memory and
time to client machines.
Usually they are very large in size,
as they have large processors and
many hard drives.
They are designed to be fail-safe
and resistant to crash.

M ainfram e Com puter

Large organizations use mainframes

for highly critical applications such

as bulk data processing and ERP.
Most of the mainframe computers
have capacities to host multiple
operating systems and operate as a
number of virtual machines.
They can substitute for several
small servers.
Large-capacity, high-performance computer

that can process large amounts of data very

rapidly
E.g. used by airlines for thousands of

reservations per second

Supercom puters
The highly calculation-intensive tasks can be

effectively performed by means of supercomputers.

Used in engineering, scientific simulations,

military/weapons research, weather forecasting

Their ability of parallel processing and their well-

designed memory hierarchy give the

supercomputers, large transaction processing
powers.

Grid Computing

Power of geographically
remote computers
connected into single
network to act as

Client/server com puting

Form of distributed computing
Multiple computers linked by a communication link

Splits processing between clients and servers

Clients: User point of entry
Normally a desktop and laptop computers

Servers: Store and process shared data and

perform network management activities

Such as managing printers, backup storage , user

security , authentication etc

C lient/server com puting

Two-tiered client/server architecture
Uses two types of machines
Multitiered client/server architecture (N-tier)
Balances load of network over several levels of

servers
E.g. Web servers and application servers

Web server:
Manage and
locate web
pages
Application
Server
Handles all
operations of

Storage devices
Alternatively referred to asexternal

memory , secondary memory,

andauxiliary storage, a secondary storage
deviceis anon-volatile device that holds
data until it is deleted or overwritten

Secondary storage
Secondary storage is one of the most

valuable assets of the computer. It is

storage that's separate from the
computer itself, where software and data
can be stored on a permanent basis.
Secondary storage is necessary because
memory, or primary storage, loses its
data when a computer is turned off
whereas secondary storage does not.
Therefore, it is commonly known as nonvolatile storage. The data on it stays
there until it is deleted or overwritten by
the user.

M agnetic Storage
Magnetic mediastores data by assigning a

magnetic charge to metal. This metal is then

processed by a read head, which converts the
charges into ones and zeros

Hard disks are usually found inside computers to

store programs and data
They are constructed from several key
components:
Platter- Metallic disks where One or both sides of the

platter are magnetized, allowing data to be stored. The

platter spins thousands of times a second around the
spindle and spins continuously when in operation. There
may be several platters, with data stored across them.
The disk is divided into tracks and sectors with data
represented by magnetizing spots on the disk.

 Head- The head reads magnetic data from the platter.

For a drive with several platters there may be two heads

per platter allowing data to be read from top and bottom
of each
Actuator Arm- used to move the read heads in and out
of the disk, so that data can be read and written to
particular locations and you can access data in a Random
fashion.
Power connector- provides electricity to spin the
platters, move the read head and run the electronics
IDE connectorallows for data transfer
from and to the platters
Jumper blockused to get the disk working
in specific ways such asRAID

H ow a hard disk w orks?

1. The platters spin around
2.

3.
4.

5.

the spindle
data is requested to be
read from a particular area
of a platter
the actuator arm moves
the read head to that track
Once the data sector that
is required has spun
around and under the read
head, data is read
Read data is sent from the
IDE connector to main
memory

RAID
RAID(originally redundant array of

inexpensive disks, now commonly

redundant array of independent disks) is a
data storage
virtualizationtechnologythat combines
multiple physical disk drive components
into a single logical unit for the purposes of
data redundancy, performance
improvement, or both.

Improvement of Reliability via

Redundancy
Mirroring

Improvement in Performance via

Parallelism
Stripping

M agnetic tape
Increasingly obsolete, the tape has been a medium

to deliver software and back up data since the

early days of computing.
Nowadays they are used mostly for corporate
backing up and archiving of data.
Tapes are sequential data stores
There is no random access like with a hard disk!
Tapes can be several terabytes in size and reading
and writing can be very fast as long as you read or
write continuous sections of the tape at once.

O pticalstorage devices
Optical storage devices save data as

patterns of dots that can be read

usinglight.
Alaser beamis the usual light source.
The data on the storage medium is read
by bouncing the laser beam off the
surface of the medium. If the beam hits a
dot it isreflected back differently to how
it would be if there were no dot. This
difference can be detected, so the data
can be read.
Dots can be created using the laser beam
(for media that iswritable such as CDRs). The beam is used in a high-power
mode to actually mark the surface of the
medium, making a dot. This process is
known as burning data onto a disc.

 CD-ROM
Compact Disc - Read-Only Memory (CD-ROM) discs can

hold around800MBof data.

The data cannot be altered (non-volatile), so cannot be
accidently deleted.
CD-ROMs arerandom-accessdevices.
CD-ROMs are used todistributeall sorts of data:
software,music, electronicbooks

DVD-ROM
Digital Versatile Disc or digital video disc - Read-Only

Memory (DVD-ROM) discs can hold around4.7GBof

data (a dual-layer DVD can hold twice that).
DVD-ROMs arerandom-accessdevices.
DVD-ROMs are used in the same way as CD-ROMs but,
since they can hold more data, they are also used to
store high-qualityvideo.

 CD-R and DVD-R

CD-Recordable (CD-R) and DVD-recordable

(DVD-R) discs can have data burntonto

them, butnot erased. You can keep adding
data until the disc is full, but you cannot
remove any data or re-use a full disc.

CD-RW and DVD-RW

CD-Re Writable (CD-RW) and DVD-Re

Writable (DVD-RW) discs, unlike CD-Rs and

DVD-Rs, can havedata burntonto them
andalso erased so that the discs can
bere-used.

Solid-State Storage D evices

The term solid-state essentially means no

moving parts.
Solid-state storage devices are based
onelectronic circuitswithno moving
parts(no reels of tape, no spinning discs, no
laser beams, etc.)
Solid-state storage devices store data using
a special type ofmemory calledflash
memory
USB Flash drive
Memory sticks arenon-volatile,random-

accessstorage devices
Small, lightweight USB memory sticks, Portable,
available for many Gigabytes.

Storage Area N etw ork

Storage networking: SANs
Connect multiple storage devices on a
separate high-speed network dedicated to
storage

Input devices
Aninput devicefor a computer allows

you to enter information.

Inputdevices convert
theuser'sactionsandanalogdata
sound,graphics, pictures)
intodigitalelectronicsignalsthat can
be processed by a computer.Digital
data(such as frombarcode
readers,modems,scanners, etc.) does
not require anyconversionand is input
direct into a computer.

Keyboard
Keyboard is the most common and very

popular input device which helps in

inputting data to the computer. The layout
of the keyboard is like that of traditional
typewriter, although there are some
additional keys provided for performing
additional functions.
Keyboards are of two sizes 84 keys or
101/102 keys, but now keyboards with 104
keys or 108 keys are also available for
Windows and Internet.

M ouse
Mouse is most popular pointing device. It is a

very famous cursor-control device having a

small palm size box with a round ball at its
base which senses the movement of mouse
and sends corresponding signals to CPU when
the mouse buttons are pressed.
Generally it has two buttons called left and
right button and a wheel is present between
the buttons. Mouse can be used to control
the position of cursor on screen, but it cannot
be used to enter text into the computer.

 Touch screen
Atouch screenis aninput devicenormally layered on
the top of anelectronic visual displayof aninformation
processing system. A user can give input or control
theinformation processing systemthrough simple
ormulti-touch gesturesby touching the screen with a
specialstylus/pen and-or one or more fingers

Optical Character Recognition

OCR, is a technology that enables you to convert

different types of documents, such as scanned paper

documents, PDF files or images captured by a digital
camera into editable and searchable data.

MICR(magnetic ink character recognition)

MICR is a technology used to verify the legitimacy or

originality of paper documents, especially checks.

Special ink, which is sensitive to magnetic fields, is
used in the printing of certain characters on the original
documents.

 Pen-basedInput
Computer that uses pattern-recognition software to enable it

to accept handwriting as a form ofinput. A stylus, which may

contain special electronic circuitry, is used to write on the
computer display or on a separate tablet.

Scanner
A scanner is a device that captures images from photographic

prints, posters, magazine pages, and similar sources

forcomputerediting and display. Scanners come in handheld, feed-in, and flatbed types and for scanning black-andwhite only, or color.

Audio input devices

are used to capture sound. In some cases, anaudio output

devicecan be used as aninput device, in order to capture

produced sound. Microphones. MIDI keyboard or other digital
musical instrument.

Sensors
device which detects or measures a physical property and

records, indicates, or otherwise responds to it.

O utput devices

Anoutput deviceis anyperipheralthat

receives data from a computer, usually for

display, projection, or physical reproduction.
Monitors and printers are two of the most
common output devices used with a
computer.
Monitors
Monitors, commonly called as Visual Display Unit

(VDU), are the main output device of a computer.

It forms images from tiny dots, called pixels that
are arranged in a rectangular form. The sharpness
of the image depends upon the number of pixels.
Cathode-Ray Tube (CRT)
Flat- Panel Display

 CRT
A vacuum tube used as adisplay

screenin a computermonitoror
TV. The viewing end of the tube is
coated with phosphors, which emit
light when struck by electrons.

flat-panel display
The flat-panel display refers to a

class of video devices that have

reduced volume, weight and power
requirement in comparison to the
CRT. You can hang them on walls
or wear them on your wrists.
Current uses of flat-panel displays
include calculators, video games,
monitors, laptop computer,
graphics display.

Printer
Printer is an output device, which is used to

print information on paper.

There are two types of printers:
Impact Printers
The impact printers print the characters by striking
them on the ribbon which is then pressed on the
paper.
E.g. DOT MATRIX PRINTER
Non-Impact Printers

Non-impact printers print the characters without

using ribbon. These printers print a complete page
at a time so they are also called as Page Printers.
Laser Printers
Inkjet Printers

Sound output- speakers

Batch vs.O nline processing

Information systems collect and

process information in one of two

ways
Batch processing:
Transactions stored for predefined amount of time,
then processed as group
Anexample of batch processingis the way that
credit card companies processbilling. The customer
does not receive a bill for each separate credit card
purchase but one monthly bill for all of that month
Online processing:
Transactions processed immediately

Contem porary H ardw are Trends

Integration of computing and

telecommunications platforms
Cell phones merging with handhelds
Growth of Internet telephony

Nanotechnology
Creating computer chips and other devices thousands of

times smaller through manipulating individual atoms,

molecules

Edge computing
Multitier, load-balancing scheme for Web-based applications
Significant parts of Web site content, logic, and processing

performed by smaller, less expensive servers located

nearby the user
Increases response time and resilience and lowers
technology costs.

Autonomic computing
Development of systems that can configure

themselves, heal themselves; e.g. selfupdating antivirus software

Virtualization
Process of presenting a set of computing

resources so they can be accessed in ways

that are unrestricted by physical
configuration or geographic location
Server virtualization: Running more than

one operating system at the same time on

single machine.

 Multicore processors
multi-coreis usually the term used to

describe two or more CPUs working

together on the same chip. Also
calledmulticore technology, it is a type of
architecture where a single
physicalprocessorcontains the core logic
of two or moreprocessors.

IT Infrastructure: C om puter
Softw are
Types of softw are
System software
Operating system
The software that manages and controls the
computers activities

Utility programs
Perform common processing tasks

Language Translators
Convert programming language into machine
laguage

Device Driver
Tells Os how to use and control a particular
device

Application software

O perating System Softw are

The software that manages and

controls the computers activities

Resource management
Memory management
I/O management
Multitasking
PROCESS management
CPU scheduling
User authentication etc

PC and Server O S
PC operating systems and

graphical user interfaces

Application Softw are and D esktop

Productivity Tools
Application programming languages

for business

COBOL

(Common Business Oriented Language) was one of the

earliest high-level programming languages

COBOLis primarily used in business, finance, and
administrative systems for companies and governments.

C, C++

Creates Operating systems and application

software for PC

Visual Basic: Visual programming language

Visual Basic(VB) is a programming environment

from Microsoft in which a programmer uses a

graphical user interface (GUI) to choose and modify
preselected sections of code written in
theBASICprogramming language.

Fourth-generation languages

Software tools that enable end-users to develop software

applications with minimal or no technical assistance

Tend to be nonprocedural, may use natural languages
Procedural languages
Sequence of steps
Tells what do and how to do

Non procedural language

A computerlanguagethat does not require writing

traditional programming logic. Also known as a
"declarative language," users concentrate on defining
the input and output rather than the program steps
required in aproceduralprogramming languagesuch
as C++ or Java.
Natural languages
In computing,natural languagerefers to a
humanlanguagesuch as English, Russian, German, or
Japanese as distinct from the typically artificial
command or programminglanguagewith which one
usually talks to a computer

Categories ofFourth-G eneration

Languages

Softw are packages and

desktop productivity tools
Word processing software
Aword processoris an electronic device or

computersoftwareapplication, that performs the

task of composition, editing, formatting, and
sometimes printing of document

Spreadsheet software

Aspreadsheetis an interactive computer

applicationprogramfor organization,
analysis and storage of data in tabular form.
Spreadsheetsare developed as computerized
simulations of paper accounting worksheets.
Theprogramoperates on data represented as
cells of an array, organized in rows and
columns.

Data management software

Adatabase managementsystem (DBMS) is a

computersoftware application that interacts

with the user, other applications, and the
databaseitself to capture and analyzedata. A
general-purpose DBMS is designed to allow
thedefinition, creation, querying, update, and
administration of databases.

Presentation graphics

Apresentation programis asoftware package

used to display information in the form of a

slide show. It has three major functions: an
editor that allows text to be inserted and
formatted, a method for inserting and
manipulating graphic images, and a slide-show
system to display the content.

Software suites
Asoftware suiteor applicationsuiteis a

collection of computer programsusually

applicationsoftwareor programmingsoftware
of related functionality, often sharing a more-orless common user interface and some ability to
smoothly exchange data with each other.
Example Microsoft office

Web browsers

Aweb browser(commonly referred to as

browser) is a software application for retrieving,

presenting, and traversing information
resources on the World Wide Web. An
information resource is identified by a Uniform
Resource Identifier (URI/URL) and may be
awebpage, image, video or other piece of
content.

Softw are for the W eb: Java,

A JA X , and H TM L
Java
Operating system-independent, processor-

independent, object-oriented programming

language
AJAX
Allows a client and server to exchange data

behind the scenes to avoid reloading a Web

page after each change
Hypertext markup language (HTML)
Page description language for specifying

how elements are placed on a Web page and

for creating links to other pages and objects

W eb services
Software components that exchange

information with each other using universal

Web communication standards and languages

Open standards
Exchange information regardless of OS

and programming languages

XML (extensible markup language)
SOAP (simple object access protocol)
WSDL (web services description language)
UDDI (universal description, discovery, and
integration)
Service oriented architecture (SOA)

 XML
Used for web pages
more powerful and flexible
XML and HTMLwere designed with different

goals:XMLwas designed to carry data - with focus

on what data is.HTMLwas designed to display data
- with focus on how data looks.XML tagsare not
predefined like HTML tagsare
Web services uses some standard web protocols
SOAP

SOAP stands forSimple Object Access Protocol.

SOAP is an application communication protocol.
SOAP is a format for sending and receiving
messages. SOAP is platform independent. SOAP is
based on XML.

 WDSL
TheWeb Services Description Language(WSDL)is
anXML-basedinterface definition languagethat is
used for describing the functionality offered by
aweb service.

UDDI
UDDIis an XML-based standard for describing, publishing,

and finding web services.UDDIstands for Universal

Description, Discovery, and Integration.UDDIis a
specification for a distributed registry of web services.

SOA ( service oriented architecture)

Collection of web services
Aservice-oriented architecture(SOA) is an

architectural pattern in computer software design in which

application components provide services to other
components via a communications protocol, typically over
a network. The principles of service-orientation are
independent of any vendor, product or technology

Softw are Trends

Open-sourcesoftware
OSS is computer software with

itssourcecode made available with a license

in which the copyright holder provides the
rights to study, change, and distribute the
software to anyone and for any
purpose.Open-sourcesoftware may be
developed in a collaborative public manner.

Cloud Computing
The practice of using a network of remote

servers hosted on the Internet to store,

manage, and process data, rather than a local
server or a personal computer

 Mashups
Mix and match different software

components to create customized

applications
ChicagoCrime.org (google maps with crime
data)

Widgets
an application, or a component of an

interface, that enables a user to perform a

function or access a service.
Can be added to desktop and web pages to
provide additional functionality
Example: Current weather conditions

M anaging H ardw are and

Softw are Technology
Capacity planning
Process of predicting when hardware system
becomes saturated
Ensuring firm has enough computing power for
current and future needs
Factors include:
Maximum number of users
Impact of current, future software
Performance measures

Scalability: Ability of system to expand to serve

large number of users without breaking down

Number of visitors can increase on some website

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) model

Used to analyze direct and indirect costs to

help determine the actual cost of owning a

specific technology
Direct costs: Hardware, software purchase
costs
Indirect costs: Ongoing administration
costs, upgrades, maintenance, technical
support, training, utility and real estate
costs
Hidden costs: Support staff, downtime,
additional network management

TCO can be reduced through increased

centralization, standardization of hardware

and software resources

Total C ost of O w nership

(TC O ) m odel

U sing technology service

Usingders
technology service providers
provi
Outsourcing
Outsourcingis an allocation of specific
business processes to a specialist external
service provider. Most of the times an
organization cannot handle all aspects of a
business process internally.
Using external provider to:
Run networks
Host, manage Web site(s)
Develop software (offshore software
outsourcing)
Manage IT infrastructures
Requires Service Level Agreements

 On-demand(OD)computingis an increasingly

popular enterprise model in which

computingresources are made available to the user
as needed.
Software as a Service (SaaS) - Firms rent software

functions from Web-based services, with users paying

either on a subscription or per-transaction basis
Managing software localization for global business
Local language interfaces
English not typically standard at middle, lower levels
Interfaces are complex: Menu bars, error messages, online forms, search
results, etc.

Differences in local cultures

Differences in business processes

All of these factors add to TCO of using technology

service providers