Business Driven Information Systems 5th Edition Baltzan Solutions Manual 1

Business Driven Information Systems 5th Edition
by Baltzan Phillips ISBN 9780073402987

Download solution manual at:
https://testbankpack.com/p/solution-manual-for-business-
driven-information-systems-5th-edition-by-baltzan-phillips-
isbn-9780073402987/
INFRASTRUCTURES: SUSTAINABLE
TECHNOLOGIES
Technical architecture refers to the structured process of designing and building software architecture, with focus
on interaction with software and hardware developers. Technical architecture is a part of software architecture,
which focuses on how to deal with certain aspects of the software engineering process. It allows us to design
better systems by:
• Meeting system requirements and objectives: Both functional and non-functional requirements can be
prioritized as "must have", "should have" or "want", where "must have" identifies properties that the system
must have in order to be acceptable. Architecture allows us to evaluate and make tradeoffs among
requirements of differing priority. Though system qualities (also known as non-functional requirements) can be
compromised later in the development process, many will not be met if not explicitly taken into account at the
architectural level.
• Enabling flexible partitioning of the system: A good architecture enables flexible distribution of the system by
allowing the system and its constituent applications to be partitioned among processors in many different ways
without having to redesign the distributable component parts. This requires careful attention to the distribution
potential of components early in the architectural design process.
• Reducing cost of maintenance and evolution: Architecture can help minimize the costs of maintaining and
evolving a given system over its entire lifetime by anticipating the main kinds of changes that will occur in the
system, ensuring that the system's overall design will facilitate such changes, and localizing as far as possible
Business Driven Information Systems - Instructor’s Manual Chapter 5 Page 1 of 30

the effects of such changes on design documents, code, and other system work products. This can be
achieved by the minimization and control of subsystem interdependencies.
• Increasing reuse and integration with legacy and third party software: An architecture may be designed to
enable and facilitate the (re)use of certain existing components, frameworks, class libraries, legacy or third-
party applications, etc…
SECTION 5.1 – MIS INFRASTRUCTURES

• The Business Benefits of a Solid MIS Infrastructure
• Supporting Operations: In formation MIS Infrastructure
• Supporting Change: Agile MIS Infrastructure
SECTION 5.2 – BUILDING SUSTAINABLE MIS INFRASTRUCTURES

• MIS and the Environment
• Supporting the Environment: Sustainable MIS Infrastructure

SECTION 5.1
M I S I N F RA S T R U C T U R E S
This section emphasizes Information technology (IT) architecture lies at the heart of most companies' operating
capabilities. Changes in IT lead therefore to fundamental changes in how businesses operate. Since many
companies depend on these technologies, no longer is IT simply nice to have; no longer is IT just value-adding. It
has become vital.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Learning Outcome 5.1: Explain MIS infrastructure and its three primary types.
The three primary areas where enterprise architects focus when maintaining a firm’s MIS infrastructure are:
• Supporting operations: Information MIS infrastructure identifies where and how important information, such as
customer records, is maintained and secured.
• Supporting change: Agile MIS infrastructure includes the hardware, software, and telecommunications
equipment that, when combined, provides the underlying foundation to support the organization’s goals.
• Supporting the environment: Sustainable MIS infrastructure identifies ways that a company can grow in terms
of computing resources while simultaneously becoming less dependent on hardware and energy consumption.
Learning Outcome 5.2: Identify the three primary areas associated with an information MIS infrastructure.
The three primary areas an information infrastructure provides to support continuous business operations are:
• Backup and recovery: A backup is an exact copy of a system’s information. Recovery is the ability to get a
system up and running in the event of a system crash or failure that includes restoring the information backup.
• Disaster recovery plan: This plan provides a detailed process for recovering information or a system in the
event of a catastrophic disaster.
• Business continuity plan: This details how a company recovers and restores critical business operations and
systems after a disaster or extended disruption.
Learning Outcome 5.3: Describe the characteristics of an agile MIS infrastructure.

• Accessibility refers to the varying levels that define what a user can access, view, or perform when operating a
system.
• Availability refers to the time frames when the system is operational.
• Maintainability (or flexibility) refers to how quickly a system can transform to support environmental changes.
• Portability refers to the ability of an application to operate on different devices or software platforms, such as
different operating systems.
• Reliability (or accuracy) ensures a system is functioning correctly and providing accurate information.
• Scalability describes how well a system can “scale up” or adapt to the increased demands of growth.
• Usability is the degree to which a system is easy to learn and efficient and satisfying to use.
CLASSROOM OPENER
Top Ten Data Failure Stories

1. PhD Almost an F - A PhD candidate lost his entire dissertation when a bad power supply suddenly zapped
his computer and damaged the USB Flash drive that stored the document. Had the data not been recovered,
the student would not have graduated.
2. Suffering from Art - While rearranging her home office, a woman accidentally dropped a five pound piece of
clay pottery on her laptop, directly onto the hard drive area that contained a book she'd been working on for
five years and 150 year-old genealogy pictures that had not yet been printed.
3. Domestic Dilemma - A husband deleted all of his child's baby pictures when he accidentally hit the wrong
button on his computer. His wife hinted at divorce if he did not get the pictures back.
4. Bite Worse than Bark - A customer left his memory stick lying out and his dog mistook it for a chew toy.
5. Don't Try this at Home - A man attempting to recover data from his computer on his own found the job too
challenging mid-way through and ended up sending Ontrack his completely disassembled drive - with each of
its parts in a separate baggie.
6. Out of Time - A clockmaker suffered a system meltdown, losing the digital designs for all of its clocks. Ontrack
literally beat the clock recovering all their data just in time for an important international tradeshow.
7. Drilling for Data - During a multi-drive RAID recovery, engineers discovered one drive belonging in the set
was missing. The customer found the missing drive in a dumpster, but in compliance with company policy for
disposing of old drives, it had a hole drilled through it.
8. Safe at Home - After one of their executives experienced a laptop crash, the Minnesota Twins professional
baseball team called on Ontrack to rescue crucial scouting information about their latest prospects. The team
now relies on Ontrack for all data recoveries within its scouting and coaching ranks.
9. Hardware Problems - A frustrated writer attacked her computer with a hammer. When the engineers received
the computer, the hammer imprint was clearly visible on the top cover.
10. La Cucaracha - In hopes of rescuing valuable company information, a customer pulled an old laptop out of a
warehouse where it had been sitting unused for 10 years. When engineers opened the computer, it contained
hundreds of husks of dead and decaying cockroaches.
CLASSROOM OPENER
Drivers and Trends for Enterprise Architectures
Change is inevitable and unavoidable, but that does not need to cost your business money, time, or
resources. Aligning IT with business requirements and being able to immediately respond to changes in those
requirements is what drives today's need for enterprise architecture.
TOP 5 DRIVERS OF IMPLEMENTING ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE

Planning is critical in today’s business climate as there are more computers and complexity than ever before. The
top 5 drivers of implementing enterprise architecture include:
• Aligning business with information technology
• Enabling a more agile enterprise
• Reducing the rising costs of IT development and maintenance
• Technical adaptability
• Service-oriented architecture
CLASSROOM OPENER
Why Macs Make Sense in the Corporate Market
Apple's market share has jumped to more than 10% in the consumer PC market, according to IDC. And consumer
applications, from chat to Facebook, are seeping into offices. As more business folk consider notebook PCs for
personal as well as work activities, many choose Apples MacBooks.

Here is a slideshow to show how demographics and technology are aligning in Apples favor.
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/05/0501_apple/index_01.htm?chan=rss_topSlideShows_ssi_5
CLASSROOM OPENER
Neil Young: The Old Man Uses Java
In his 1972 hit song "Old Man," rock legend Neil Young sings out: "Old man take a look at my life. I'm a lot like you
..." Indeed, it is Young who is now an "old man" of sorts and has compiled 45 years of archives about his music
career on Blu-ray discs using Java technology.
Young joined Sun Microsystems CEO and President Jonathan Schwartz and Rich Green, the company's executive
vice president for software, on stage during the JavaOne conference opening keynote to announce the new
archive project and demonstrate some of the interactive features of his upcoming Blu-ray disc box set.
Young also announced his collaboration with Sun and Reprise/Warner Bros. for the release of the upcoming Neil
Young Archive series on Blu-ray disc, powered by Java technology. Visit: www.java.com or www.neilyoung.com
for more information.
Young said the Blu-ray format delivers both unsurpassed 192/24 audio quality and high-definition video, capturing
the quality of the original analog master recordings in the best digital format available today. The first Neil Young
Archive release will be a 10 Blu-ray disc set available this fall from Reprise/Warner Bros. Records, covering
Young's career from 1963-1972.
"Previously, there was no way to browse archival material on a disc and listen to a song in high resolution at the
same time," said Young. "The technology had not yet evolved to that capability. It is important for me that the user
experience the high-resolution music along with the archival visual material. Previous technology required
unacceptable quality compromises. I am glad we waited and got it right. "
Moreover, "We needed technology to go through this chronological thing like a video game," Young said. "And
Java technology made it possible to do things we couldn't do just a few years ago. Java allows us to play the
music and walk through the archives. We wanted to do this in the '80s, but the DVD wasn't good enough; we were
defeated by the technology."
CLASSROOM EXERCISE
Backup and Recovery
Ask your students to answer the following questions:
• Do you have a backup strategy for your computer?
• How often do you backup?
• What do you backup?
• What type of format do you use for your backup?
• Where do you save the backup?
• How long do you save the backup?
Now ask your students that if you stole their computer or spilled a hot cup of coffee on their computer right now
how much information would they lose? Encourage your students to create a backup strategy.

CLASSROOM EXERCISE
Open Source on a Large Scale
Initially, open source was used deep within IT departments. These groups have the technical prowess to manage
and evaluate such technologies, understanding where they should be widely deployed, and where they should
have limited use. The use of open source is not limited to a few companies that want to be on the edge.
Companies that are using open source, such as Linux, for commercial applications include Winnebago Industries,
Merrill Lynch and Co, and L. L. Bean.
Fundamental issues with open source software development

While vast numbers of the current technology community members are proponents of open source, there are also
people on the other side of the debate. The most obvious complaint against open source software involves
intellectual property rights. Some software development companies do use the copyright and patent rights
provided for software developers as their primary source of income. By keeping their software source code hidden,
they can demand fees for its use. While most software is written for internal use, the fees from sale and license of
commercial software are the primary source of income for companies which do sell software. Additionally, many
companies with large research and development teams often develop extensive patent portfolios. These
companies charge money for the use of their patents in software, but having software be open source means that
there is a potential to have a nearly infinite number of derived software using patented technology, unbeknownst to
the patent holder.
Another common argument, one that is more difficult for open source advocates to contradict with hard facts, is
that closed source development allows more control over the final product. The theory behind this argument is that
open source software is primarily a volunteer effort, while closed-source development is typically a salary-driven
effort. By having the monetary resources to fund developers and management, and the ability to force
development in a given direction, closed source proponents argue that development can be more efficient and
more focused.
Legal risks
The legal risks of adopting open source software may not be confined to intellectual property problems. "Open
source" describes a belief that software is best written in an open collaborative process in which the resulting
product is freely available to others to use, improve, and distribute. Early proponents of open source based it on
moral principles of free access, while later supporters have promoted it as a viable business model for commercial
developers and users.
Licensing issues
Open source comes with unusual license restrictions that may impact a company's strategies, particularly the risk
that its own proprietary software may be "tainted" by a duty to open its source code to others. This risk is different
from the infringement risk. Open source is not in the public domain but instead is available for use only under one
of a variety of licenses that impose restrictions on users. These licenses differ, and it is important to know and
observe their terms.
Linux has been distributed under the General Public License (GPL). One risk under the GPL stands out: the
possibility that a user's proprietary code will be "tainted" by a duty to make its source code open. If a user of GPL
code decides to distribute or publish a work that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the open source or
any part thereof, it must make the source code available and license the work as a whole at no charge to third
parties under the terms of the GPL (thereby allowing further modification and redistribution). In other words, this
can be a trap for the unwary: a company can unwittingly lose valuable rights to its proprietary code.
Areas (departments, companies, industries, etc.) where open source makes most sense
Open source is most useful in areas of technology that are well understood. Proprietary companies have the
advantage in new technology realms due to better information regarding real-world customer needs and their
ability to experiment in parallel regarding the satisfaction of those needs.
Open source also makes most sense in "infrastructure." Most contributors to open source do so free of charge.
This means that their work will tend to be oriented towards areas of interest to themselves. Infrastructure is of
necessity oriented towards technical personnel, and thus the interests of the open-source contributors and end
users (technical personnel) align closely. Open source is being used successfully in government, industry, and
education.
An assessment of the competition (e.g., open source vs. Microsoft)

A number of major software companies, such as Microsoft, oppose the GPL due to its open nature. Microsoft has
continually argued that the software license makes it difficult for a company to protect intellectual property because
it forces a company to expose to competitors the blueprints of any code it uses that are licensed under the GPL.
Here is an overview of the current operating systems and the percentage of usage:
OS Group Percentage Composition

Windows 49.6% Windows XP, 2000, NT4, NT3, Windows 95, Windows 98
[GNU/]Linux 29.6% [GNU/]Linux
Solaris 7.1% Solaris 2, Solaris 7, Solaris 8
BSD 6.1% BSDI BSD/OS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD
Other Unix 2.2% AIX, Compaq Tru64, HP-UX, IRIX, SCO Unix, SunOS 4 and others
Other non-Unix 2.4% MacOS, NetWare, proprietary IBM OSs
Unknown 3.0% Not identified by Netcraft OS detector
Security issues
The reason viruses are written for Microsoft is because most people use it. Therefore, if 90 percent of software
was open source there would be just as many attacks, only worse. Imagine smart hackers with access to source
code.
Those in favor of open source say that because everyone has access to the code, bugs and vulnerabilities are
found more quickly and thus are fixed more quickly, closing up security holes faster. They also point out that any
and everyone is free to create a better, more secure version of the software.
Those on the other side maintain that a closed system in which only trusted insiders debug the code makes it less
likely that discovered vulnerabilities will be exploited before they can be patched.
They also point out that there are many reasons (in addition to market share) that are unrelated to the technical
security of the software but that can account for a larger number of attacks against proprietary software. One is the
nature of the “OS wars” – because open source software has traditionally been more difficult to use, those who
gravitate toward it tend to be more technically savvy. The larger number of self-proclaimed hackers who are pro-
open source and anti-Microsoft means there are more people out there with the motive and the means to write
malicious code targeting Windows systems.
The need for standards

Open standards are published standards that are unimpeded by patents and copyrights. They form the basis of all
consumer electronics, including radio encoding standards, film and music recording standards and even the power
supply standards used by the wall sockets.

Standards play a large role in the running of modern computer systems. They allow users to purchase new
hardware with confidence that it will work with their existing hardware. They allow users to connect their computers
together into a network in which the applications running on them can talk to each other. They also support healthy
competition, because if a computer or program uses the correct standard, it can do tasks independently of who
made the hardware, who wrote the software, and even where in the world the computer is operating.
Open standards (i.e., open protocols) are often quoted as being more important than open source code. Yet, both
are necessary, since open source projects depend on open protocols (think Apache and HTTP, Mozilla and
HTML/CSS/JavaScript, Sendmail and SMTP), but that proprietary products do, too (IIS, IE, Exchange Server).
CORE MATERIAL
The core chapter material is covered in detail in the PowerPoint slides. Each slide contains detailed teaching notes
including exercises, class activities, questions, and examples. Please review the PowerPoint slides for detailed
notes on how to teach and enhance the core chapter material.

SECTION 5.2
BUILDING SUSTAINABLE MIS
INFRASTRUCTURES
The section emphasizes the need to keep business systems up-and-running 24x7x365 while continuing to be
flexible, scalable, reliable, and available is no easy task. Organizations today must continually watch new
architecture trends to ensure they can keep up with new and disruptive technologies.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Learning Outcome 5.4: Identify the environmental impacts associated with MIS.
Increased energy consumption, increased electronic waste, and increased carbon emissions are all associated
with MIS. Ewaste refers to discarded, obsolete, or broken electronic devices. Sustainable MIS disposal refers to
the safe disposal of MIS assets at the end of their life cycle.
Learning Outcome 5.5: Explain the three components of a sustainable MIS infrastructure along with their
business benefits.
The components of a sustainable MIS infrastructure include:
• Grid computing: A collection of computers, often geographically dispersed, that are coordinated to solve a
common problem.
• Cloud computing: The use of resources and applications hosted remotely on the Internet. The term comes (at
least in part) from the image of a cloud to represent the Internet or some large networked environment.
• Virtualized computing: The creation of multiple “virtual” machines on a single computing device.
CLASSROOM OPENER
Grid Computing
Discuss some real-world examples of grid applications (not mentioned in the book):
• A company needing to reach a decision on the placement of a new factory invokes a sophisticated financial
forecasting model from an Application Service Provider (ASP), providing the ASP with access to appropriate
proprietary historical data from a corporate database on storage systems operated by a Storage Service
Provider (SSP). During the decision-making meeting, what-if scenarios are run collaboratively and
interactively, even though the division heads participating in the decision are located in different cities. The
ASP itself contracts with a cycle provider for additional "oomph" during particularly demanding scenarios,
requiring of course that cycles meet desired security and performance requirements.
• An industrial consortium formed to develop a feasibility study for a next-generation supersonic aircraft
undertakes a highly accurate multidisciplinary simulation of the entire aircraft. This simulation integrates
proprietary software components developed by different participants, with each component operating on that
participant’s computers and having access to appropriate design databases and other data made available to
the consortium by its members.

• A crisis management team responds to a chemical spill by using local weather and soil models to estimate the
spread of the spill, determining the impact based on population location as well as geographic features such
as rivers and water supplies, creating a shortterm mitigation plan (perhaps based on chemical reaction
models), and tasking emergency response personnel by planning and coordinating evacuation, notifying
hospitals, and so forth.
• Thousands of physicists at hundreds of laboratories and universities worldwide come together to design,
create, operate, and analyze the products of a major detector at CERN, the European high energy physics
laboratory. During the analysis phase, they pool their computing, storage, and networking resources to create
a "Data Grid" capable of analyzing petabytes of data.
CLASSROOM EXERCISE
Intel and Apple
Ask your students if they use an Intel based Apple (Macintosh). If they raise their hands, they have the ability to
use virtualization. Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion make it possible to run Windows and other PC-based
operating systems on a Mac. Until the release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Server, Apple's software license
agreement explicitly forbade running multiple copies of Mac OS X Server on a single Mac, preventing Parallels and
VMware from including Mac OS X Server among the operating systems that could be virtualized legally.
CLASSROOM EXERCISE
Understanding SOA
Tell your students to imagine for a moment that they have a goal to get from their house in Cleveland, Ohio, to a
hotel in Denver, Colorado. How might they accomplish this?
A few responses might be… You will drive in your car to off-site parking near an airport. You’ll park your car and
ride a shuttle bus to the airport where (if you successfully get through security) you board an airplane for Denver.
When you get off, you walk to the taxi stand and take a taxi to the hotel.
Each of these modes of transportation — car, the shuttle bus, the airplane, and the taxi — came together as you
needed them. Or, said another way, when you set out from your home in Cleveland, you had not specified the
entire transportation network from exactly which shuttle bus you would take to exactly which taxi you would use. In
addition, at the intersection of each of these transportation modes — where one mode stopped and you were not
yet at your goal — there is likely more than one option you can use that will take you a step closer to your
destination. For example, you could have started from your house with a walk to a light rail station that took you
directly into the airport terminal, thus eliminating the car ride and the shuttle bus.
In this analogy, one could call the transportation modes “services.” A service can be defined as “the capability to
perform work for another, the specification of the work offered for another, and the offer to perform work for
another.” The car, airplane, bus, taxi, and light rail are all services used to reach the end goal.
Here is an excellent short video that you can use to support the analogy above.
http://www.infoworld.com/video/archives/2007/03/soa.html
CLASSROOM EXERCISE
Ray Kurzweil Video: How Technology’s Accelerating Power will Transform Us
Prolific inventor and outrageous visionary Ray Kurzweil explains in abundant, grounded detail why -- by the 2020s
-- we will have reverse-engineered the human brain, and nanobots will be operating your consciousness. Kurzweil
draws on years of research to show the speed at which technology is evolving, and projects forward into an almost
unthinkable future to outline the ways we'll use technology to augment our own capabilities, forever blurring the
lines between human and machine.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/38
CLASSROOM EXERCISE
One Laptop Per Child
Nicholas Negroponte lays out the details of his nonprofit One Laptop Per Child project. Speaking just days after
relinquishing his post as director of the MIT Media Lab, he announces that he'll pursue this venture for the rest of
his life. He takes us inside the strategy for building the "$100 laptop," and explains why and how the project plans
to launch "at scale," with millions of units distributed in the first seven countries. "This is not a laptop project; it's an
education project," he says.
CLASSROOM EXERCISE
Making Movies that Change
Jeff Skoll made his fortune as the first president of eBay. Now he's spending it at the movies. His company,
Participant Productions, makes entertaining, issues-driven films that inspire real change -- Murderball, Syriana, An
Inconvenient Truth ... Here, he talks about the people who've inspired him to do good, and about some upcoming
films that will open your eyes.
CORE MATERIAL
The core chapter material is covered in detail in the PowerPoint slides. Each slide contains detailed teaching notes
including exercises, class activities, questions, and examples. Please review the PowerPoint slides for detailed
notes on how to teach and enhance the core chapter material.

CHAPTER FIVE
CLOSING MATERIAL
OPENING CASE QUESTIONS

BOX UP YOUR DATA
1. Knowledge: List the ways that an agile MIS infrastructure supports Box’s business.
An agile MIS infrastructure supports change. An agile MIS infrastructure includes the hardware, software, and
telecommunications equipment that, when combined, provides the underlying foundation to support the
organization’s goals. An agile MIS infrastructure includes all of the following:
• Accessibility refers to the varying levels that define what a user can access, view, or perform when
operating a system.
• Maintainability (or flexibility) refers to how quickly a system can transform to support environmental
changes.
• Portability refers to the ability of an application to operate on different devices or software platforms, such
as different operating systems.
Student answers to how an agile MIS infrastructure supports Box will differ depending on their personal view
of this business. Students who are familiar with Box and are using the service will know intimately how an
agile MIS infrastructure supports a customer’s needs. Students who are unfamiliar with Box might have
different views on what the customer wants and the important part of this exercise is ensuring the students
include their analysis and justification for each component.
2. Comprehension: Describe the reasons Box can help a company with its disaster recovery plan and a
business continuity plan.
A company can create a disaster recovery plan, which is a detailed process for recovering information or a
system in the event of a catastrophic disaster. This plan includes such factors as which files and systems need
to have backups and their corresponding frequency and methods along with the strategic location of the
storage in a separate physical site that is geographically dispersed. A company might strategically maintain
operations in New York and San Francisco, ensuring that a natural disaster would not impact both locations. A
disaster recovery plan also foresees the possibility that not only the computer equipment but also the building
where employees work may be destroyed. A hot site is a separate and fully equipped facility where the
company can move immediately after a disaster and resume business. A cold site is a separate facility that
does not have any computer equipment but is a place where employees can move after a disaster. A warm
site is a separate facility with computer equipment that requires installation and configuration.
Box is a key supplier for offsite storage so customers can easily recover from any type of major disaster
from a fire to equipment malfunctions. Keeping the data at Box is a great way to ensure the company
employees can get back on track if they experience disasters.

3. Application: Apply the concepts of cloud computing to Box’s business model.
Marketing materials continually promote new technologies that promise to radically change the way
businesses operate; unfortunately, these devices rarely live up to the hype. However, it might actually be true
for one new development making this promise. Cloud computing could change not only the way businesses
operate, but also the way people interact with technology. Cloud computing refers to the use of resources and
applications hosted remotely on the Internet. The term comes (at least in part) from the image of a cloud to
represent the Internet or some large networked environment. Users connect to the cloud from their personal
computers or portable devices using a client, such as a Web browser. To these individual users, the cloud
appears as their personal application, device, or document. It is like storing all of your software and documents
“in the cloud” and all you need is a device to access the cloud. No more hard drives, software, or processing
power—that is all located in the cloud, transparent to the users. Companies can use Box to store their cloud
data or cloud applications – Box is a key cloud player.
4. Analysis: Analyze how Box can benefit from a sustainable MIS infrastructures.
Sustainable MIS infrastructure identifies ways that a company can grow in terms of computing resources while
simultaneously becoming less dependent on hardware and energy consumption. Sustainable, or green, MIS
describes the production, management, use, and disposal of technology in a way that minimizes damage to
the environment. Sustainable MIS is a critical part of corporate social responsibility, that is, companies’
acknowledged responsibility to society. Building sustainable MIS infrastructures is a core initiative and critical
success factor for socially responsible corporations. The three primary side effects of businesses’ expanded
use of technology include:
• Electronic waste
• Energy consumption
• Carbon Emissions
5. Synthesis: Develop a way that a company could benefit from grid computing using Box.
Combating ewaste, energy consumption, and carbon emissions requires a firm to focus on creating
sustainable MIS infrastructures. A sustainable MIS infrastructure identifies ways that a company can grow in
terms of computing resources while simultaneously becoming less dependent on hardware and energy
consumption. The components of a sustainable MIS infrastructure include:
• Grid computing is a collection of computers, often geographically dispersed, that are coordinated to solve
a common problem. A smart grid delivers electricity using two-way digital technology. It is meant to solve
the problem of the world’s outdated electrical grid, making it more efficient and reliable by adding the
ability to remotely monitor, analyze, and control the transmission of power.
• Cloud computing: A smart grid delivers electricity using two-way digital technology. It is meant to solve the
problem of the world’s outdated electrical grid, making it more efficient and reliable by adding the ability to
remotely monitor, analyze, and control the transmission of power. Utility computing offers a pay-per-use
revenue model similar to a metered service such as gas or electricity.
• Virtualized computing creates multiple “virtual” machines on a single computing device.
Additional business benefits of grid computing include:

• Improved productivity and collaboration of virtual organizations and respective computing and data
resources.
• Allowing widely dispersed departments and businesses to create virtual organizations to share data and
resources.
• Robust and infinitely flexible and resilient operational architectures.
• Providing instantaneous access to massive computing and data resources.

• Leveraging existing capital investments, which in turn help to ensure optimal utilization and costs of
computing capabilities.
6. Evaluate: Assess how Box uses server virtualization to support its growth while helping the
environment.
Through the use of virtualization, computers can run multiple operating systems along with multiple software
applications—all at the same time. Virtualization creates multiple “virtual” machines on a single computing
device. A good analogy is a computer printer. In the past you had to purchase a fax machine, copy machine,
answering machine, and computer printer separately. This was expensive, required enough energy to run four
separate machines, not to mention created additional amounts of ewaste. Today, you can buy a virtualized
computer printer that functions as a fax machine, answering machine, and copy machine all on one physical
machine, thereby reducing costs, power requirements, and ewaste. Virtualization is essentially a form of
consolidation that can benefit sustainable MIS infrastructures in a variety of ways, for example:
• By increasing availability of applications that can give a higher level of performance depending on the
hardware used.
• By increasing energy efficiency by requiring less hardware to run multiple systems or applications.
• By increasing hardware usability by running multiple operating systems on a single computer.
REVIEW QUESTIONS
1. How often should a business back up its data?

The timeliness of backups depends on the business need. Some organizations will need to backup daily or
monthly while other businesses will have to backup continuously.
2. Why is it important to ensure backups are working and can be restored?

Without a backup a business is out of commission if there is a data disruption. An organization must ensure
that they are not only backing up all critical information but that the backups are working and can be easily
restored.
3. What is the difference between a disaster recovery plan and a business continuity plan?
A disaster recovery plan, which is a detailed process for recovering information or a system in the event of a
catastrophic disaster. This plan includes such factors as which files and systems need to have backups and
their corresponding frequency and methods along with the strategic location of the storage in a separate
physical site that is geographically dispersed. For this reason many companies are turning to a more
comprehensive and all-encompassing emergency preparedness plan known as business continuity planning
(BCP), which details how a company recovers and restores critical business operations and systems after a
disaster or extended disruption. BCP includes such factors as identifying critical systems, business processes,
departments, and the maximum amount of time the business can continue to operate without functioning
systems.
4. What are the three forms of MIS infrastructures and what do they support?
Information MIS infrastructure identifies where and how important information, such as customer records, is
maintained and secured and support operations. An agile MIS Infrastructure includes the hardware, software,
and telecommunications equipment that, when combined, provides the underlying foundation to support the
organization’s goals and supports change. A sustainable MIS infrastructure identifies ways that a company

can grow in terms of computing resources while simultaneously becoming less dependent on hardware and
energy consumption and supports the environment.
5. List the characteristics of an agile MIS infrastructure and explain why they are all critical for
supporting change.
An agile MIS infrastructure supports accessibility, availability, maintainability, portability, reliability, scalability,
and usability.
6. Explain what capacity planning is and how it can help a business prepare for growth.
Capacity planning determines future environmental infrastructure requirements to ensure high-quality system
performance. If a company purchases connectivity software that is outdated or too slow to meet demand, its
employees will waste a great deal of time waiting for systems to respond to user requests.
7. Explain the difference between fault tolerance and failover.

Fault tolerance is the ability for a system to respond to unexpected failures or system crashes as the backup
system immediately and automatically takes over with no loss of service.
8. Compare the differences among a hot, cold, and warm site.

A hot site is a separate and fully equipped facility where the company can move immediately after a disaster
and resume business. A cold site is a separate facility that does not have any computer equipment but is a
place where employees can move after a disaster. A warm site is a separate facility with computer equipment
that requires installation and configuration.
9. What is Moore’s Law and how does it affect companies?

Moore’s Law, which refers to the computer chip performance per dollar doubles every 18 months. Although
Moore originally assumed a two-year period, many sources today refer to the 18-month figure. Moore’s law
means that an organization is under constant change including computer upgrades and safe disposal of
ewaste.
10. List the business benefits of using grid computing.

Grid computing is a collection of computers, often geographically dispersed, that are coordinated to solve a
common problem. With grid computing a problem is broken into pieces and distributed to many machines,
allowing faster processing than could occur with a single system.
11. Identify the benefits and challenges of cloud computing

The benefits of cloud computing include cheaper costs to an organization for a system deployment and
backup and maintenance maintained by the vendor. It also includes accessibility, scalability, and capacity
benefits as the cloud has infinite scalability. The challenges of cloud computing include data security and data
ownership.
12. What is a data center and why would a business develop one.
A data center is a facility used to house management information systems and associated components, such
as telecommunications and storage systems. Data centers are central locations where all of the organizations
computer resources are safeguarded and maintained.
13. List and describe the three most popular cloud computing delivery models.
Infrastructure as a Service, Software as a Service, and Platform as a Service are the three primary delivery
methods for cloud computing.

14. Why would a company want to use virtualization?
Virtualization creates multiple “virtual” machines on a single computing device. A good analogy is a computer
printer. In the past you had to purchase a fax machine, copy machine, answering machine, and computer
printer separately. Virtualization allows for cheaper technology deployments as the cost of computer
equipment decreases as more devices run on a single source.
15. Explain why a business today would want to follow sustainable MIS practices.
With the ever increasing issues associated with ewaste and the environment organizations need to understand
green computing to ensure a sustainable MIS enterprise.
16. Explain why ebusiness is contributing to the three pressures driving sustainable MIS infrastructures.
Increased electronic waste, energy consumption, and carbon emissions are the three pressures driving
sustainable MIS infrastructures. With new laws and regulations organizations must focus on everything to
ensure they are not contributing to these issues.
CLOSING CASE ONE QUESTIONS

UPS Invests $1 Billion to Go Green
1. Why do you think UPS is embracing sustainable technologies?
Any company that wants to compete in the future needs to be aware of sustainable technologies to ensure
they are implementing best practices surrounding growth. Sustainable MIS infrastructure identifies ways that a
company can grow in terms of computing resources while simultaneously becoming less dependent on
hardware and energy consumption. Sustainable, or green, MIS describes the production, management, use,
and disposal of technology in a way that minimizes damage to the environment. Sustainable MIS is a critical
part of corporate social responsibility, that is, companies’ acknowledged responsibility to society. Building
sustainable MIS infrastructures is a core initiative and critical success factor for socially responsible
corporations. The three primary side effects of businesses’ expanded use of technology include:
2. How is UPS developing a sustainable MIS infrastructure?

United Parcel Service (UPS) will make about $1 billion in technology investments to improve the efficiency of
its operations, with the goal of cutting billions more from its costs over the long term. One of its main goals is to
improve the speed and efficiency of its delivery operations. To achieve that, UPS is equipping its vans with
sensors that allow it to collect data about things such as fuel consumption, chosen routes, and how much time

its engines spend idling. Reducing fuel consumption will help UPS not only to cut costs, but also to be more
environmentally responsible.
3. What business benefits will UPS gain from virtualization?

hardware used.
• Hardware being underutilized. Today, many data centers have machines running at only 10 or 15
percent of total processing capacity which translates to 85 or 90 percent of the machine’s power is
unused. In a way, Moore’s Law is no longer relevant to most companies because they are not able to take
advantage of the increased power available to them.
• Data centers running out of space. The business world has undergone an enormous transformation
over the past 20 years. In 1985, the vast majority of business processes were paper based. Computerized
systems were confined to so-called backroom automation: payroll, accounting, and the like. That has all
changed, thanks to the steady march of Moore’s Law. Business process after business process has been
captured in software and automated, moving from paper to computers.
• Increased energy costs. The cost of running computers, coupled with the fact that many of the machines
filling up data centers are running at low utilization rates, means that virtualization’s ability to reduce the
total number of physical servers can significantly reduce the overall cost of energy for companies. Data
center power is such an issue that energy companies are putting virtualization programs into place to
address it.
• System administration costs mounting. Virtualization enables data center managers to make far better
use of computer resources than in non-virtualized environments, and enables an enterprise to maximize
its investment in hardware.
4. What role does each characteristics of an agile MIS infrastructure play in helping UPS to operate its
business?
operating a system.
changes.

Student answers to how an agile MIS infrastructure supports UPS will differ and the important part of this
exercise is ensuring the students include their analysis and justification for each component.
5. How could UPS benefit from cloud or grid computing?


resources.
resources.
6. What types of ethical issues might UPS encounter with the tracking technology it has placed in its
trucks?
UPS will encounter the same types of ethical issues that every organization faces including insider threats and
like most leading ebusiness sites, UPS encrypts much of the data sent between customers' computers and
UPS servers, which means that when customers type their password into UPS’s website, that information
cannot be viewed by hackers. Most ebusiness sites use Secure Socket Layer (SSL), a technology that
encrypts sensitive information such as customer passwords and account activity while the data is in transit to
another computer.
7. What types of security issues might UPS encounter with the tracking technology it has placed in its
trucks?
Information security is important for everyone and every organization. UPS needs to keep its sensitive
information secure and ensure it is protected against hackers, viruses, and theft. Moving to cloud
infrastructures can feel like the security risks are increased since the physical location of the information is in
the cloud, but actually for most organizations security is far stricter in the cloud. UPS needs to make sure that
they have a security plan in place as well as:
• Backup and recovery
• Disaster recovery

• Information security
OPENING CASE QUESTIONS

PANDORA’S MUSIC BOX
1. Knowledge: List the ways that an agile MIS infrastructure supports Pandora’s business.
operating a system.
changes.
Student answers to how an agile MIS infrastructure supports Pandora will differ depending on their personal
view of this business. Students who are familiar with Pandora and are using the service will know intimately
how an agile MIS infrastructure supports a customer’s needs. Students who are unfamiliar with Pandora might
have different views on what the customer wants and the important part of this exercise is ensuring the
students include their analysis and justification for each component.
2. Comprehension: Describe the reasons Pandora would create a disaster recovery plan and a business
continuity plan.
A company can create a disaster recovery plan, which is a detailed process for recovering information or a
system in the event of a catastrophic disaster. This plan includes such factors as which files and systems need
to have backups and their corresponding frequency and methods along with the strategic location of the
storage in a separate physical site that is geographically dispersed. A company might strategically maintain
operations in New York and San Francisco, ensuring that a natural disaster would not impact both locations. A
disaster recovery plan also foresees the possibility that not only the computer equipment but also the building
where employees work may be destroyed. A hot site is a separate and fully equipped facility where the
company can move immediately after a disaster and resume business. A cold site is a separate facility that
does not have any computer equipment but is a place where employees can move after a disaster. A warm
site is a separate facility with computer equipment that requires installation and configuration.
Pandora would need to create a disaster recovery plan to ensure that all customers have continuous
listening capabilities, regardless of what was occurring at Pandora. Just like customers expect to have electric
or cable 24x7, radio listeners expect to have service 24x7, a disaster recovery plan or a continuity plan would
ensure that 24x7 service occurs.
3. Application: Apply the concepts of cloud computing to Pandora’s business model.

Marketing materials continually promote new technologies that promise to radically change the way
businesses operate; unfortunately, these devices rarely live up to the hype. However, it might actually be true
for one new development making this promise. Cloud computing could change not only the way businesses

operate, but also the way people interact with technology. Cloud computing refers to the use of resources and
applications hosted remotely on the Internet. The term comes (at least in part) from the image of a cloud to
represent the Internet or some large networked environment. Users connect to the cloud from their personal
computers or portable devices using a client, such as a Web browser. To these individual users, the cloud
appears as their personal application, device, or document. It is like storing all of your software and documents
“in the cloud” and all you need is a device to access the cloud. No more hard drives, software, or processing
power—that is all located in the cloud, transparent to the users.
4. Analysis: Analyze how Pandora is using sustainable MIS infrastructures.

5. Synthesis: Develop a way that Pandora could benefit from grid computing.

resources.
resources.
6. Evaluate: Assess the use of virtualization to support Pandora’s business growth while helping the
environment.

hardware used.
CRITICAL BUSINESS THINKING

Instructor Note: There are few right or wrong answers in the business world. There are really only efficient and
inefficient, and effective and ineffective business decisions. If there were always right answers businesses would
never fail. These questions were created to challenge your students to apply the materials they have learned to
real business situations. For this reason, the authors cannot provide you with one version of a correct answer.
When grading your students’ answers, be sure to focus on their justification or support for their specific answers. A
good way to grade these questions is to compare your student’s answers against each other.
1. UNIVERSITIES ARE SWITCHING TO GMAIL

Project Purpose: To understand issues surrounding cloud computing applications.
Potential Solution: The biggest issue with Gmail would include a feeling of insecurity surrounding the mail
systems. With a private email system the businesses would have total control over when the system was
operational, backed-up, and security measures. Using Gmail all of these features would be out of their control.
With all cloud computing applications you are giving up an element of control as the system owner is
responsible for availability, reliability, scalability, etc. It has been proven that many cloud applications are
actually far safer from a security perspective than a privacy application, however many view cloud applications
as less secure. This can be overcome by simply educating the business about the security measures that are
deployed in a cloud application.
2. DESKTOP VIRTUALIZATION
Project Purpose: To understand how personal devices impact business environments.
Potential Solution: This is such a hot subject to discuss in your course. There are so many security and
ethical issues surrounding personal computing devices including:
• Who owns the data?
• Who is responsible for the device including backups and security measures?
• Is there an added risk for viruses and hackers from personal devices?
• Is there an added risk of data theft from a personal device?
• If the employ develops a product or application on work device from home who owns the content?
• What policies would a company need to put in place to help alleviate personal device issues?
• What if an employee is posting inappropriate or sensitive information to social networking site?
3. I DON’T HAVE A TEMPERATURE BUT I AM POSITIVE I HAVE A VIRUS

Project Purpose: To understand the business value backups
Potential Solution: A Crisis in America's Schools — How It’s Done and Why It’s Happening

Angelo Angelis, a professor at Hunter College in New York City, was recently grading some student papers on
the story of Paul Revere when he noticed something strange. A certain passage kept appearing in his
students' work, he said. It went like this, Angelis told Primetime's Charles Gibson: "Paul Revere would never
have said, 'The British are coming, the British are coming,' he was in fact himself British, he would have said
something like, 'the Red Coats are coming.' " Angelis typed the words into Google, and found the passage on
one Web site by a fifth-grade class. Half a dozen of his college students had copied their work from a bunch of
elementary school kids, he thought. The Web site was very well done, Angelis said. For fifth graders, he would
give them an "A." But his college students deserved an "F". Lifting papers off the Internet is one of the newer
trends in plagiarism — and technology is giving students even more ways to cheat nowadays.
http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=132376&page=1
4. SUSTAINABLE DEPARTMENTS
Project Purpose: To understand how different departments contribute to environmental MIS issues.
Potential Solution: There are many issues that the different departments would face including:
• Accounting and finance would have issues such as computer upgrades and energy use.
• Marketing would have issues such as wasted paper for marketing campaigns, any types of gadgets they
use to attract business such as bouncing balls or staplers with the company logo, as well as computer and
energy use.
• Sales would have several issues such as energy use associated with travel, mailing sales information, cell
phones and other PDAs required to perform their jobs.
• Manufacturing would have the most environmental issues due to the massive amounts of energy and
waste associated with creating products.
5. FACEBOOKS ENERGY USE

Project Purpose: To demonstrate the value of sustainable MIS and environmental issues associated with
technology
Potential Solution: Combating ewaste, energy consumption, and carbon emissions requires a firm to focus
on creating sustainable MIS infrastructures. A sustainable MIS infrastructure identifies ways that a company
can grow in terms of computing resources while simultaneously becoming less dependent on hardware and
energy consumption. Grid computing is a collection of computers, often geographically dispersed, that are
coordinated to solve a common problem. A smart grid delivers electricity using two-way digital technology. It is
meant to solve the problem of the world’s outdated electrical grid, making it more efficient and reliable by
adding the ability to remotely monitor, analyze, and control the transmission of power.
Celebrities Tell Facebook to Ditch Coal - Video

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/02/celebreties-tell-facebook-to-ditch-coal-video.php
6. PLANNING FOR DISASTER RECOVERY

Project Purpose: To create a disaster recovery plan.
Potential Solution: A backup is an exact copy of a system’s information. Recovery is the ability to get a
system up and running in the event of a system crash or failure and includes restoring the information backup.
A disaster recovery cost curve charts (1) the cost to the organization of the unavailability of information and
technology and (2) the cost to the organization of recovering from a disaster over time. The disaster recovery
cost curve shows where the two lines intersect is the best recovery plan in terms of cost and time. Creating an
organization’s disaster recovery cost curve is no small task. It must consider the cost of losing information and
technology within each department or functional area, and the cost of losing information and technology
across the whole enterprise. During the first few hours of a disaster, those costs will be low but become
increasingly higher over time. With those costs in hand, an organization must then determine the costs of
recovery. Cost of recovery during the first few hours of a disaster is exceedingly high and diminishes over
time.The student’s backup and recovery plan should include how the company is going to backup its
information, how frequently the backups will occur, where the backups will be stored, how long the backups
will be saved, etc.
7. COMPARING BACKUP AND RECOVERY SYSTEMS

Project Purpose: To research different backup and recovery strategies.
Potential Solution: Student answers to this question will vary. A few vendors might include:
• Symantec
• Storage Mountain
• StorageTek
• IBM
• Quantum
8. COOL SCHOOLS
Project Purpose: To analyze your schools data center.
Potential Solution: Students need to be focusing on your schools specific data center structure and issues. If
you can take this opportunity to do a mini field trip by visiting your schools data center. If you have a big class
you can easily take some videos using your cell phone of flip device to show during class – a sort of virtual
data center field trip. If you school does not have a data center and is using cloud computing you can show
the following video for your students to analyze during this activity.
• Green Data Center Virtual Tour – Syracuse
http://www.syr.edu/greendatacenter/
APPLY YOUR KNOWLEDGE BUSINESS PROJECTS

Instructor Note: There are few right or wrong answers in the business world. There are really only efficient and
inefficient, and effective and ineffective business decisions. If there were always right answers businesses would
never fail. These questions were created to challenge your students to apply the materials they have learned to
real business situations. For this reason, the authors cannot provide you with one version of a correct answer.
When grading your students’ answers, be sure to focus on their justification or support for their specific answers. A
good way to grade these questions is to compare your student’s answers against each other.
PROJECT I: RANKING MIS CHARACTERISTICS

To understand infrastructure architecture organizations students must determine which components are most
important to their business. In a group, review the list of IT infrastructure qualities and rank them in order of their
impact on an organization’s success. Use a rating system of 1 to 7, where 1 indicates the biggest impact and 7
indicates the least impact.
Organizations must determine which components are most important to their business. The infrastructure
architecture components include:
• Flexibility
• Scalability
• Reliability
• Availability
• Accessibility
• Performance
• Capacity Planning
The order of importance will vary depending on the business.
PROJECT II: DESIGNING A COMPANY INFRASTRUCTURE

Use this project to have your students tackle the common problem of building an enterprise architecture. The list
of questions required will vary for each student. Components of a solid enterprise architecture include everything
from documentation to business concepts to software and hardware. Deciding which components to implement
and how to implement them can be a challenge. New IT components are released daily, and business needs
continually change. An enterprise architecture that meets your organization’s needs today may not meet those
needs tomorrow. Building an enterprise architecture that is scalable, flexible, available, accessible, and reliable is
key to your organization’s success.
You are the enterprise architect (EA) for a large clothing company called Xedous. You are responsible for
developing the initial enterprise architecture. Create a list of questions you will need answered to develop your
architecture.
The list of questions required will vary for each student. A few examples could include:
• Is the architecture scalable for future growth?
• Does the system need a failover strategy?
• Does the system need a fault tolerance system?
• Is there a need for a hot site?
• Is there a need for a cold site?
• Is there a need for high availability?
• What are the performance requirements?
• What are the company’s growth expectations?
• Will systems be able to handle additional users?
• How long will information be stored in the systems?
• How much customer history must be stored?
• What are the organization’s business hours?
• What are the organization’s backup requirements?
PROJECT III: RECYCLE YOUR CELL PHONE

Here are some excellent websites and programs you can share with your students as you kick-off this great
activity.
• In 2007, approximately 14 million Americans recycled their used cell phones. Today, donating or recycling cell
phones, PDAs, chargers, and batteries has never been easier. Donating your working cell phone or PDA can
benefit your community. When cell phones and accessories are in good working order, some programs donate
them to worthy charities or sell them at a discount to those in need. Recycling cell phones helps the
environment by saving energy and keeping usable materials out of landfills. Cell phones and PDAs are made
of precious metals, copper, and plastics-all of which require energy to mine and manufacture. Recycling
conserves these materials so they can be turned into new products.
http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/materials/ecycling/donate.htm
• Cell Phones for Soldiers has committed to provide 750,000 FREE communication tools to U.S. armed forces
in 2011. Help us meet our goal by donating today! http://www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com/
• Answer the Call of the Wild! Bring your old cell phone to the guest services counter at the main entrance of
the Denver Zoo. Many of us have old cell phones cluttering closets and taking up valuable space in our
drawers at home. During 2005, it is estimated that there will be 500 million cell phones out of use in the United
States. Rather than throw an old cell phone away, guests are encouraged to donate their old cell phones to
Denver Zoo, who has partnered with Eco-Cell to recycle and reuse old cell phones.
o Why should I recycle my cell phone? Help the environment by recycling hazardous waste Cell
phones contain a number of hazardous substances that can seriously impact the environment. Donate
your cell phone to the Denver Zoo and the Zoo will have it recycled by Eco-Cell who will ensure that
most of these cell phones and their accessories will be reused or properly recycled. Eco-Cell will pay
Denver Zoo up to $10 for each working digital cell phone. Funds from the program will support Denver
Zoo in providing world class care to its wild residents.
o Help Wildlife in the Congo: Columbite-tantalite, or Coltan for short, is a dull metallic ore found in
major quantities in the eastern areas of the Congo. It is used in cell phones, laptops, pagers and other
electronic devices. Coltan mining is occurring illegally in protected lands all across the Congo
endangering wildlife. In order to mine the coltan, rebels have overrun Congo's national parks and are
hunting the park's endangered elephants and gorillas for food.
o Who gets the phones? Through the program, approximately 80 percent of the phones collected will
be refurbished and reused by first time, low income users in Latin America or by select local
programs, such as battered women's organizations, senior citizens groups and other groups for
emergency 911 calls. All unusable cell phones and accessories will be recycled under strict EPA
guidelines by certified recyclers.
o Why is there Coltan in your cellular phone? When refined, coltan becomes metallic tantalum, a
heat resistant powder that can hold a high electrical charge. These properties make it a vital element
in creating capacitors, the electronic elements that control flow inside miniature circuit boards.
Tantalum capacitors are used in almost all cell phones, laptops, pagers and other electronic devices.
o Privacy & Recycling Your Phone ECO-Cell does not clear cell phones of data or content left on
phones. It is the responsibility of the donating party to cancel or switch service on the phone and to
delete any data such as phone numbers, text messages, pictures, emails, documents, etc. that might
be on the cell phone. ECO-Cell sends donated phones to refurbishing companies who often delete
any content left on phones, but Eco-Cell cannot guarantee that content will always be deleted.
Therefore it is Eco-Cell’s position and recommendation that those wishing to donate a phone take the
time to clear phone of all data to ensure maximum privacy.
PROJECT IV: BACK ON YOUR FEET

****A great modification to this exercise is to ask your students to define a backup and recovery plan for
their own computer and information. If they do not already have one, they will thank you for it if they ever
experience a computer crash****
To understand the value of backup and recovery. Each year businesses lose time and money because of system
crashes and failures. One way to minimize the damage of a system crash is to have a backup and recovery
strategy in place. A backup is an exact copy of a system’s information. Recovery is the ability to get a system up
and running in the event of a system crash or failure and includes restoring the information backup. Many different
types of backup and recovery media are available, including redundant storage servers, tapes, disks, and even
CDs and DVDs. All the different types of backup and recovery media are reliable; their primary differences are the
speed and associated costs.
Disasters such as power outages, floods, and even harmful hacking strike businesses every day. Organizations
must develop a disaster recovery plan to prepare for such occurrences. A disaster recovery plan is a detailed
process for recovering information or an IT system in the event of a catastrophic disaster such as a fire or flood.
Spending on disaster recovery is rising worldwide among financial institutions. A comprehensive disaster recovery
plan takes into consideration the location of the backup information. Many organizations store backup information
in an offsite facility. A comprehensive disaster recovery plan also foresees the possibility that not only the
computer equipment but also the building where employees work may be destroyed. A hot site is a separate and
fully equipped facility where the company can move immediately after a disaster and resume business. A cold site
is a separate facility that does not have any computer equipment, but is a place where employees can move after
a disaster.
A disaster recovery cost curve charts (1) the cost to the organization of the unavailability of information and
technology and (2) the cost to the organization of recovering from a disaster over time. A disaster recovery cost
curve and shows that where the two lines intersect is the best recovery plan in terms of cost and time. Creating an
organization’s disaster recovery cost curve is no small task. It must consider the cost of losing information and
technology within each department or functional area, and the cost of losing information and technology across the
whole enterprise. During the first few hours of a disaster, those costs will be low but become increasingly higher
over time. With those costs in hand, an organization must then determine the costs of recovery. Cost of recovery
during the first few hours of a disaster is exceedingly high and diminishes over time.
Plan a Backup and Recovery Strategy

Computers in general are very reliable. You may run your system for months or even years without experiencing
any problems that cause you to lose information on your system. However, as the frequency of computer problems
has decreased, the potential impact of problems has increased. Businesses are more and more dependent on
computers and the information that is stored in them. The information that is in your computer may not be available
anywhere else.
Saving the information on your system is time-consuming and requires discipline. Why should you do it? Why
should you spend time planning and evaluating it?
Because you may have a problem. You will need to use your backup copies of information. Every system needs to
restore some or all of its information at some point in time. Here are a few guideline to follow when you are ready
to start planning your strategy:
1. Know What to Save and How Often To Save It

You should save everything in your system as often as possible. You may not be prepared to recover from a
site loss or certain types of disk failures if you do not regularly save everything. If you save the right parts of
your server, then you can recover to the last save. You should save the parts of your system that change often
- daily. Every week, you should save the parts of your system that do not change often.
2. Find Your Save Window

Realistically, when you run save procedures, how you run save procedures and what you save depend on the
size of your save window. Your save window is the amount of time that your system can be unavailable to
users while you perform your save operations. To simplify your recovery, you need to save when your system is
at a known point and your data is not changing.
When you select a save strategy, you should balance what your users think is an acceptable save window with
the value of the data you might lose and the amount of time it may take to recover.
If your system is so critical to your business that you do not have a manageable save window, you probably
cannot afford an unscheduled outage either. Choose one of the following save strategies, based on the size of
your save window. Then reevaluate your decision based on how you save strategy positions you for a recovery.

• Simple save strategy - You have a long save window, which means that you have an 8- to 12-hour block
of time available daily with no system activity (including batch work).
• Medium save strategy - You have a medium save window, which means that you have a shorter block of
time (4 to 6 hours) available daily with no system activity.
• Complex save strategy - You have a short save window, which means that there is little or no time when
your system is not being used for interactive or batch work.
3. Choose Availability Options

Availability options are a complement to a good save strategy, not a replacement. Availability options can
significantly reduce the time it takes you to recover after a failure. In some cases, availability options can
prevent you from having to perform a recovery. To justify the cost of using availability options, you need to
understand the following:
• The value your system provides.
• The cost of a scheduled or unscheduled outage.
• What your availability requirements are.
The following are the availability options that you can use to complement your save strategy:
• Journal management lets you recover the changes to objects that have occurred since your last complete
save.
• Access path protection lets you re-create the order in which records in a database file are processed.
• Disk pools limit the amount of data you have to recover to the data in the disk pool with the failed unit.
• Device parity protection enables you to reconstruct data that is lost; the system can continue to run while
the data is being reconstructed.
• Mirrored protection helps you keep your data available because you have two copies of the data on two
separate disk units.
• Clustering lets you maintain some or all data on two systems; the secondary system can take over critical
application programs if the primary system
4. Test Your Strategy

If your situation requires a medium save strategy or a complex save strategy, it also requires regular review,
as follows:
• Are you saving everything occasionally?
• What do you need to do to recover?
• Are you using options like journaling or saving changed objects to help you recover? Do you know how to
recover using those options?
• Have you added new applications? Are the new libraries, folders, and directories being saved?
• Have you tested your recovery?
The best way to test your strategy for saving is to test a recovery. Although you can test a recovery on your
own system, doing so can be risky. If you have not saved everything successfully, you may lose information
when you attempt to restore.
PROJECT V: GROWING, GROWING, GONE

You had vision when you started Black Pearl. You knew the potential of your business model to revamp the comic
industry. You purchased high-end computers and customizable software to support your operations. Now, you are
faced with a new dilemma. You have a large international following and you have decided to pursue international
opportunities. You would like to open stores in Japan, France, and Brazil over the next year. To determine if this is
possible you need to evaluate your current systems to see if they are flexible and scalable enough to perform
business internationally. You know that you are going to run into many international business issues. Create a list
of questions you need to answer to determine if your systems are capable of performing international business.
Student answers to this question will vary, potential answers include:

• What types of currency issues will you encounter?
• Will we have enough digits for larger currency such as currencies that have 500,000 equal to $100
• How will exchange rates affect our systems and our business?
• What types of language issues will you encounter?
• How will the system handle multiple languages?
• Will the bills be produced in multiple languages?
• Will all of our employees speak English or will we need the system to operate in other languages?
• Will there be new business laws that we need to become familiar with?
• Are there different types of tax laws such as VAT?
• How will information security vary in these new countries?
• Do we need a translator to ensure our marketing slogans work in all countries?
• How will time zones affect the business?
PROJECT VI: EXCUSES, EXCUSES, EXCUSES

There is no excuse good enough that will keep a customer if they are unable to access your applications or
ebusiness site. There are dozens of competitors just waiting to steal your customers and they are just a simple
click away. You need to ensure that your systems are operational and that your customers are confident in your
ability to keep their personal information secure. Organizations must determine which components are most
important to their business to ensure their systems are meeting customer demands. The infrastructure architecture
components include:
• Flexibility
• Scalability
• Reliability
• Availability
• Accessibility
• Performance
• Capacity Planning
PROJECT VII: EWASTE NOT, WANT NOT

There are so many ewaste companies available today, but warn your students to be careful as not all are what
they seem. Start this activity by showing the following video.
Two arrested in electronic waste recycling fraud case

Two managers of a San Jose-based electronics and metal waste recycling warehouse were arrested last week for
allegedly attempting to defraud the state out of $1 million in recycling reimbursement claims. Jason Huang, 65, of
Foster City, was arrested Aug. 19, and 38-year-old John Chen of Hillsborough was arrested Friday, officials said. A
third man, 69-year-old Joseph Chen of Hillsborough, who owns Tung Tai Group, is in China. Arrangements are
being made to return him to the United States to be arraigned on the charges. The Chens are father and son, and
Huang is the brother of Joseph Chen. The men are charged with making false reimbursement claims with the
California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, also known as CalRecycle. The claims state they
collected more material than they really did. "Tung Tai Group attempted to collect $1 million in fraudulent and
fictitious state reimbursements for millions of pounds of electronic waste that didn't exist," Attorney General Jerry
Brown said in a statement. "This brazen scheme is a violation of state law and the public trust." According to the

attorney general's office, the men face a total of 17 criminal counts for submitting false documents, attempting to
defraud the state, forgery, and hazardous waste storage and handling violations. They face a maximum nine-year
prison sentence if convicted. An example provided by the attorney general's office shows that Tung Tai submitted
reimbursement claims to CalRecycle for 555,000 pounds of material, but the collector's records indicate it
delivered 62,000 pounds to Tung Tai. The state did not pay Tung Tai for the false or inflated claims. The
warehouse of Tung Tai Group is located on Rogers Avenue in San Jose, and its offices are in Burlingame.
http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/two-arrested-electronic-waste-recycling-fraud-case
EWaste Fraud
It seemed a perfect symmetry: California, the world's high-tech capital, would lead the way in recycling the debris
of our digital revolution. But five years after its launch, the state government-run electronic waste program stands
out not as a model of the green innovation for which California is famous but as an example of good intentions
gone awry. By paying more than $320 million to collect and recycle computer monitors and televisions, the state
has built a magnet for fraud totaling tens of millions of dollars, including illegal material smuggled in from out of
state. "I don't think anybody could have forecast the greed that has poisoned the program," said Bob Erie, chief
executive officer of E-World Recyclers north of San Diego and once an enthusiastic supporter of the state effort.
http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2010/08/e-waste_recycling_begun_with_l.html
Additional website and videos you might want to explore include:

• Electronic Product Management DirectoryLooking for an organization that collects specific types of
electronic equipment for reuse or recycling? This directory enables you to search for such opportunities by
county. You should contact any of the listed organizations to determine the details of their services and any
potential charges before loading up your vehicle! Other useful information available through CalRecycle's e-
waste website include Listings of certain special collection events sponsored by local governments;Guidance
on battery and fluorescent tube recycling; Other resources for reusing and recycling electronic equipment.
• EPAs Listing: Where Can I Donate or Recycle My Old Computer and Other Electronic Products?
http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/ecycling/donate.htm
• Ecycling: http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/ecycling/
PROJECT VIII: ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD

There are so many exciting videos and photos demonstrating this incredible program. Be sure to jumpstart
this activity with a few overviews from the following site
• OLPC's mission is to empower the world's poorest children through education
We aim to provide each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop. To this end, we have
designed hardware, content and software for collaborative, joyful, and self-empowered learning. With access
to this type of tool, children are engaged in their own education, and learn, share, and create together. They
become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future.
http://one.laptop.org/
PROJECT IX: VIRTUALIZATING YOUR CELL PHONE

Virtualization is a difficult concept for students to grasp. The best way to explain virtualization is the switch from having one
iPod, cell phone, and digital camera to one device that can do all three. Printers also offer an excellent example as we
converged from having a fax machine, printer, copier, and scanner to one device that can do all of these things. Here is an
excellent video to help your students understand virtualization.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnNX13yBzAU

PROJECT X: DATA CENTERS ON THE HIGH SEAS
Data centers are truly amazing and rather frightening when you think about the impact to the environment of housing so
many computer systems in one area. Just keeping the data center cool takes tremendous energy. The carbon footprints
left by these giant buildings of computing equipment is scary for any environmentalist. Here is a great video to start the
discussion: IT at sea: Google to launch a computer navy - Video
http://www.cnn.com/2008/SPORT/09/18/computer.navy/
Google Search Heads to Sea

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/googles-search-goes-out-to-sea/

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Business Driven Information Systems 5th Edition

by Baltzan Phillips ISBN 9780073402987

Business Driven Information Systems - Instructor’s Manual Chapter 5 Page 1 of 30

SECTION 5.1 – MIS INFRASTRUCTURES

SECTION 5.2 – BUILDING SUSTAINABLE MIS INFRASTRUCTURES

Business Driven Information Systems - Instructor’s Manual Chapter 5 Page 2 of 30

Learning Outcome 5.3: Describe the characteristics of an agile MIS infrastructure.

Business Driven Information Systems - Instructor’s Manual Chapter 5 Page 3 of 30

TOP 5 DRIVERS OF IMPLEMENTING ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE

Business Driven Information Systems - Instructor’s Manual Chapter 5 Page 4 of 30

Business Driven Information Systems - Instructor’s Manual Chapter 5 Page 5 of 30

Fundamental issues with open source software development

An assessment of the competition (e.g., open source vs. Microsoft)

OS Group Percentage Composition

The need for standards

Business Driven Information Systems - Instructor’s Manual Chapter 5 Page 7 of 30

Business Driven Information Systems - Instructor’s Manual Chapter 5 Page 8 of 30

Business Driven Information Systems - Instructor’s Manual Chapter 5 Page 9 of 30

Business Driven Information Systems - Instructor’s Manual Chapter 5 Page 11 of 30

OPENING CASE QUESTIONS

Business Driven Information Systems - Instructor’s Manual Chapter 5 Page 12 of 30

Additional business benefits of grid computing include:

Business Driven Information Systems - Instructor’s Manual Chapter 5 Page 13 of 30

1. How often should a business back up its data?

2. Why is it important to ensure backups are working and can be restored?

Business Driven Information Systems - Instructor’s Manual Chapter 5 Page 14 of 30

7. Explain the difference between fault tolerance and failover.

8. Compare the differences among a hot, cold, and warm site.

9. What is Moore’s Law and how does it affect companies?

10. List the business benefits of using grid computing.

11. Identify the benefits and challenges of cloud computing

Business Driven Information Systems - Instructor’s Manual Chapter 5 Page 15 of 30

CLOSING CASE ONE QUESTIONS

2. How is UPS developing a sustainable MIS infrastructure?

Business Driven Information Systems - Instructor’s Manual Chapter 5 Page 16 of 30

3. What business benefits will UPS gain from virtualization?

Business Driven Information Systems - Instructor’s Manual Chapter 5 Page 17 of 30

5. How could UPS benefit from cloud or grid computing?

Additional business benefits of grid computing include:

Business Driven Information Systems - Instructor’s Manual Chapter 5 Page 18 of 30

OPENING CASE QUESTIONS

3. Application: Apply the concepts of cloud computing to Pandora’s business model.

Business Driven Information Systems - Instructor’s Manual Chapter 5 Page 19 of 30

4. Analysis: Analyze how Pandora is using sustainable MIS infrastructures.

Additional business benefits of grid computing include:

Business Driven Information Systems - Instructor’s Manual Chapter 5 Page 20 of 30

CRITICAL BUSINESS THINKING

1. UNIVERSITIES ARE SWITCHING TO GMAIL

3. I DON’T HAVE A TEMPERATURE BUT I AM POSITIVE I HAVE A VIRUS

Business Driven Information Systems - Instructor’s Manual Chapter 5 Page 21 of 30

5. FACEBOOKS ENERGY USE

Celebrities Tell Facebook to Ditch Coal - Video

6. PLANNING FOR DISASTER RECOVERY

7. COMPARING BACKUP AND RECOVERY SYSTEMS

APPLY YOUR KNOWLEDGE BUSINESS PROJECTS

PROJECT I: RANKING MIS CHARACTERISTICS

The order of importance will vary depending on the business.

PROJECT II: DESIGNING A COMPANY INFRASTRUCTURE

PROJECT III: RECYCLE YOUR CELL PHONE