TENTATIVE
In modern business, information technologies are implemented in several forms of enterprise information systems (EIS) such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationships Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management (SCM), Business Intelligence (BI), integrated messaging systems and other forms of business computing. These systems are designed and implemented by using several approaches and methodologies. No matter which EIS design and implementation methodology is used, each enterprise information system is consisted of several information technologies such as: servers, desktop computers, portable/mobile computing devices, systems software, application software, data communication technologies, computer networks. In addition, enterprise information systems employ several profiles of IT specialists such as application developers, programmers, system and network administrators, and business analysts.
EIS platforms cover business processes and make them possible in today’s e-economy, therefore, there is a high level of correlation between reliability, availability and scalability of business processes/business operations and IT platforms that enable them. However, several types of IT-related problems such as hardware components’ glitches and failures, operating system or application defects and crashes, disastrous events, IT-specialists’ errors such as accidental or intentional file deletion, unskilled operations, intentional hazardous activities including sabotage and strikes, can bring the system down for some time and consequently make data unavailable.
Modern enterprise information systems are expected to be resilient (continuous) and operational on „always-on“ basis, in other words: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. This is particularly important for multinational companies as their customers, suppliers, partners, employees, are located in many different time zones. Business critical applications such as e-commerce applications, financial applications and services, call centers, Web servers, e-mail servers, must be up at all times. The leading multinational companies and most e-business oriented organizations seek for highly available, reliable and scalable operating environments in order to achieve “always-on”, reliable and scalable operations.
In order to stay competitive, today’s business has to be “resilient” or “continuous” with an emphasis on continuous, always-on and uninterruptible computing support and data availability. The main prerequisite for such a kind of business is an information system or an integrated IT platform which operates on “always-on” basis with a 100% system uptime and “zero downtime”, or which is characterized by a high availability ratio measured in number of nines, e.g. four nines – 99,99%, five nines – 99,999%, etc. The term of “business continuance” or “business continuity” (BC) emphasizes the ability of a business to continue with its operations even if some sort of failure or disaster on its computing platform occurs. In short, the concept of continuous computing is all about “having IT-systems up and running”, being “always-on”, and consequently keeping “business in business”.
Always-On Enterprise Information Systems for Business Continuance: Technologies for Reliable and Scalable Operations aims at providing a number of high quality chapters describing in more detail the structure of such information systems, enabling technologies, aspects of their implementations, IT/IS governing, risk management, disaster management, interrelated manufacturing and supply chain strategies, and new IT paradigms.
Chapter I, IT Governance and IT Risk Management Principles and Methods for Supporting ‘Always-On’ Enterprise Information Systems , by Spremic argues that the development and governance of proper IT infrastructure may have enormous implications for the operation, structure and strategy of organizations. IT and IS may contribute towards efficiency, productivity and competitiveness improvements of both inter-organizational and intra-organizational systems. Organizations manage risks associated with growing IT opportunities as well as critical dependence of many business processes on IT and vice-versa. IT risk management issues are not marginal or ‘technical’ problems and become more and more a ‘business problem’. This chapter proposes a Corporate IT Risk Management model and a framework of IT Governance and IT Audit. In addition, the chapter explains how to model information systems and supporting IT procedures to meet ‘always-on’ requirements that comes from the business.
Chapter II, Risks Evaluation and IT Audit Aspects of Business Intelligence Solutions , by Ko emphasizes the tact that today’s IT environments are more and more complex and fragmented which brings additional security risks. Author focuses on business intelligence solutions that can provide assistance in these complex business situations. Their main goal is to assist organizations to make better decisions. Better decisions means that these solutions support the management of risks, and they have a key role in raising revenue and in reducing cost. This chapter provides an overview on business intelligence solutions and its future trends, and demonstrates the most important business intelligence solutions, by highlighting their risks, business continuity challenges and IT audit issues.
Chapter III, Collaborative Systems for Decision Making for Disaster Preparedness and Response , by Hahn, Block, Keith, and Vinze, points out that collaborative technologies (CT) have an excellent track record for supporting the important processes of preparing and planning before a disaster situation. These technologies can be the right choice for support of strategic approach and training groups before an emergency situation arises. Using CT before a disaster may allow groups to create emergency procedure manuals which will be invaluable to first responders during a real-time disaster. Finally, collaborative technologies are equally as beneficial for use after an emergency situation. The next generation of collaborative technologies is media rich—expanding into database driven visualization, simulation, semantic analysis and communication tools to create comprehensive interoperable collaboration systems. Authors present an example of this next generation of collaborative technologies called “the Decision Theater” at Arizona State University.
Chapter IV, Principles and Experiences: Designing and Building Enterprise Information Systems , by Aktas discusses principles and experiences for designing and building of a “novel Enterprise Information System”. Author introduces a novel architecture for a Hybrid Information Service, which provides unification, federation and interoperability of major Web-based Information Services. The Hybrid Information Service is designed as an add-on information system, which interacts with the local information services and assembles their metadata instances under one hybrid architecture. The proposed system differs from “local-as-view” approaches, as its query transformation happens between a unified schema and local schemas. It utilizes and leverages previous work on “global-as-view” approach for integrating heterogeneous local data services. The proposed system addresses the limitations of previous work by introducing an “add-on architecture”, which runs one layer above the implementations of UDDI and its extensions. It leverages previous work on UDDI and improves the quality of UDDI-based metadata-systems in terms of fault-tolerance and high-performance.
Chapter V, Optimization of Enterprise Information System through A ‘User Involvement Framework” in Learning Organizations , by Dave and Shrivastava is an attempt to evaluate the psychological capabilities of the organization which can largely be evaluated through the mindset of the workforce and the willingness with which they are ready to adopt change. The authors argue that the implementation of any IT enabled operations systems requires a systematic approach which includes the evaluation of the organization’s learning capabilities. They present the results of the study conducted in Bhilai Steel Plant, one of the leading steel manufacturing public companies in India, where ERP is to be adopted.
Chapter VI, Always-On Enterprise Information Systems With Service Oriented Architecture And Load Balancing , by Bayram, Kirlidog, and Vayvay, proposes a model that aims at achieving continuous EIS operations in terms of hardware and software components where these components work “in tandem”. Proposed model is based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). SOA, which is implemented as the main software component of the model is described, as well as the Quality of Service (QoS) and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) concepts of SOA. Hardware component of the model and the Load Balancer are described separately and within the tandem working system of SOA and Load Balancer. Unlike the traditional software where components are tightly coupled in a point-to-point architecture, SOA is based on distributed and heterogeneous architecture and offers loose coupling. A case study which employs Oracle SOA Suite has been developed and presented. Distributed computing allows services to be distributed to different resources thereby enhancing the backup logic, and loose coupling minimizes the impact of modifications and failures on the whole system when there is a problem in one component.
Chapter VII, Challenges of Data Management in Always-On Enterprise Information Systems, by Varga considers some of the most challenging aspects of data management, whether they are classified as data continuity, data improvement or data management. The chapter explores in more details the most challenging aspects of data management classified into three classes. The first combines data availability, data integrity and data security, which serve as data continuity aspects that are important for the continuous provision of data in business processes and for decision-making purposes. Aspects in the second class enable more innovative, more efficient, and more effective data usage. The problems of data overload, data integration, data quality, data degradation, data ownership or stewardship, data privacy, and data visualization are described. Data governance is also important dimension for planning, supervising and controlling of all management activities exercised to improve organizational data and information. Consequently, data governance will constantly need to discover novel and innovative ways to deal with data management problems.
Chapter VIII, Continuous Database Availability , by Tomic and Markic gives an overview of the most widely used solutions for continuous database availability. It provides a set of examples of these standards and their implementations by three main database vendors: Oracle (Oracle 11g), IBM (DB2 Version 9.5) and Microsoft (SQL Server 2008). It identifies the main threats of continuous database availability grouped into four categories: network, hardware, software and DBMS, having in mind the distinction between planned and unplanned threats (downtime). Solutions from major DBMS vendors such as backup and recovery, clustering, log shipping, stand-by, replication, mirroring, automated software applications, replication, virtualization are briefly explained. This chapter focuses on database aspect of continuous data availability. Presented overview of solutions shows that different approaches and techniques can be used for enabling database continuous availability. Main classification of these solutions is based on the differentiation between two approaches: narrow and broad approach. While narrow approach is focused on IT solutions (backup and recovery, clustering, replication, mirroring), a broad approach considers IT solution only as a part of broader context that includes business processes, management of data and information lifecycle, additional education and training of users and IT staff, disaster recovery strategies and action plans.
Chapter IX, Some Aspects of Implementing Always-on IT-solutions and Standards in Banking Sector: The Case of Croatia , by Pejic-Bach, Draganic, Jakovic presents the results of an empirical research that was conducted in order to determine the level of influence of information technologies to the system of payment transactions in Croatia. The results suggest that the level of influence is important due to the enlargement of product range and communication channels with clients, expense reduction for the costumers and the bank as well as the increase of the business security. The study showed that information technology can help in reducing risks through data access control and risk management (data collection and statistical analysis), but can also be a risk source: the risk of an unskilled use of information technology and the reputation risk (in case of technical failure or employees' abuse if the controls are not implemented). As the results of the study suggest, the level of acceptance of the new distribution channels by the clients depends on the simplicity of the created service and on the stimulation of the clients by lower transaction costs in these channels.
Chapter X, Making Retail Firm’s Procurement Leagile: A Conceptual Framework , by Gupta, Garg, Goh, and Kumar describes the concept of “leagility” as a combination of well known concepts in manufacturing: lean and agile manufacturing. The authors argue that the leagility concept can be used not only in manufacturing, but in procurement as well. Based on their experiences with a world-wide retailer, they propose a conceptual framework that can be used in applying the principles of leagility in procurement. In addition, a case study of Dell with regard to this concept is presented. Making the retail firm’s procurement leagile can benefit the firm by maximizing gross margin return on investment (GMROI) and the supply chain more efficient and responsive. In identifying the strategies, a retailer must consider the product’s GMROI as well as total volume traded, the seasonality of the product and the supply lead time to procure the products. This paper discusses the framework for identifying the strategies a retail firm can employ to make its procurement leagile.
Chapter XI, The Business Knowledge And Information Policy Model , by San proposes the “Business Knowledge and Information Policy Model” (BKIP). According to this author, the BKIP is a key for the resilient, continuous, flexible and operational business and provides greater opportunity for businesses to create new design models in order to manage knowledge and information (KI) and assets related to KI (AKI). The BKIP is a “kind of lens” for business which obtains the alternative ways for absorbing, processing, using, servicing, and diffusing KI in the frame of the IBT. It organizes to harmonizingly operate all of KIAKI in the frame of equality principles. The BKIP makes easier the process of preparing and integrating enterprise architectures or business models.
Chapter XII, Information Supply Chains: Restructuring Relationships, Chains and Networks , by Arora, Raghu, and Vinze discusses the importance of Information Supply Chains (ISCs) that take an information-centric view of supply chains, where information is not only used to support supply chain operations, but also to create value for customers and enable business partners to collectively sense and respond to opportunities in a networked eco-system. Creating value in the ISC involves gathering, organizing, selecting, synthesizing and distributing information. Authors argue that mitigating supply chain vulnerabilities requires a mechanism that allows for continuously sensing the environment, detecting existing or anticipated vulnerabilities, and responding to these vulnerabilities in real time through information sharing and collaboration. This chapter describes how the autonomic computing paradigm can be used to build resilient information supply chains by restructuring the associated relationships, chains and networks.
Chapter XIII, Sustaining The Green Information Technology Movement, by Miti, Gupta, Goh, and DeSouza explores the Green Computing paradigm, the paradigm that is used to describe a movement in the field of information technology whereby users and information technology professionals are adopting ‘less environmentally destructive’ practices to mitigate the detrimental effects of excessive computing to the environment. Environment-friendly practices such as virtualization, cloud computing, greening of data centres, recycling, telecommuting and teleworking are discussed in this chapter. Several measures can be adopted to provide a sustainable and green computing environment by adopting and implementing old and new ideas. While virtualization and cloud computing are cutting edge technologies, telecommuting, teleworking, recycling have been accepted by organizations all over the world. Authors argue that governments must work with organizations to chart the right course of action to decrease the carbon footprint. New ideas such as carbon credits traded by companies in international markets can be used to control and regulate the market. Through successful implementation of the green computing paradigm firms can successfully decrease their carbon footprint and contribute to decreasing the harm wrought to the environment.
Chapter XIV, Swift Trust And Self-Organizing Virtual Communities, by Ngo-Mai and Raybaut define the term “swift trust” and propose a research model with different functions of swift trust which tried to capture both the average pre existent stereotypes in a given opening community and the fragile and cyclical movement of influences depending on relative action during the group lifespan. Contrarily to the traditional ‘trust need touch’ concepts based on small steps learning and long history, swift trust basically relies on pre existent stereotypes at the beginning of collaboration and afterward on current action of others agents. It is then well suited to virtual communities characterized by (i) no common history in bilateral relationships and scarce face to face (ii) uncertainty about viability, (iii) possible weak involvement. Swift trust demonstrates to be very fragile and on occasion cyclical. The performance or profit index both at individual and community level has been built in such a way as to encapsulate the idea of knowledge creation as a function of bilateral interaction within a network and of the cognitive distance between individuals. A cost function with a learning effect has also been introduced. Finally the organizational feature of the community has been seized by two indexes which measure the relative number of positive reciprocal influences between individuals and the relative number of positive influence. Simulations of the model with our different swift trust functions using a replicator equation for the dynamics of the community display various organizational structures similar to those described by stylized facts.
I would like to thank to all the authors whose manuscripts made this book possible.
A further special note of thanks goes to Ms. Julia Mosemann, Development Editor, for her continuous help during the process of working on the book and to the managerial, acquisition, editorial, publishing and marketing teams at IGI Global.
I am grateful to my wife Ermina and son Adnan for their understanding during this book project.