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Development of Our Country's IT Industry in the New Period

Information Technology Service Units

Information Technology (IT) is responsible for management of the service units that support effective exploitation of information technology by the enterprise. We view the CIO as the top management leader of Information Technology services. The CIO is responsible for optimizing the use of information technology by the enterprise. IT services fulfill three primary roles:

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Executive staff support

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Service unit automation

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Infrastructure management

Executive Staff Support

IT brings technical expertise and insights to the executive staff. It provides development and support of modeling capabilities and may provide modeling expertise. At the same time it has different roles in support of each of the executive staff service units:

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Strategic Planning. The CIO should be a member of the strategic planning team, the same as other enterprise executives. The CIO brings a perspective on changes in technology and the application of technology to optimize the operation of the enterprise.

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Business Architecture. Business Architecture requires technical support for a number of its responsibilities. In particular, it requires support for service-oriented analysis, design and modeling, capture and management of business rules, gap analysis, and transformation planning. BA provides the enterprise perspective on transformation planning and optimization of service units, but IT personnel are needed to understand the details of the systems and processes involved and to develop and support the business models.

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Enterprise Intelligence. IT provides technical support for the planning and implementation of EI capabilities. In particular, IT provides the technical expertise associated with development of the enterprise logical data model, development of business activity monitoring (BAM), data warehouses, and Enterprise Information Integration (EII). IT also supports modeling tools, collaboration facilities, and knowledge management facilities.

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Enterprise Transformation. IT must provide the technical capability to develop and deploy detailed business processes and applications; integrate service units, applications, and business rules; transform legacy applications; and implement appropriate security facilities.

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Standards and Technology. IT provides the primary input for defining information systems standards and technology selections driven by a need to minimize diversity and achieve economies of scale in IT service units. This must be balanced against potential business opportunities or improvements in other service units that would suggest the need for deviations. IT must request deviations or proposals for changes to standards where appropriate for adoption of new technologies or alignment with industry trends. Standards and Technology should also address standards for products driven by product development and standards for business practices in the various business disciplines such as accounting and human resource management.Service Unit AutomationIT service units support automation of business service units. This includes development of automated business processes, development of supporting computer applications, implementation of commercial software, transformation of legacy systems, systems integration, problem resolution, and technical support. These are solutions owned and funded by the service units. Consequently, the basic requirements are determined by the service unit interface, the interfaces of other service units used, and capability requirements of the service unit.Infrastructure ManagementIT is responsible for management and operation of the technical infrastructure, including computers, communications, and data storage. The SOA infrastructure, described in Chapter 2, includes the following:▪Reliable messaging▪Event notification▪Security▪Message transformation▪Service unit registry▪Business process management system▪Service unit portals▪Service unit performance monitoring▪Billing for servicesIn addition to these capabilities, IT must provide shared facilities for human communication, collaboration, and knowledge management. This includes telephone, email, teleconferencing facilities, group/community servers, and other technical capabilities that support information sharing and collaboration. EI should be viewed as the business owner of these enterprise facilities.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/information-technology

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When it comes to technology and your business, you'll need to know enough about the topic to understand what your business needs and why. And while you won't need to be able to disassemble and reassemble a PC against a stopwatch like a Marine does his M-16, you'll want to know a little more than simply how to turn on your computer and then launch your favorite programs.

Computers and peripherals are constantly evolving, but knowing a few general specifications in each product category will help you find the best deal on the right equipment for your business--or at least understand what a tech expert is telling you. And what a business needs is not the same for everyone. There's no one "right" PC brand or printer type any more than there's one right car for everyone out on the road today.

Your business will have its own unique set of equipment needs that probably differ from those of the company next door. And, of course, you'll have a different amount of money to spend.

When it comes to pricing, the good news is that prices for office equipment have gone down every year during the past three decades, while features have continued to improve with every new version of hardware and software that's released. That's been true in every product category every year, so you can expect to get a better price and a more capable bundle of equipment than you could have found this time last year.

Also, you can expect your computer and telecommunications equipment to be your best business allies. As we've evolved from an industrial to an information-based economy, small businesses have used their office tools to be more competitive against larger businesses, which--let's face it--have a lot of built-in market advantages.

Getting Started Let's start by behaving as if you're already a Fortune 500 company--in miniature. Over the decades, large businesses have learned quite a bit about getting the most out of their office equipment. The first lesson is: You don't buy equipment; you buy systems.

As you shop for PCs, fax machines and phones, keep in mind that the goal is to make all this equipment work well together and, to the extent possible, talk to one another--that is, share data. If your personal digital assistant (PDA) can't easily transfer data to your desktop, your fax machine can't accept computer files, or you're building contact lists and address books in a lot of different and incompatible applications, you're duplicating your efforts, which means you're losing time. Efficiency today means being well connected--both inside and outside the walls of your company.

Even if you start off as a solo operator working from a home office, you're still going to need connections to clients and suppliers in the wider world. That not only means phone, fax and internet connections, but also some level of connectivity in the applications that make them work--e-mail, instant messaging, web protocols and more.

At some point, you may want to share proposals, spreadsheets and other files--not only among co-workers but possibly customers and suppliers as well. That suggests you'll want to stick with the most popular operating systems and applications to improve your chances of collaboration with others. Certainly, you'll want to do that within your own company.

Incidentally, even if you're starting as a solo operator, you'll need at least two connected computers. And if you're like many businesspeople today, you probably already own three or four "computing devices"--PC, laptop, PDA, cell phone--with a lot of wired and/or wireless connections among them and your other office equipment.

But why two desktop computers? Actually, one of those could be a laptop for travel. But you need two because of that inevitable day when your hard drive crashes or your computer gets a virus or there's some inscrutable problem with your PC's on/off button--whatever. Your PC is likely to become the heart and soul of your operation, and while computer equipment is very durable, all equipment fails.

So what will you do when that machine that holds your critical business information fails? Even if you're among that small fraction of people who back up their data religiously and have it available somewhere on tape or CD-ROM, how long will it take you to run out and buy a new PC and add all the software you regularly use configured just the way you like it so you can start loading that data? How many hours or days can your business go before you get back online with your customers?

Realistically, you don't want even one hour of lost productivity. At a minimum, you need at least one duplicate of your main PC's entire setup that you can immediately turn to without losing a step. As mentioned, that duplicate image could be a laptop used for travel. Ideally, it will be another desktop just as capable or nearly so as your first.