Introduction to Information Technology

 In this chapter, we will study:
 Foundation concepts of information systems in organizations.
 How information systems help organizations solve problems and seize opportunities.
 How information systems are managed in organizations.
 Career opportunities in Information Technology.

 Information Infrastructure:
 The physical facilities, services, and management that support all organizational computing resources.
 Computer hardware
 General-purpose software
 Networks and communications facilities
 Databases
 Information management personnel

 Information Infrastructure (continued)
 Defines integration, operation, documentation, maintenance, and management of computing resources.
 Defines how specific computing resources are arranged, operated, and managed.
 Information Architecture
 High-level plan that details
 The organization’s information requirements
 The way these requirements are being satisfied.
 Blueprints for future directions
 Information architecture is different from computer architecture which only describes the hardware needs of computer system
 Computer architecture involves several processors, whereas the information architecture is just like planning a house.
 This architecture includes planning the drawing ,purpose, and building constraints.
 It can be divided into 2 major parts
 Organizational objectives and problems
 Existing infrastructure
 Transaction Processing Systems
 Such systems which support usual and routined repetitive tasks.
 For example employees are paid at regular intervals, expenses are monitored are compared to budget
 Collect, store, process, and disseminate basic business transaction data.
 Provide foundation data for many other systems.
 May be complex and sophisticated.
 Essential to business success even today.
 Management Information Systems
 As the cost of computers lowered and its capabilities increased, it became possible to justify more analytical tasks then the transaction processing systems
 These systems monitored, organized, summarized, and displayed information for supporting the transaction processing systems
 These systems are geared toward the middle management
 Functional information systems are put to ensure that business activates are done in efficient way
 Non functional are part of domain but not are necessary
 Emphasize routine reporting on known and anticipated issues.
 Also, answer queries and forecast trends.
 Support Systems
 Managers are not only the employees which can benefit from the information systems, so the support systems for office employees also began to emerge.
 Office Automation – support for office workers
 Decision Support – support complex, non-routine managerial decision makers
 Lowered costs and increased capabilities justified support for a one time applications
 It expanded into 2 ways
 Executive Information Systems – support higher-level managers
 Group Support Systems – employ Groupware to support people working in groups
 Intelligent Systems
 Business applications of Artificial Intelligence
 Expert systems – capable of solving certain problems as well as human experts.
 Learning systems – can incorporate new information and update their knowledge.
 For example the expert systems are frequently used to capture the knowledge of bank loan officers and enable a less experienced person to make a complex loan decision
 First, consider how organizations are structured:
 Typically by functional departments
 Frequently in a hierarchy
 May be by project or in a matrix structure
 Information Systems in an organization are developed to support the way the organization is structured.