chapter 3

Question 1

Any area where people live or work needs a supporting

Answer 1

Infrastructure - which entails the technical structures enabling the provision of services; many infrastructure components,
such as power, water, telephone, and sewage lines, are “invisible” to the users, meaning that the user typically do not know where, for example, the water comes from, as long as it flows when they open their faucets.

Question 2

Just as people/companies rely on basic municipal services to function, businesses rely on an

Answer 2

Information Systems Infrastructure (consisting of hardware, system software, storage, networking, and data centers) to support their decision making, business processes, and competitive strategy.

Question 3

Application Software helps to

Answer 3

automate business processes, and enables processes that would otherwise not even be possible.

Question 4

Databases are

Answer 4

collections of related data organised in a way that facilitates data searches. They are vital to an organisation’s operations and often are vital to competitive advantage and success.

Question 5

Hardware

Answer 5

are computers that run the applications and databases necessary for processing transactions or analysing business data.

Question 6

The five general classes of computers:

Answer 6

1. Supercomputer: most powerful kind of computer (typically not used by business organisations) but used to assist in solving massive scientific problems.
2. Mainframe: used primarily as the main, central computing system for major corporations - optimised for high availability, resource utilisation, and security. Used for mission-critical applications, such as transaction processing.
3. Servers: any computer or network that makes access to files, printing, communications, and other services available to users of the network. Used to provide services to users within large organisations.
4. Workstation: designed for medical, engineering, architectural, or animation and graphics design uses, are optimised for visualisation and rendering of 3D mode,s and have fast processors. large memory, and advanced video cards.
5. Personal Computer: used for personal computing and small business computing. Over the past few years, PC’s have increasingly become part of an organisation’s information system infrastructure.

Question 7

Embedded Systems are optimised to

Answer 7

perform a well-defined set of tasks, ranging from playing MP3 music files to controlling engine performance, traffic lights, or DVD players.

Question 8

System Software is

Answer 8

the collection of programs that control the basic operations of computer hardware.

Question 9

The most prominent type of system software is

Answer 9

the Operating System (e.g. OS X, Windows 8) coordinates the interaction between hardware components,
peripherals (e.g. printers), application software (e.g. office programs) and users.

Question 10

Device Drivers

Answer 10

allow the computer to communicate with various different hardware devices.

Question 11

Organisations store data for three reasons:

Answer 11

1. Operational
2. Backup
3. Archival

Question 12

Computer Networking

Answer 12

is the sharing of data or service. The information source produces a message, which is encoded so that it can be transmitted via a communication channel; a receiver then decodes the message so that it can be understood by the destination. Hence, it involves coding, sending, and decoding a message.

Question 13

Computer networks require:

Answer 13

1. A sender and a receiver that have something to share
2. A pathway or transmission medium to send the message
3. Rules or protocols dictating communication between senders and receivers

Question 14

Transmission Media

Answer 14

refers to the physical pathway - cables and wireless - used to carry network information.

Question 15

Protocols define

Answer 15

the procedures that different computers follow when they transmit and receive data. You both might decide the one communication protocol will be that you communicate in English.

Question 16

Bandwidth

Answer 16

is the transmission capacity of a computer or communications channel, measured in bits per second (bps) or multiples thereof, and represents how much binary data can be reliably transmitted over the medium in one second.

Question 17

Computer in a network have three roles:

Answer 17

1. Servers: any computer on the network that makes access to files, printing, communications, and other services available to the users of the network.
2. Clients: any computer, such as a user’s PC or laptop, on the network, or any software application that uses the services provided by the server. A client usually has only one user, whereas many different users share the server. So-called thin clients - microcomputers with minimal memory, storage, and processing capabilities - use desktop virtualisation to provide workers with a virtual desktop environment.
3. Peers: any computer that may both request and provide services. The trend in business is to use Client-Server Networks, in which servers and clients have defined roles. With ubiquitous access to local area networks (LANs) and the Internet, almost everyone works in a client-server environment today. Peer-to-Peer Networks enable any computer or device on the network to provide and request servies; these networks can be found in small offices and homes.

Question 18

Computing networks are commonly classified by size, distance covered, and structure. Common classifications are:

Answer 18

> Personal Area Network (PAN): wireless communication between devices.
Local Area Network (LAN): sharing of data, software applications, or other resources between several users.
Wide Area Network (WAN): connect multiple LANs, distributed ownership and management.

Question 19

Organisations install Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) using

Answer 19

high-frequency radio-wave technology; WLANs are often referred to as Wi-Fi- Networks.

Question 20

The Internet is a large worldwide collection of

Answer 20

networks that use a common protocol to communicate with each other.

Question 21

• The World Wide Web is

Answer 21

a software of interlinked documents on the Internet, or a graphical user interface to the Internet that provides users with a simple, consistent, interface to access a wide variety of information. A Web Browser is a software application that can be used to locate and display Web pages, including text, graphics, and multimedia content.

Question 22

A key feature of the Web is

Answer 22

Hypertext - a document, otherwise known as a Web page, containing not only information but also Hyperlink, which are references or links to other documents.

Question 23

The standard method of specifying the structure and content of web pages is called

Answer 23

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML).

Question 24

Web pages are stored on

Answer 24

Web Servers, which process user requests for pages using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

Question 25

Web servers typically host a collection of interlinked web pages (called a Web site) that

Answer 25

are owned by the same organisation or by an individual.

Question 26

A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is used to

Answer 26

identify and locate a particular web page. For example, www.google.com is the URL used to find the main Google Web Server.

Question 27

The URL has three parts

Answer 27

:
1. The Domain Name: a term that helps people recognise the company/person that the domain name represents. For Google, this is google.com
2. Top-Level Domain: the suffix. For Google, this is .com (some other suffixes are .edu, .org, .gov, .nl, .co.nz, .net.)
3. The Host Name: the host name is the web server that will respond to the request. For Google, this is www (but can also be mail or maps - mail.google.com or maps.google.com)

Question 28

IP Addresses serve to

Answer 28

identify all the computers or devices on the Internet. The IP address serves as the destination address of that computer or device and enables the network to route messages to the proper destination. For example, 128.196.134.37 is the underlying IP address of www.arizona.edu.

Question 29

the Internet uses the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) to

Answer 29

facilitate the transmission of Web pages and other information.

Question 30

A private network can be created through

Answer 30

Intranet. It look sand acts just like a publicly accessible web site an uses the same software, hardware, and networking technologies to communicate information. However, they are behind a firewall which secures proprietary information.

Question 31

An Extranet can be regarded as

Answer 31

a private part of the Internet that is cordoned off from the ordinary users, enable two or more firms to use the Internet to do business together.

Question 32

Moore’s Law hypothesises that

Answer 32

the number of transistors on a chip would double about every two years. So far, this has been fairly accurate.

Question 33

Planned Obsolescence means that

Answer 33

the product is designed to last only for a certain life span. For hardware, this can mean that certain components are not built to be serviceable, and the device has to be replaced once in a while. The rapid obsolescence of computer hardware carries a high price tag for the environment.

Question 34

Radical advances in information technology have

Answer 34

opened many opportunities for organisation but have also brought challenges.

Question 35

Hardware and obsolescence, faster IT cycles, and consumerisation present issues such as

Answer 35

when and how to upgrade the current infrastructure.

Question 36

The processing, storage, and transmission of data is taking place in

Answer 36

the cloud

Question 37

Cloud Computing

Answer 37

is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and realised with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.

Question 38

Using a Utility Computing Model, cloud computing thus helps to

Answer 38

transform IT infrastructure costs form a capital expenditure to an operational expenditure.

Question 39

Characteristic of cloud computing include

Answer 39

on-demand self-service, rapid elasticity, broad network access, resource pooling, and measured service.

Question 40

Typical cloud computing service models:

Answer 40

> Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - the basic capabilities of processing, storage, and networking a provided. So, the customer has the most control over the resources. Think of Amazon and Network.
Platform as a Service (PaaS) - customers can run their own application, typically designed using tools provided by the service provider. Think of Facebook.
Software as a Service (SaaS) - the customer uses only applications provided via cloud infrastructure. Think of e-mail and Google Docs.

Question 41

Types of clouds:

Answer 41

1. Public Cloud - can be used by any interested party on a pay-per-use basis. Hence, they are often used for applications that need rapid scalability (i.e. the ability to adapt to increase/decreases in demand for processing or data storage), or in cases where there is insufficient capital or the resources to build or expand an IT infrastructure. Amazon.com is a public cloud.
2. Private Cloud - internal to an organisation and can helpt he organisation to balance demand and supply of computing resources within the organisation.

Question 42

When considering the move to a public cloud-based infrastructure, organisations have to weigh issues such as

Answer 42

availability, reliability, scalability, viability, security, privacy, compliance, openness, diversity of offerings, and, costs.

Question 43

Other applications in the cloud include:

Answer 43

1. Service-Oriented Infrastructure (SOA) - business processes are broken down into services that are designed to achieve the desired results for the service consumer. SOA’s must follow three principles: reusability, interoperability, componentization.
2. Grid Computing: combining computing power of a large number of smaller, independent, networked computers into a cohesive system in order to solve problems that only supercomputer were previously capable of solving.
3. Content Delivery Network: increase performance of websites as they store copies of content closer to the end user.
4. Voice over IP (VoIP): the use of Internet technologies for placing telephone calls.
5. Videoconferencing over IP: the use of Internet technologies to place video calls.

Question 44

a recent trend is Green Computing, as companies realise

Answer 44

potential cost savings and a positive effect on the company’s image by implementing ways to reduce energy consumption and waste. It involves helping to use computers more efficiently, doing the same/more with less. For instance, by using virtualisation to replace hundred of individual servers with just a few powerful mainframe computers.