What is enterprise infrastructure - Research Paper Example

Information Technology: Enterprise Infrastructure Introduction Enterprises convert their applications into services, both for internal operation as well as for external collaboration. Services in turn run on systems distributed over a network. There is a growing trend of gradual transition to e-businesses. An e-business infrastructure would consist of a large number of business processes. The steps in a business process are undertaken either by humans as in work-flow management systems, by automated systems, or through outsourcing to external providers.

E-businesses also require mechanisms facilitating customers’ access to their services through the Internet (Sahai & Graupner, 2005). Enterprise infrastructure is stated to be the technology backbone of modern business (IT World Canada, 2011). Thesis Statement: The purpose of this paper is to investigate enterprise infrastructure. Enterprise Infrastructure According to Camp (2004), a blueprint of the enterprise infrastructure, known as enterprise architecture, forms the basis of an organisation’s Information Technology planning.

A complex infrastructure is usually found in an e-business environment. Web services are being increasingly used for putting e-businesses on the Web, as well as enabling users: either humans or other Web services to use them. “Web service refers to a business or computational function delivered using standard web technology such as HTTP (Hypertext transfer protocol), XML (Extensible markup language), and SOAP (Simple object access protocol)” (Sahai & Graupner, 2005, p.5). Web services have to be interfaced with the internal business processes to receive, fulfill and deliver orders.

IT World Canada (2011) states that business process improvement software, business performance management and other enterprise infrastructure software are essential for improving the efficiency of business functions. Thus, the logical business processes, the Web services and the operation of enterprise infrastructure require the support of hardware, software, as well as humans. For example, an e-business infrastructure would include “web sites, web server farms, applications servers (J2EE, .Net) and business processes execution platforms such as Process Manager, MQSeries, and Web Method (Sahai & Graupner, 2005, p.44). Further, management of enterprise infrastructure includes desktop, data storage systems, networks, and the reduction of complexity and costs including minimizing the number of people required to efficiently operate the enterprise IT sytems.

Conclusion This paper has higlighted enterprise infrastructure and its components; and examined the need for its management, for achieving best outcomes in e-businesses. With the transformation of information technology from infrastructure support to service provisioning, there is a greater emphasis on overall application and service management. E-business managers, analysts and users have to manage the enterprise infrastructure through frameworks and tools that help to define, measure, and analyze business and Information Technology metrics, and their correlation.

Sahai & Graupner (2005) reiterate that e-businesses also require management systems not only for their own enterprise infrastructure consisting of business processes and Web services, but also for correlation with other enterprises (Sahai & Graupner, 2005). ReferencesCamp, O. (2004). Enterprise information systems V. New York: Springer. IT World Canada. (2011). Enterprise infrastructure. Retrieved on 30th August, 2011 from http://www.itworldcanada.com/category/enterprise-infrastructureSahai, A.

& Graupner, S. (2005). Web services in the enterprise: Concepts, standards, Solutions, and management. New York: Springer.