Lean and agile using resources in the best way.

Proactive in addressing changes in the market.

Quick to respond and adapt to advances in technology.

Transformational in its processes, structure and HR initiatives to match a changing and dynamic workforce.

The structure beneath a structure.

IT infrastructure is the implementation of your organization's architecture.

Collection of integrated software for business management, accounting, finance, supply chain management, inventory management, customer relationship management, e-colaboration, etc.

Federal government will spend 7.7 billion on ERP in 2009.

60% of Fortune 500 companies have ERP systems.

Reliable information access

Avoids data and operations redundancy

Delivery and cycle time reduction

Cost reduction

Easy adaptability

Improved scalability

Global outreach

E-business support

Time-consuming

Expensive

Lack of conformity of modules

Vendor dependence

Too many features

Too much complexity

Questionable scalability

Not enough extended ERP capability

Fundamental underlying infrastructure for any IT environment.

- Decentralized

- Decentralized

- Distributed

- Client/server

- Tiered

Involves little or no sharing of IT and other resources such as information.

Almost nonexistent today.

Sharing information systems in one central area or one central mainframe.

Like decentralized, almost nonexistent today.

Distributing the information and processing power of IT systems via a network.

First true network infrastrucure.

Processing activity is allocated to the location(s) where it can most efficiently be done.

One or more computers that are servers which provide services to other computers, called clients.

Servers and clients work together to optimize processing, information storage, etc.

When you surf the Web, the underlying network infrastructure is client/server.

The IT system is partitioned into tiers (layers) where each tier performs a specific type of functionality.

- 1-tier: single machine (word processor)

- 2-tier: basic client/server relationship (database query)

- 3-tier: client, application server, data or database server (web browsing)

- N-tier: scalable 3 tier structure with more servers

Process of continuously measuring system results and comparing them to benchmarks.

Benchmarks: Baseline values a system seeks to attain.

Doing something right.

- In the least time.

- At the lowest cost.

- With the fewest errors.

- Etc.

Bottom-line initiatives typically focus on efficiency

Doing the right things.

- Getting customers to buy when they visit your site.

- Answering the right question with the right answer the first time.

- Etc.

Top-line initiatives tend to focus on effectiveness.

Infrastructure-centric metrics

Web-centric metrics

Call center metrics

Financial metrics

Infrastructure-Centric Metric

Amount of information that can pass through a system in a given amount of time.

Infrastructure-Centric Metric

Speed at which a system can process a transaction.

Infrastructure-Centric Metric

Measured inversely as downtime, or the average amount of time a system is down or unavailable.

Infrastructure-Centric Metric

Measured inversely as error rate, or the number of errors per thousand/million that a system generates.

Infrastructure-Centric Metric

Average time to respond to a user-generated event, such as a mouse click.

Infrastructure-Centric Metric

Conceptual metric related to how well a system can be adapted to increased demands.

# of unique visitors to a site (Nielsen/Net Ratings primary metric)

Number of visits to a site.

Average page exposures to an individual visitor

% of potential customers who visit your site and who actually buy something.

# of people who click on an ad are are taken to another site.

Sales dollars generated per dollar of advertising.

# who start to register at your site and then abandon the process.

# who create a shopping cart and then abandon it.

Call-Center Metrics

% number of callers who hang up while waiting for their call to be answered.

Call-Center Metrics

Average time, usually in seconds, that it takes for a call to be answered by an actual person.

Call-Center Metrics

% of calls answered within a specific time frame, such as 30 or 90 seconds.

Call-Center Metrics

% of calls that can be resolved without having to call back.

Formal, contractually obligated agreement between 2 parties.

SLA must include IT success metrics.

SLAs are between your organization and outsourcing organizations.

- SLAs define how you will measure the outsourcing organization's efforts.

- These measures are in service level specifications (SLS) or service level objectives (SLO).

Supplies software applications (and related services) over the Internet that would otherwise reside on customer's computers.

- If you engage an ASP, you would do so with an SLA

Rigorous and well-informed organizational methodology for developing a business continuity plan, a step-by-step guideline defining how the organization will recover from a disaster or extended disruption.

BCP is very necessary today given terror threats, increased climate volatility, etc.

1. Organizational strategic plan

2. Analysis

3. Design

4. Implementation

5. Testing

6. Maintenance

It all starts here.

The strategic plan defines what is and what is not important.

You must have a business community plan for what is important.

Impact Analysis (risk assessment): Evaluating IT assets, their importance, and susceptibility to threat.

Threat Analysis: Document all possible major threats to organizational assets.

Impact Scenario Analysis: Build worst-case scenario for each threat.

Requirement Recovery Document: Identifies critical assets, threats to them, and worst-case scenarios.

Build disaster recovery plan, a detailed plan for recovering from a disaster. May include:

- Collocation Facility: Rented space and telecommunications equipment.

- Hot Site: Fully equipped facility where your company can move to.

- Cold Site: Facility where your company can move to but has no computer equipment.

Engage any businessses that will provide collocation facilities, hot sites, and cold sites.

Implement procedures for recovering from a disaster.

Train employees.

Evaluate each IT system to ensure that it is configured optimally for recovering from a disaster.

As opposed to traditional SDLC, testing in BCP methodology occurs after implementation.

Simulate disaster scenarios.

Have employees execute disaster recovery plans.

Evaluate success and refine as necessary.

Perform testing annually, at a minimum.

Change business continuity plan as organizational strategic plan changes.

Evaluate and react to new threats.

No "system" is ever complete.