Page 206 - DCAP302_ENTERPRISE_RESOURCE_PLANNING

Enterprise Resource Planning

notes introduction

Development of information system solutions to business problems is a responsibility of any
business professional today. As a business end user he will have to initiate and provide inputs
for development of effective information systems for his company. The business end user has the
responsibility of using the system and continuously initiating improvements. As an IT Manager
his responsibility will consist of managing the development efforts of Information System
specialists.
The systems approach to problem solving uses a system orientation to the process of developing
an information system. The activities are inter-related and require the involvement of every
business end user in addition to the IS professionals.
The system approach involves:
1. Recognising and defining the problem or opportunity

2. Evaluating alternative system solutions
3. Selecting the ‘Best fit’ solution
4. Designing the selected solution
5. Implementing and evaluating the success of the designed system.
When a systems approach to problem solving is applied to the development of information system
solutions to business problems, it is called information systems development or application
development. However before we look at the application development we need to understand
the information system architecture.

12.1 information system architecture

The information system architecture, according to Synnott (1987), is a conceptual framework
for the organizational IT infrastructure. It is a plan for the structure and integration of the
information resources in the organization. Synnott proposes a model for information system
architecture, which comprises of two major parts. The centralised portion serves the entire
organization and it includes the business architecture (information needs of the organization),
the data architecture, and the communications architecture. The decentralized (upper) portion
focuses on an organizational function or on some service or activity (e.g. human resources,
computers, end-user computing, and systems). Each entity includes operational, managerial and
strategic applications.
Types of Information system Architecture: One way to classify information system architecture
is by the role the hardware plays. It is possible to distinguish two extreme cases: a mainframe
environment and a PC environment. The combination of these two creates a third type of
architecture, the distributed or networked environment.

Mainframe environment - in the mainframe environment, a mainframe computer does processing.
The users work with passive (or “dumb”) terminals, which are used to enter or change data and
access information from the mainframe. This was the dominant architecture until the mid 1980s.
Very few organizations use this type of architecture exclusively today. An extension of it is an
architecture where PCs are used as smart terminals. Yet, the core of the system is the mainframe
with its powerful storage and computational capabilities. The network computers (NCs) that
were introduced in 1997 are redefining the role of the centralized computing environment.
PC Environment - In the PC configuration, only PCs form the hardware information architecture.
They can be independent of each other, but normally the PCs are connected via electronic
networks. This architecture is common for many small and medium-size organizations.

200 LoveLy professionaL university