Harnessing Information Management, the Data, and Infrastructure

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Importance of information management for the IT and data industry

Information management in the industry of information technology and data is important in many ways. First of all, constant management of data and information helps the organizations and companies to maintain the integrity of information all the time. Secondly is that information is kept up to date thus making it credible for use in areas such as research and data analytics. Information management also ensures that any element of data redundancy is eliminated by the database administrators thereby making the process of information management simpler. Information management makes the critical information needed available for the management for decision making process by reducing the access time of such information from their respective areas or locations of storage. The security or safety of data is also maintained through information management. The management of information in business enterprises and companies also guarantees business continuity and disaster recovery of information in the case of any down time during business hours. To get the right documentation for future maintenance or upgrade of any information system, the available information has to be managed well.

Analysis of the fundamental impact of IT architecture or enterprise architecture on information management for IT and data industry

The IT architecture or enterprise architecture has several impacts on information management in the It and data industry. First is that the architecture helps to determine the best design of the electronic management information system that is more efficient and effective in terms of information processing, storage , access, retrieval and communication of information to the final users. The design of the architecture also plays an important role in determining the level of security for data and information stored in either stand alone systems or online systems. The information technology (IT) architecture is also the basis of designing how information stored in the system is to be transmitted safely through communication channel, taking into an account the error detections and corrections that ensures the integrity of the received information by the recipient.

The architecture also has an impact of converting a manual system of filing and information retrieval into a computerized system. In this way it contributes to better, speed of operation, reliability and accuracy of files and information handling which is performed electronically with the aid of computerized system in comparison with the manual system which is slow, less accurate and less reliable. The attributes of speed enhanced by the computerized system of IT architecture are the processing speed, access speed, and transmission speed. The information technology architecture also results to a system with high throughput in terms of the number of jobs which can be executed by the computerized system per unit of time. This implies that the architecture also delivers a system that improves the quality of information management in the company, enterprise, organization or institution. The design of the architecture also includes documentation with it which is very instrumental in making sure that the required information is available for maintenance of the system.

Whether IT architecture impacts the effectiveness or efficiency of information management and vice versa

It is in fact true that the architecture of IT improves the efficiency and effectiveness of information management. The architecture is designed in such a way that it controls and directs all the processing, storage, access and other operations at the electronic speed. The efficiency in this case is looked at in terms of the shortest time taken to execute instructions or to perform any information related operation with accuracy. The effectiveness will involve the use of both few available system resources as well as shortest time possible to execute of process jobs or some other particular instructions and with much accuracy. Given that, speed and accuracy are some of the reasons as to why the computer system is used in many sectors of economy; it simply means that the IT architecture used to design the information system has direct impact of information management. Therefore, a well designed IT architecture for computerized or electronic information system will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the information management.

On the other hand, the information technology architecture can at times reduce the efficiency and effectiveness of information management. As an example, poor design of IT architecture is likely to compromise the quality of information management in terms of efficiency and effectiveness due to design flaws. The architectural design in fact affects the functioning of an information system in terms of reliability, accuracy, robustness, error generation, throughput, safety and security of information which are all factors that determines the efficiency and effectiveness of an information system. An information system that is less reliable, less robust, more prone to errors, has less throughput and many other negative system attributes makes the information system difficult and hard to manage. In this case, the efficiency and effectiveness of information management is reduced.

Data storage methods regarding database, data warehouse, and / or date mart for IT and data industry

The data warehouses stores have large size of data market including both software and hardware and thus a considerable fraction of budgets for information technology are geared towards applications of data warehousing. Data warehousing is thus taken as the general purpose answer to the issues of making management of information requirements satisfactory in an organization. Data marts on the other hand allow data to be accessed openly by users through data extraction from the central data warehouse into data marts in order to maintain some specific requirements for analysis. The database allows information to be organized and stored in the form of tables, forms, queries and reports (Moody & Kortink, 2000).

The data storage methods that can be considered generally in this case include the use of Hbase for distributed storage of data, simple storage service which is used to offer online storage for web services including the Google BigTable to support the storage of data at the back end (Chen, Chiang & Storey, 2012). The MIPS and terabyte that uses Hadoop cluster storage method is employed by organizations that handled big data for the purpose of cost reduction through the cloud service. There is also disk storage that can be used for storing large and varied volumes of data and which is also turning out to be extra cost effective and efficient. The NoSQL is also a storage method that can be considered (Davenport & Dyché, 2013).

Optimal data storage method between the methods suggested above

The Hadoop cluster method is the most optimal out of the alternatives suggested above. This is because Hadoop is a unified storage method and an atmosphere of processing that is very much scalable to large and sophisticated volumes of data in the form of terabytes. The movement of data by means of Hadoop together with NoSQL storage also eliminates the need for data normalization. Last but not least, the Hadoop cluster method is more cost effective as compared with the traditional relational database methods and database appliances methods for storing of data (Davenport & Dyché, 2013).

References

Moody, D. L., & Kortink, M. A. (2000, June). From enterprise models to dimensional models: a methodology for data warehouse and data mart design. In DMDW (p. 5).

Chen, H., Chiang, R. H., & Storey, V. C. (2012). Business Intelligence and Analytics: From Big Data to Big Impact. MIS quarterly, 36(4), 1165-1188.

Davenport, T. H., & Dyché, J. (2013). Big data in big companies. May 2013.