Information and Technology

What does it mean Information and Technology ???

The IT department ensures that the organization’s systems, networks, data and applications all connect and function properly. The IT team handles three major areas:

 

Help desk staff specialize in answering questions, gathering information and directing troubleshooting efforts for hardware and software. IT support often includes IT asset and change management, helping admins with procurement, handling backup and recovery of data and applications, monitoring and analyzing logs and other performance monitoring tools and following established support workflows and processes.

 

Administration. Administrators handle the day-to-day deployment, operation and monitoring of an IT environment, including systems, networks and applications. Admins often perform a range of other duties such as software upgrades, user training, software license management, procurement, security, data management and observing adherence to business process and compliance requirements.

 

Applications.

Businesses rely on software to perform work. Some applications are procured and deployed from third parties, such as email server applications. But many organizations retain a staff of skilled developers that create the applications and interfaces example APIs needed to deliver critical business capabilities and services. Applications might be coded in a wide array of popular languages and integrated with other applications to create smooth and seamless interactions between different applications. Developers might also be tasked with creating interactive business websites and building mobile applications. The trend toward agile or continuous development paradigms require developers to be increasingly involved with IT operations, such as deploying and monitoring applications.

 

Compliance.

Businesses are obligated to observe varied government and industry driven regulatory requirements. IT staff play a major role in securing and monitoring access to business data and applications to ensure that such resources are used according to established business governance policy that meets regulatory requirements. Such staff are deeply involved with security tasks and routinely interact with legal and business teams to prevent, detect, investigate and report possible breaches.

 

 

Information technology

 

So how is IT actually involved in day-to-day business? Consider five common examples of IT and teams at work:

 

1. Server upgrade. One or more data center servers near the end of their operational and maintenance lifecycle. IT staff will select and procure replacement servers, configure and deploy the new servers, backup applications and data on existing servers, transfer that data and applications to the new servers, validate that the new servers are working properly and then repurpose or decommission and dispose of the old servers.

2. Security monitoring. Businesses routinely employ tools to monitor and log activity in applications, networks and system IT staff receive alerts of potential threats or noncompliant behavior such as a user attempting to access a restricted file — check logs and other reporting tools to investigate and determine the root cause of the alert and take prompt action to address and remediate the threat, often driving changes and improvements to security posture that can prevent similar events in the future.

3. New software. The business determines a need for a new mobile application that can allow customers to log in and access account information or conduct other transactions from smartphones and tablets. Developers work to create and refine a suitable application according to a planned roadmap. Operations staff posts each iteration of the new mobile application for download and deploy the back-end components of the app to the organization’s infrastructure.

4. Business improvement. A business requires more availability from a critical application to help with revenue or business continuance strategies. The IT staff might be called upon to architect a high availability cluster to provide greater performance and resilience for the application to ensure that the application can continue to function in the face of single outages. This can be paired with enhancements to data storage protection and recovery.

5. User support. Developers are building a major upgrade for a vital business application. Developers and admins will collaborate to create new documentation for the upgrade. IT staff might deploy the upgrade for limited beta testing allowing a select group of users to try the new version while also developing and delivering comprehensive training that prepares all users for the new version’s eventual release.

Software vs. hardware

IT includes several layers of physical equipment (hardware), virtualization, management systems, automation tools, operating systems, other system software and applications used to perform essential functions. User devices, peripherals and software can be included in the IT domain. IT can also refer to the architectures, methodologies and regulations governing the use and storage of data.

 

Software

There are two categories of software: system software and applications. System software encompasses the computer programs that manage the basic computing functions. They include the following:

 

 

 

1.    Oses

2.    BIOSes;

3.    boot programs;

4.    assemblers; and

5.    device drivers.

 

Business Applications Include 

Databases, such as SQL Server;

• Transactional systems, such as real-time order entry;

• Email servers, like Microsoft Exchange

• Web servers, like Apache and Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (IIS);

• Customer relationship management, such as Oracle NetSuite and HubSpot; and

• Enterprise resource planning systems, such as SAP S/4HANA.

These applications make use of programmed instructions to manipulate, consolidate, disperse and otherwise work with data for a business purpose.

Mobile applications that run on smartphones, tablets and other portable devices typically connect with cloud or data center applications over the internet. These applications have expanded the scope of computing and created a new category of software and telecommunications that requires special expertise to maintain.

Hardware

There are many different types of computer hardware. Computer servers run business applications. Servers interact with client devices in the client-server model. They also communicate with other servers across computer networks, which typically link to the internet.

Storage is another type of hardware. It’s any technology that holds information as data. Storage may be local on a specific server or shared among many servers, and it may be installed on premises or accessed via a cloud service. Information that is stored can take many forms, including file, multimedia, telephony, and web and sensors data. Storage hardware includes volatile random-access memory (RAM) as well as non-volatile tape, hard disk drives and solid-state drives. Telecom equipment, comprising network interface cards (NICs), cabling, wireless communications and switching devices, connect the hardware elements together and to external networks