Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
As auto manufacturers must match
the intended use of a vehicle to its
components, so too must business
managers select the hardware
components of an effective
information system.
(Source: © Mark Jenkinson/
CORBIS.)
•
Bosch Security Products provides and maintains physical security systems to control
access and detect intrusions for the secure locations of large organizations such as the
Dutch Army. For a single customer, Bosch might perform preventive maintenance on
thousands of components to ensure that its system is working properly. Service
technicians used to rely on a paper-intensive process that required them to fill out forms
on the status of each device. The process was error prone and could not provide customers
with the comprehensive reports they needed to verify that all necessary repairs and
replacements had been completed. Maintenance technicians and their managers defined
the requirements for a new and improved solution to meet the business needs. They then
consulted with IS experts and chose a PDA-based device for data entry instead of a laptop
device because it was lighter, easier to handle, and more resistant to rough handling.
1
•
The Iowa Health System is a network of physicians, hospitals, civic leaders, and local
volunteers who serve more than 100 communities. To support patient care, it operates
a multifacility Picture Archiving and Communications System in which they store and
manage image data such as magnetic resonance images (MRIs). The storage capacity
requirements of this system are rapidly growing to 1 million exams per year. Staff and
administrators identified additional data storage needs for secure and redundant storage
of patient data and to meet the United States Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) requirements for data integrity. Taking these
requirements, the IS staff selected and implemented an appropriate data storage solution
that met all needs in a cost-effective manner.
2
As these examples demonstrate, choosing the right computer hardware requires understand-
ing its relationship to the information system and the needs of the organization. Furthermore,
hardware objectives are subordinate to, but supportive of, the information system and the
current and future needs of the organization.
Hardware Components
Computer system hardware components include devices that perform input, processing, data
storage, and output (see Figure 3.1). To understand how these hardware devices work to-
gether, consider an analogy from a paper-based office. Imagine a one-room office occupied
by a single person named George. George (the processing device) can organize and manip-
ulate data. George's mind (register storage) and his desk (primary storage) are places to
temporarily store data. Filing cabinets fill the need for more permanent storage (secondary
storage). In this analogy, the incoming and outgoing mail trays are sources of new data (input)
or places to put the processed paperwork (output).
