ABSTRACT
Issues related to the design, implementation, and maintenance of the IT infrastructure are important for every modern company and particularly challenging for larger enterprises. Very rapid technical change and increasing demands for connectivity to external systems make these tasks even more difficult. The purpose of this section is to help IS managers broaden and deepen their understanding of the following core issues:
• Managing a distributed computing environment • Developing and maintaining the networking infrastructure • Data warehousing • Quality assurance and control • Security and risk management
MANAGING A DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING ENVIRONMENT
IT solutions are increasingly being built around core Internet technologies that enable the distribution of processing and data storage resources via standardized protocols. Effective management of distributed environments requires both careful technical infrastructure analysis and design, as well as appropriate allocation and structuring of organizational resources to support the chosen model of technology distribution. This section begins with three chapters that discuss the broad organizational and technical context in which modern distributed systems are managed.
