WHAT WOULD YOU REGARD AS THE KEY CHALLENGES IN
MANAGING GLOBAL IINFORMATION SYSTEMS AND IT
INFRASTRUCTURE?

Introduction

At present the business world is experiencing globalisation, internationalisation of markets, ebusiness and the knowledge economy. These are among the interconnected phenomena whose emergence creates new challenges for the growth and adaptation of numerous businesses(Raymond, 2003). Organisations which adopted a dependent view (IT infrastructure investments derived from strategic context) or an enabling view (infrastructure capability is a core competence and integrated with strategic context) are highly dependent on their present IT infrastructures
(Broadbent, 2001) which link them with partners into unified networks that share resources, best practices, sales information and “increase communication with partners in order to react rapidly to market changes and deploy products efficiently…” (Laudon & Laudon, 2000). Companies are facing constant challenges of planning, designing, implementing and managing global information systems and IT infrastructures. IT infrastructures have become one of the most critical and
intricate investment decisions made by executives and are an important factor in businesses’ longterm competitive prospects.

Four Management Concepts of Enterprise Computing

In order to understand the complexities of managing a global Information Systems, the term enterprise computing and four underlying management concepts (IT investment portfolio, IT infrastructure, business logic and information architecture) need to be closely examined. According to the two leading academics Kenneth Laudon and Jane Laudon,enterprise computing is a method of planning and designing of systems that “integrates the key business processes within a firm and even integrates business processes across an entire industry” (Laudon & Laudon, 2000).
IT investment portfolio is the first management concept, which from Weill’s and Broadbent’s point of view is an approach which aggregates all investment decisions such as costs, risks and benefits of investments into one unified procedure (Weill and Broadbent, 1998). The challenge that comes with IT investment portfolio is determining whether it is returning an acceptable benefit to the firm given the competitive circumstances. It is up to the company to ascertain what
benefits it values most, whether it is substantial of financial returns or long-term marketdominating strategic position. Several challenges are apparent in establishing what benefits a current portfolio may bring to a global organisation. Evaluation and measurement methods are constantly being developed to tackle that difficulty. One of the most prominent methods remains a balanced scorecard (BSC) which was initially developed by Robert Kaplan and David Norton to allow businesses to evaluate corporate IT and on the whole to drive their strategies based on
measurement and follow-up (Grembergen & Bruggen, 2000). Additionally, another challenge for the management is recognising exactly how one firm’s strategic position is affected by the organisation-wide IT investment. This yet again, requires looking at organisation’s obje ctives and business strategy and comparing this to the current and future-standing strategic position.
The second component in enterprise computing is an IT infrastructure which according to a well known theorist James O’Brien consists of IT equipment, software and human resources required to control the equipment. This definition is indeed analogous to Weill’s and Broadbent’s definition of the structure of IT infrastructure which according to them consists of shared and standard IT applications, shared IT services, human IT infrastructure and IT components (Weill and Broadbent, 1998). The key complex decisions which managers face is determining whether the right hardware, software and human resources have been chosen and most importantly whether
current infrastructure is capable of achieving the firm’s strategic objectives. These decisions are indeed critical to business success and ultimately determine whether an organisation will achieve low return on investments or introduce an IS system which is highly standardised for compatibility, cost efficient, of high availability and extensible for further updates. According to two prominent academics Weill and Vitale, presently many businesses handle such issues by
establishing satisfactory performance benchmarks and then comparing them to the results. Many aspects of an IS such as source code quality, data quality and reliability, system reliability, ease of use, output quality and portability of a new or modified IS are critically analysed (Weill & Vitale, 1999).
Business logic is another significant component of enterprise computing. It determines an organisation’s business rules; that is how a firm is delivering its products or services and broadly speaking what business processes exist to achieve set business strategic objectives. In case of an infomediary or an online auction broker such as e-Bay the business logic would be to deliver highly sought-after information or to encapsulate the unimportant intricacies of online transactions between customers, businesses or a combination of the two. Subsequently, the definition and scope of this business logic is completed by implementing online information portals or auctions and charging users monthly subscription fees (i.e. Businessweek.com) or transaction fees in case of online auction brokering or transaction brokering (i.e. PayPal.com).
Lastly, to support the business logic and key business processes, sound information architecture must be designed and implemented. Information architecture encompasses everything an IS holds within itself, from large-scale applications to networks which facilitate communication,transactions and service delivery on a global scale. Presently, numerous businesses still see information architecture as just hardware and software and thus fail to align the current IS with organisational strategic objectives (McKeen & Smith, 1996). The infrastructure must be closelyevaluated to determine whether business processes have been improved and optimised, that correct design and implementation decisions have been made and whether or not a satisfactorybusiness value have been realised (Laudon & Laudon, 2000). Once again, benchmarking of information architecture is highly recommended to be used by organisations to determine the level of success.