SIA - MODULE 5

Enterprise Infrastructure

The enterprise-wide collection of facilities and services that supports communications and shared services, linking BSDs, management information services, and portals for customers, partners, and employees.

Business System Domain (BSD)

A business unit's system domain within the enterprise, with its own isolated LAN and restricted access, free to use network technology suited to its function.

Economies of Scale

Cost and effort savings gained when facilities are shared instead of duplicated across the enterprise.

Information Access

The infrastructure benefit of improved sharing and access to information across the enterprise.

Backbone Connectivity

The infrastructure benefit of linking BSDs to each other and to the outside world.

Integration Infrastructure

The general design that unifies diverse systems while preserving flexibility and autonomy for each BSD.

Intranet

The primary vehicle for internal user access to applications and for the exchange of messages and files between applications.

LAN (Local-Area Network)

A network that serves a work group.

WAN (Wide-Area Network)

The network that links the work-group LANs together across the enterprise.

Personal Computers (PCs)

Part of the infrastructure because business applications depend on them for user access. They run Web browsers, the primary user interface, and handle e-mail, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and conferencing.

Browser Plug-ins

Add-ons that extend the Web browser's capability.

Message-Oriented Middleware (MOM)

Software that communicates messages between BSDs and their applications in a store-and-forward, asynchronous mode.

Store-and-Forward

A message is held in a queue and delivered later rather than immediately.

Asynchronous Mode

The sender and receiver do not have to be active at the same time. The receiver processes the message when it is ready.

Message Queue

The holding place where an application posts a message for later delivery.

Once-and-Only-Once Delivery

The guarantee that a message is delivered exactly one time, never lost and never duplicated.

System Management

Supports operation, configuration, and problem resolution for the infrastructure, and anticipates and coordinates upgrades and workload changes to avoid disruption of service.

Security Services

Primarily each BSD's responsibility, executed in a physically secure environment.

Authentication

Verifying a user's identity. This is done first.

Authorization

Granting an authenticated user access to specific data and functionality.

Server-to-Server Security

For communication between BSDs, servers should authenticate each other and encrypt their communications.

Organization Directory

A service holding information about employees and the corporate organization structure, accessible anywhere in the corporation. It defines who a person is in the organizational context and holds enterprise-level roles.

Digital Certificate

Authenticates a user's identity, while the organization directory defines the person's organizational context.

Enterprise-Level Roles

Roles defined in the organization directory, distinct from local roles defined within individual BSDs.

Archiving Service

A shared enterprise service for long-term storage of legally binding documents such as customer agreements, internal transactions, and digitally signed documents.

Meta Data Repository

Holds data about data, systems, and interfaces, providing data for runtime operations and distinct from development repositories.

Knowledge

Information about relationships, consequences, and priorities that, along with relevant facts, is the basis for good decisions.

Knowledge Management

The infrastructure helps find knowledge rather than store it, by providing storage and search of knowledge meta data. Capture and classification remain with specific business functions.

Portal

A window on the enterprise from the public Internet and a point of contact and control for access to information and services, letting outsiders see only what is appropriate.

Business-to-Business (B2B) Messaging

Exchanges conducted between the computers of business partners rather than between a human and a computer.

ebXML (Electronic Business XML)

A United Nations-sponsored standard that specifies protocols and documents for B2B exchanges, along with a reliable messaging service that guarantees once-and-only-once delivery.