The Role of Information System Monitoring in Improving System Availability

The IS availability is an essential requirement that business presents to its IT departments. Ibrahimovic (2016) concluded that, with a very low investment in “monitoring of the relevant components”, it is possible to achieve a significant improvement in IS availability. This chapter starts with a brief introduction of the IS availability. Authors provide a short definition of BBN modeling and address different aspects of IS monitoring, particularly: network monitoring, server monitoring, application, security and business process monitoring. As main artifact of this chapter authors proposed the monitoring. Since the framework emphases importance of governance and management layer, chapter contains overview of COBIT 5 and ITIL V3 from the IS monitoring aspect. In the final part of the chapter, authors address the challenges that a monitoring tool needs to address in modern information systems, especially but not limited to DevOps, Cloud and Hybrid IT architectures.

Two Approaches in Assessing Business Continuity Management Attitudes in the Organizational Context

The paper presents two approaches in assessing the business continuity management (BCM) attitudes in the organizational context: qualitative and quantitative. The first approach - case study analysis is based on a series of in-depth interviews with the key people involved in the BCM processes in Croatia (Chief Information Officers – CIOs, Chief Executive Officers – CEOs and BC managers). The second approach is an empirical research that was conducted among companies in Bosnia and Herzegovina based on Confirmative Factor Analysis (CFA) which is used for psychometrically validation of the measurement scale of BCP and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and t-test for the hypotheses testing. The empirical research has shown that there is a statistically significant difference in terms of attitudes of respondents regarding business continuity depending of companies' size and sector that company belongs to. Specifically, financial sector is in all of BCM segments more coherent than other sectors.In addition, qualitative research revealed the results showing that business continuity plan (BCP) and disaster recovery plan (DRP) were the only IT governance areas that were implemented in business practice. The reason for that may be found in the fact that BCP and DRP are very expensive to implement especially for small companies.

The Risk Management Profession in Australia

This study aimed to identify to what extent Australian organizations have any plans to manage business continuity threats, and the nature and content of these plans. Sixty-four respondents who were risk management professionals were surveyed to explore the Business Continuity Practices within their organizations. The ANOVA analysis showed 39 per cent of the organizations had developed an enterprise-wide plan of which just over half stated that the plan was tested. However, 36 per cent of respondents had no plan, an “informal plan,” were developing a plan, or did not know whether they had a plan. Standardized guidelines for a process to manage risks have been developed across many spheres and countries and are brought together in the international risk management standard ISO31000 (ISO, 2009), which presents a process applicable to all organizations and all risks. Human resource practices that promote consistent communication and an organizational culture that allows business continuity plan values, attitudes and beliefs to become embedded and to move across traditional organizational boundaries are therefore important for gaining the cooperation needed to implement plans in an organization's operational areas pertaining to business continuity.

Always-On Enterprise Information Systems With Service-Oriented Architecture and Load Balancing

In today's digital age, it is essential for a business to provide a seamless and continuous service to its customers and other stakeholders like providers. Such an always-on service is required, not only for the strong competitive environment but also because of the fact that most the stakeholders also have to offer seamless and continuous service to their own stakeholders. In this chain, failure of one of the systems and components even for a short time can result in a disaster in the entire service chain. A wise approach to provide a continuous service should consider all possible failure areas in a computer-based information system. Since hardware and software are vulnerable to a myriad of problems that can halt the normal operation of a system, an ideal solution should not only consider both of these two components, but also should seek to find ways for them to work in support of each other against a malfunction. This chapter is an attempt to develop a model that provides this functionality. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is implemented in the model due to its tenets that are suitable for such functionality.

Always-On Sport Content Multimedia Delivery Over Internet in Croatia

Multimedia allows and encourages different ways and methods of human sense manipulation using the highest achievement of technological development with the aim of communication, education, or entertainment. The most frequent contents that are transmitted in real time are contents based on voice services, the so-called VoIP services. In order to shed some light to the opportunity of the media delivery of sports content in always-on mode in Croatia the following goals are fulfilled. First, the possibilities of transfer services of multimedia content live via Internet are analyzed. Second, the competitive advantages over the same or similar services and check its influence on the development of society and the general economic activity are examined. Third, habits of potential customers using multimedia services as well as their expectations are analyzed based on the survey research results. Finally, based on this information, the canvas model of providing a service of sport content multimedia delivery in always-on mode in Croatia is developed.

Always-On Enterprise Information Systems

The chapter presents conceptual aspects of “always-on” information systems as well as the main attributes and implementation drivers. In addition, HP's HP-UX server operating environment which provides a possible solution platform for “always-on” information system is presented as a case.

Business Continuity and Information Systems

Considering the expectations of customers on service and information availability 24x7, complete operations suspension in case of adverse events is not an option. Modern businesses have become dependent on their information systems (IS) whose incidents and failures can highly affect business operations. Ensuring continuity in IS is related to the reliable delivery information. In order to lower the negative impact of IS incidents, organizations should get prepared for them. Business continuity management (BCM) is a holistic management approach whose aim is to identify, prevent or mitigate operational risks. BCM consists of business continuity planning (BCP), contingency planning (CP) and disaster recovery planning (DRP). BCP defines the strategies that organizations should implement in order to ensure their survival when a crisis event occurs. The aim of this paper is to identify the relevant elements of continuity in IS.

Always on Guard

This chapter advances the idea that the modern organization can become immune to a full spectrum of risks by re-engineering its organizational capability and culture. Given the accepted role of people in causing or escalating technical risk – the requirement to achieve ‘always on' socio-technical protection poses a significant challenge. However, an enterprise's human resources offer a massive potential to detect and report risk and there is also substantial competitive advantage available to the organization which develops, integrates, leverages and acts on intelligence gained from a suite of socio-technical sensors and sense-making processes. The human resources and culture of an organization, properly configured, could comprise a powerful innate (constant) and adaptive (active) immune system. The chapter will provide the reader with a framework for how such an immune capability could be integrated into an organization that takes seriously the requirement to be ‘always on' – protected from any form or blend of socio-technical threat.

Enterprise Risk Management Software

This chapter presents research results on user requirements related to enterprise risk management software. The authors developed a questionnaire to investigate the standpoints of risk managers, quality managers, and others in charge of risk management regarding the functionality they expect risk management software to support. In today's globalized and volatile world, the recognition, understanding, and management of risks is critical for an organization's survival. Adequate software support enables organizations to take an innovative, risk-based approach to governance and compliance and to gain a holistic, enterprise-wide view of risk exposure and near-real-time risk management and monitoring. Research results show the main attributes that risk management software should have in order to fulfill user expectations. The chapter also provides some important guidelines and suggestions for risk management software development and improvement.

The Always-On Business Model and Competitive Advantage

This chapter discusses the always-on business model of information technology (IT) and how firms can gain a competitive advantage and differentiate themselves from competitors that may be adopting a similar always-on model. The discussion of how firms can get and keep a competitive advantage has been a topic of interest for a long time. An always-on application is a type of IT application; therefore, this is part of a more general research question that has been of interest to researchers that researches have wondered if information system applications actually provide an advantage to firms when firms are getting the same type of IT application. Previous research has concluded that IT improves productivity but the exact mechanisms by which IT increases business value are still not fully understood. One of the mechanism by which IT improves the competitiveness of firms is through the identification of innovative opportunities (Bardhan et al., 2013).