Designing and Rightsizing the Information System Architecture

  • Authors:

  • Danilo Ardagna;Chiara Francalanci;Vincenzo Piuri

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Electronics and Information Technologies, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo Da Vinci 32, 20133 Milano, Italy. ardagna@elet.polimi.it;Department of Electronics and Information Technologies, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo Da Vinci 32, 20133 Milano, Italy. francala@elet.polimi.it;Department of Information Technologies, University of Milan, Via Bramante 65, 26013 Crema, Italy. piuri@dti.unimi.it

  • Venue:
  • Information Systems Frontiers
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

Information system design and sizing constitute a complex, top-down process that tailors the technology architecture to application requirements. Practitioners usually tackle this top-down process by focusing on individual design aspects, such as data or specific applications, and by relying on their previous experiences to compare alternative architectural solutions. Acquisition costs are usually accounted for, but related operating and maintenance costs are often neglected or underestimated. The complexity of optimizing individual design problems leads researchers to avoid a global optimization perspective and, thus, the IS architecture is usually a result of the juxtaposition of multiple local optima.This paper takes an overall perspective on the cost minimization problem of information system design to achieve a better trade-off between cost and performance over the whole expected life of the technology architecture. A comprehensive design methodology is discussed as an integrating framework that accounts for all categories of costs, including design, implementation, maintenance, and operation, to achieve a globally cost-minimizing solution.