MANAGING INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND TECHNOLOGIES

This document begins by surveying information systems and information technology in

general, looking at the relationship between information and the manager’s job and the nature
of the current information technology revolution. Then it discusses several types of
information systems that managers can use to help themselves perform their jobs, and
examines the impact that rapidly evolving information systems and technologies may have
on managers’ jobs and on an organization’s competitive advantage.

IT Service Management requires the correct integration of three factors: people, processes
and technology.1
IT service providers can no longer maintain their focus on technology and their own
organizations, now they have to consider the quality of the services they provide and focus
on their relationships with customers2
Usually the management of IT services involves the use of outsourcings, insourcing’s and
shared services. It is extremely important to maintain a broad knowledge base within the
organization for these practices to be successful.
The objectives of good IT service management must be:
1. Provide an adequate quality management.
2. Increase efficiency
3. Align business processes and IT infrastructure.
4. Reduce the risks associated with IT Services.
5. Generate business
Today's organizations make significant investments in information technology resources to
support business processes. The significant and relevant value that the use of the
information has for the organizations, determines that all the processes related to the
production, administration and use of Information Technology (IT) services must be
optimally managed and controlled to ensure the quality of the information. Information,
support for compliance with business objectives.
The data and information processes resulting from the operations and business processes
require the application of control techniques and measures within the framework of a
management system that guarantees the provision of services and the reduction of
vulnerability to risk generating threats that jeopardize the stability of the operational,
organizational and macro system of the business. All of the above justifies the need to
optimize IT resources in support and alignment with business objectives through effective
processes of "IT Service Management".

1
De la Cruz, Angela; Cruz, Angela De la; Mauricio, David (16 de mayo de 2014). «Una Revisión de la Gestión de
Servicios de Tecnologías de Información». Revista de investigación de Sistemas e Informática 4 (1): 71-
80. ISSN 1815-0268. Consultado el 14 de marzo de 2016.
2
IT Service Management Forum (2002). van Bon, J., ed. IT Service Management: An Introduction. Van Haren
Publishing. ISBN 90-806713-4-7. Emphasis added.
In organizations there is an IT organization that generates and provides IT services and a
group of internal (users) and external clients that demand these services and expect their
timely and quality delivery. The relationships and communications between the IT provider
and the IT clients must be channeled through a system that guarantees the optimization of
the delivery and service support processes through the consolidation of IT Service
Management.
Investments in the IT infrastructure and in the information assets of the organizations are
increasingly important, which justifies the implementation of systems that ensure the
performance of the processes based on IT services to ensure the reduction of the total cost
of ownership (TCO) and a reasonable return on investment (ROI). So far, only some high-
level and large companies have assumed and incorporated into their organization culture
and business plans, the IT Service Management processes based on best practices of
international acceptance.
This new paradigm based on the service must have an approach to organizations of any
size, companies must adopt and adapt these best practices under a "Quality of Service"
approach and opportunity to change the business with the application of updated standards.
This paradigm is based on the continuous improvement of the IT Service Culture.
The products and services of these frames of reference are oriented to the implementation
of consolidated systems of continuous improvement in the management of information
technology service in alignment with the business objectives, from end to end from the
diagnostic and planning phases to the implantation, monitoring, supervision and
optimization. The trend of IT Service Management is based on the promotion and
application support of best practices, reference frameworks and international acceptance
standards, such as ISO / IEC 20000, ITIL, ITSCMM, COBIT, MOF, ISO / IEC -17799 -
2700X and others.
Directs strategic changes that generate competitiveness and productivity through the proper
management of the different technological and information platforms. It directs strategic
changes that generate competitiveness and productivity through the adequate management
of the different technological and information platforms.
Skills you develop
Performance areas.

 Director of systems and technologies in national and international organizations.

 Manager of technological projects with holistic vision of organizations to generate
added value.
 Advisor to public and / or private organizations that require a strategic vision in the
implementation of technological projects.
  Manager and business developer for the generation of solutions related to
information systems and technologies with an environmental dimension.
To support the mission and support processes in an organization, it is important to have
information systems that become a single source of useful data to support or argue
corporate decisions. The information systems must:

 Guarantee the quality of information

 Have consultation resources for the public of interest

 Allow transactions from the processes that generate the information

 Be scalable, interoperable, safe, functional and financially and technically

sustainable

 The Information Systems strategy involves the development of the following

aspects:

 Information systems architecture

 Development and maintenance

 Implantation

 Functional technical support services

As a result of the management of information systems we obtain support information

systems, mission information systems, digital information services and strategic addressing
information systems.
The contributions of john atanasoff
Dr. John Vincent Atanasoff built the true electronic computer half a century ago. He and
his assistant designed the machine to perform mathematical calculations for his graduate
students, but his contribution to computing was nearly lost to history.
Atanasoff worked on his machine during the 1930s at Iowa State University. After hours of
work one night in 1937, he was stumped by a basic problem of electronic design. In
exhaustion, Atanasoff drove 170 miles over the state line to a road house in Illinois.
(“There wasn’t any place to get a drink in Iowa,” he recalls.) In the Illinois tavern he saw
things from a new perspective and solved some of the thorny problems that had plagued
him. The computer would be a digital device, unlike the analog devices that were then in
use. It would use vacuum tubes and have an on-off configuration. The computer would also
have memory and be based on the base-two number system. Finally it would have a
“jogging” function to refresh the computer memory and prevent loss of information.
With his assistant, Clifford Berry, Atanasoff finally built his machine—the “ABC”
(Atanasoff Berry Calculator.) He signed over his rights to the invention to the Iowa State
College Research Foundation in exchange for a $5,330 grant, assuming that the college
would patent the invention. World War II intervened, however, and no patent application
was prepared.
Later, personnel in charge apparently did not realize the significance of the device, and no
patent was ever obtained. Meanwhile, Drs. John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert of the
Moore School of Electrical Engineering at University of Pennsylvania were working on a
computing machine for the U.S. Army. ENIAC, the machine they developed, was
completed in 1946 and has been widely referred to as the first modern computer. They
applied for and received two patents, one for ENIAC, and one for the “jogging” memory
function they used. Mauchly and Eckert assigned their patents to the Sperry Rand
Corporation, for which they later went to work. Sperry collected royalties from other
computer companies for all computers using the technology developed in ENIAC, which,
over the years, has been estimated to total $1 billion. It was not until 1967 that another
computer company, Control Data, found an obscure reference to Atanasoff’s machine. It,
along with several other companies, sued and won release from the royalties, largely on the
basis of Atanasoff’s testimony. The court ruled that the patents had wrongly been issued
and that the original theory was Atanasoff’s. However, neither Iowa State nor Atanasoff
has received any financial reward from the decision.

Military information logjams

During the Gulf War Pentagon officials were delighted with the performance of weapons
like the F-18 hornet and Tomahawk cruise missile. They were less delighted with other
important systems. Shipboard communications computers, the key link to General
Schwarzkopf’s Riyadh headquarters, were dangerously slow and out of date. Crucial orders
from Riyadh were transmitted to some naval vessels at telex speed, often arriving in more
than twenty separate pieces and taking up to six hours to be completed. Personal computers,
by contrast, can transmit data ten to twenty times as fast.
The delays left pilots with little time to study their missions before taking off. In a
desperate attempt to by-pass the logjam, officers from the U.S.S. Saratoga began running a
200-mile helicopter shuttle from their Red Sea location to Riyadh. There the day’s orders
were copied onto a floppy disk, flown back to the carrier, transferred to a hard drive, and
distributed.

Importance for organizations

An information system for the organization is very important because it facilitates the
organization and normalization of information, which allows knowing the status of data,
information on markets and competitors, statistics of projects, suppliers and other relevant
information for the organizational management and decision making.

It must respond to the fulfillment of its mission and vision, as supreme objectives of this,
since the information systems interact directly with the environment of the organization,
since the elements of the environment that affect the system constitute an input and all
result of the system towards your environment is a way out. Similarly, feedback is a key
element for the development and strengthening of the organization. The feedback allows us
to know the impact of the services and products, which will serve as outputs in the
environment and promotes the redesign of the system based on the satisfaction of the needs
of the users / customers that will form inputs.

It represents a process of great importance, since the information obtained through it

influences quantitatively and qualitatively in the improvement of the quality of services and
products.