CIS 599 Week 6 Discussion 1

Course Code CIS599_W6_P1: Sustainability, Technology, and Economic Pragmatism: A View Into the Future
Slide #	Slide Title	Slide Narration
Slide 1	Introduction	Welcome to Graduate Information Systems Capstone. In this lesson we will discuss Sustainability, Technology, and Economic Pragmatism: A View Into the Future Next slide.
Slide 2	Topics	The following topics will be covered in this lesson: Sustainability; Globalization, Decentralization, and sustainability; Future Opportunities For Improving Global IT Sustainability; Mobility; and Ubiquity: Pervasive Computing, Ubiquitous Sensors, and Ad Hoc Communications. Next slide.
Slide 3	Topics, continued	Additionally, the following topics will be covered in this lesson: Energy: Smart Buildings, Renewables, and Campus Sustainability; Physical Security and Information Assurance; Integrating Sustainability Into Strategic Planning; and The Future Lies Before Us. Next slide.
Slide 4	Sustainability	The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines sustainability as being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged. According to the text, sustainability is the ability to sustain something. In an ecological sense, sustainability is a means of configuring communities, systems, and human activity so that cultures, their members, and their economies are able to meet their needs and reach their greatest potential in the present, while preserving resources, biodiversity and natural ecosystems, planning and acting for the ability to maintain these ideals for future generations. Most of the time, sustainability is seen as negative from a business perspective, but this is not true. In fact, sustainability should be considered to be in the best interest of the business. Think about a man or woman who makes good financial decisions and leaves wealth to his or her children, and then the children make good financial decisions so that they can pass wealth to their children. Most people do not see a problem with this, because generational wealth is considered a good thing. What is key here is that the financial wealth was sustained rather than spent frivolously. From the same perspective, sustainability encourages a business to do the things that will allow them to have longevity. Protecting and using wisely the resources that we have is just good, plain commonsense. Next slide.
Slide 5	Globalization, Decentralization, and Sustainability	There are several leading green initiatives that are solidifying Green IT as a discipline. First, Leadership - the text notes that an IT organization can be transformed only with clear direction from the CIO. Transformative change means a holistic approach to Green IT. That approach should integrate planning, purchasing, implementation, usage, maintenance, and disposal. Ultimately, the CIO is responsible, but it must be remembered that the CIO is not alone in organizational endeavors relating to Green IT; Second, Current Practices are a first selection target for any CIO looking down the road of Green IT. For instance, power-saving initiatives present the CIO with abundant opportunities to directly cut energy costs. The best practice CIO encourages the enterprise to purchase low-power hardware whenever possible, and when looking to upgrade existing infrastructure. Five key areas of current practices where IT can have a significant impact are: End user working practices; Office environment and equipment; Office infrastructure and data center; Procurement; and Corporate citizenship. Each of these areas harnesses great opportunities for Green IT and its exploration. The third initiative is Measuring Energy and Carbon. It must be acknowledged that energy consumption and carbon emission measurement practices are related, but are not equal. The measurements of consumption and carbon emission are not always accurate. In addition, while it is conceivable that measurement of resources in the data center could be done, it may be difficult to measure IT resources that are spread throughout the enterprise. The CIO must determine the best and most practical ways to monitor green initiatives. Fourth, Future Innovations are always on the mind of the CIO. Beyond product-level innovations, enterprises and their IT organizations may seek transformative change that radically alters processes and structures to deliver high-quality services with minimal impact on the environment. Along with transformative change, CIOs have adopted new performance measures such as Power Usage Effectiveness, which is a measure of efficiency. Next slide.
Slide 6	Future Opportunities for Improving Global IT Sustainability	In these times of economic difficulty and uncertainty, CIOs are now looking at sustainability opportunities as a way to prosper. Information technology holds the promise of revolutionary improvements in global enterprise sustainability that will dramatically enhance enterprise agility, increase operational efficiency, and even turn cost centers into profit centers. Looking forward, Virtualization and Cloud Computing are two areas that seem to hold tremendous promise for the IT organization and the enterprise in general. When considering the data center, consolidation and virtualization efforts are closely related and have a major impact on the enterprise Ecological Footprint. The deferment of a single large-scale data center can have a major impact on the Ecological Footprint. Additionally, the reduction of data centers due to virtualization can yield an enormous reduction of the carbon footprint. Storage virtualization evolving from today’s Network Attached Storage and Storage Area Networks is another approach to hardware consolidation and utilization optimization. The focus of this approach is to pool currently distributed, heterogeneous storage resources to make them appear as a single uniform, logical unit of storage. Desktop virtualization takes the localized software and moves it to a managed virtualized service. This reduces the amount of hard drive memory that local machines actually need. This natural evolution from remote desktop and network workstation technology allows the user to do more with no more than a lightweight notebook, tablet or smartphone platform. Networks that were formerly physically separated can be virtualized through Generic Routing Encapsulation tunnels or Multiprotocol Label Switching. These methods create separate, virtual networks which can be consolidated and virtualized in the same way as servers to support independent logical networks with virtual routing tables and security features. Network virtualization is currently on the rise among many enterprises. Virtualization is one piece of the puzzle, and cloud computing is the other. Server, storage, and network virtualization are the basic building blocks of cloud computing, and enable a potent, sustainable mix of Software as a Service, Platform as a Service, and Infrastructure as a Service. Cloud computing gives global IT organizations unprecedented agility, enabling them to quickly respond to dynamic market conditions, shifting sources of supply and demand, and new global opportunities with little or no change to physical, Ecological, or Carbon Footprints. Moreover, it is possible to increase usage without having negative impacts. Next slide.
Slide 7	Mobility	The CIOs of today are dealing with a workforce that is very different from years past. The worker or employee of today does not desire a cubicle and most do not even want an office. They seek freedom and flexibility in order to be creative. CIOs must be responsive to the needs of this evolving workforce. The offices of the future will allow Generation Y employees the ability to have open offices. There will be an emphasis on shared, open spaces with few private, dedicated offices. If an employee has a laptop, he or she can plug in anyway. When students walk into a classroom, everyone does not always sit in the same seat that they sat in last week. Employees that work at a business could do the same thing,which allows them to move around freely. Employees are favoring mobile computing and communications technologies that reduce or eliminate the need for conventional office space. This freedom allows the work to roam with the employee. In addition, the rise of virtual private networks allows employees with an internet connect to work from almost anywhere. Business is a collaborative thing, therefore the CIO must ensure that a high level of collaboration and creativity is maintained. Next slide.
Slide 8	Ubiquity: Pervasive Computing, Ubiquitous Sensors, and Ad Hoc Communications	According to the text, pervasive and ubiquitous sensing, computing, and communications will dominate the global enterprise of the future. In addition, nanotechnology-enabled MEM sensors are already diffusing throughout the enterprise, sensing force, shock, vibration, locations, temperature, chemistry, and other environmental conditions. The future holds the promise of office equipment that will diagnosis issues and take corrective action much like many of fault-tolerant midrange and mainframe systems of today. Radio-frequency Identification will only continue to evolve. These sensors are everywhere. Future RFID sensors that detect vibration, temperature, and chemical spectra will identify equipment maintenance issues before they become critical. RFID-produced data will drive analytics that produce highly optimized maintenance and procurement strategies, prolonging the lifetime of equipment, and thereby avoiding needless unsustainable waste that might otherwise end up in landfills. Intelligent tracking devices based on nanotechnology and molecular electronics will rapidly supersede the almost primitive hybrid polymer tags. They will be a composite of extremely low power microcontrollers, MEM sensors, GPS navigation, ad hoc networking devices, near field multiband communications transceivers, and sophisticated energy harvesters. These devices will perform the normal functions, but will extend their reach to asset tracking and location, physical security, hazard detection, material inventory, and safety functions. The future technological advances will only be rivaled by one’s imagination; therefore, the technology function of future organizations will have to be proactive and engaged as never before. Next slide.
Slide 9	Energy: Smart Buildings, Renewables, and Campus Sustainability	When there is a discussion about energy, the conversation must include buildings, which are the largest consumers of energy in the United States. This means that buildings consume forty percent of all energy; moreover, they consume seventy-two percent of all electricity generated. Buildings produce thirty-nine percent of total United States carbon dioxide emissions, and consume five hundred seventy-two billion in annual operating costs. One would think that this is where efforts and reductions should be focused. The National Science and Technology Council has established the Net Zero Energy High Performance Green Buildings Research and Development agenda to address this growing problem. The goal is to develop technologies that will result in buildings that produce as much energy as they consume. Basically, creating buildings that are smarter. Buildings that replace what is used while reducing greenhouse emissions. Next slide.
Slide 10	Physical Security and Information Assurance	Just as the future of commerce is the transnational enterprise, the future of crime and terrorism is one of stateless, transnational organizations. In this context, the term stateless can be considered to be a communications protocol that treats each request as an independent transaction unrelated to any previous request so that communication consists of independent pairs of requests and responses. As can be imagined, attacks are usually singular in nature to elude detection. These organizations pose one of the greatest threats to the sustainability of the global enterprise. In the future, attacks will not resemble military assaults. Attacks will be initiated from across the globe in cyberspace, and on occasional on-site infiltration to compromise systems not directly connected to the outside world will occur. These attacks take place daily. When government agencies, businesses and other organizations notify customers that a breach has occurred, many times the entity has been hacked or there is an instance of negligence by an employee or consultant. Terrorist attacks will focus on gaining control of low-level process control and automation systems that can be used to manipulate physical systems such as chemical process plants, nuclear reactors, natural gas pipelines, electrical grids, and other vital infrastructure that can be used to produce catastrophic effects. Future global enterprises will need to operate sophisticated intelligence gathering, analysis, forecasting, and response centers to protect global assets from potential attack. Closely resembling government around-the-clock counter-terrorism watch desks, these centers will leverage cloud computing to facilitate data ingestion, processing analysis, correlation, and alert generation from a vast number of sensors and systems distributed throughout the global enterprise. Next slide.
Slide 11	Integrating Sustainability Into Strategic Planning	The key to achieving sustainability in the global enterprise is tight integration with mainstream enterprise strategic planning. When sustainability planning is relegated to out-of-pocket processes and isolated staff, the tangible and intangible benefits will not be realized. For the majority of sustainability frameworks, there is a gap between theory and actionable tools and artifacts, requiring organizations to develop ad hoc extensions to their existing processes and tools. Strategic planning in many global organizations includes the use of strategy maps describing the corporate strategy, and different versions of scorecards to measure strategic performance. Strategy maps are an important tool for describing the strategy, and balanced scorecards are important tools for measuring and managing movement in the desired direction. Balanced scorecards stimulate a more comprehensive approach to strategic performance in the context of increasing shareholder value by enabling consideration of both short term and long term, financial and nonfinancial, and quantitative and qualitative. Strategy maps are one page illustrations of strategic objectives. This management tool has proven to be enormously useful for clarifying and communicating strategy throughout the entire enterprise. Next slide.
Slide 12	The Future Lies Before Us	The global IT organization and its leadership, directed by the CIO, can have a profound effect on enterprise sustainability by making the right choices, which begin with the strategic planning process. In The Singularity is Near, Ray Kurzweil revealed profound and accelerating trends in technology growth that are now being experienced throughout the developed world. Coming at an even quicker pace is the assimilation of this technology in developing countries and the resulting changes in their cultures, economies, and ecosystems. One can read Thomas Friedman’s book entitled The World is Flat and quickly realize how technology has flattened the world and made Washington, D.C. and Beijing, China next door neighbors. As the future unfolds, the CIOs of tomorrow will have to bridge and master many formerly stove-piped organizational responsibilities, skills, and talents that will rapidly lead to an ascendancy of the CIO position in the organizational hierarchy. Next slide.
Slide 13	Check Your Understanding
Slide 14	Summary	We have now reached the end of this lesson. Let’s take a look at what we’ve covered: We began with an introduction to Sustainability, where we defined sustainability as harvesting or using a resource in a responsible manner while maintaining a focus on longevity of the Resource. Next, we looked at Globalization, Decentralization, and Sustainability. We highlighted that product development is somewhat driving globalization. Also, the three sustainability areas of focus – the carbon footprint, the ecological footprint, and the natural step - were discussed here. In our next topic, Future Opportunities For Improving Global IT Sustainability, we discussed Storage Virtualization, Desktop Virtualization, Network Virtualization, and Cloud Computing. Next, we focused on Mobility. Here, we reviewed the fact that employees are seeking more freedom and flexibility with their work environments. The following topic, Ubiquity: Pervasive Computing, Ubiquitous Sensors, and Ad Hoc Communications, covered future self-diagnostic and corrective equipment, radio-frequency identification, and intelligent tracking devices. Next Slide.
Slide 15	Summary, continued	The next topic we covered was Energy: Smart Buildings, Renewables, and Campus Sustainability, which focused on the fact that buildings are the largest consumers of energy and underlined the need for “smarter” buildings. Next, in Physical Security and Information Assurance, we covered the challenges of stateless, transnational organizations with regard to cyber attacks. We then moved on to Integrating Sustainability Into Strategic Planning, where we focused on balanced scorecards and strategy maps; and Lastly, in The Future Lies Before Us, we discussed the increasing focus placed on the IT organization, CIO and developing countries. This concludes this lesson.