Lesson 1: Information Technology Concepts and Terminology

Objectives:
• Define key terminology in Information Technology
• Describe the infrastructure of Information Technology
• Explain Information and communication technology (ICT)

Lesson Content:

The term ‘Information technology’ defines IT as “is the use of computers, storage,
networking and other physical devices, infrastructure and processes to create, process,
store, secure and exchange all forms of electronic data.”

What does information technology encompass?

The IT department ensures that the organization's systems, networks, data and
applications all connect and function properly. The IT team handles three major areas:

1. deploys and maintains business applications, services and infrastructure

(servers, networks, storage);
2. monitors, optimizes and troubleshoots the performance of applications, services
and infrastructure; and
3. oversees the security and governance of applications, services and
infrastructure.
Most IT staff have different responsibilities within the team and are divided into several important
areas:

 Administrators are responsible for the day-to-day provisioning, operation, and

monitoring of IT environments such as systems, networks, and applications.
Administrators often perform a variety of other tasks such as software upgrades,
user training, software license management, procurement, security, data
management, and meeting business process and compliance requirements.
 Support. Help desk staff specializes in answering questions, gathering
information, and guiding you in hardware and software troubleshooting. IT
support often includes IT asset and change management, procurement
administrator assistance, data and application backup and restore, log and other
performance monitoring tool monitoring and analysis, and established support
workflows and processes. Includes tracking.
 Application. Companies rely on software to get their jobs done. Some
applications, such as the following, are procured and provided by third parties
such as Email server application. However, many companies have a staff of
skilled developers building applications and interfaces such as APIs (Application
Programming Interface) needed to provide critical business functions and
services. Applications can be coded in a variety of popular languages ​and
integrated with other applications to create smooth and seamless interactions
between different applications. Developers can also be responsible for creating
interactive business websites and building mobile applications. The trend
towards agile or ongoing development paradigms requires developers to become
 increasingly involved in IT operations such as application provisioning and
monitoring.
 Compliance. Companies are obliged to comply with various official and industry-
specific regulatory requirements. IT staff play a key role in protecting and
monitoring access to business data and applications, ensuring that these
resources are used in accordance with established business governance
guidelines that comply with legal requirements. These people are deeply involved
in security operations and regularly interact with legal and business teams to
prevent, detect, investigate and report potential breaches.

Information Technology Components and Functions

 Cloud Computing. cloud computing means storing and accessing data and
programs over the internet instead of your computer's hard drive.
 Data Centers. A data center is a physical facility where businesses store
important applications and data. The data center design is based on a network of
computing and storage resources that enable shared applications and data
delivery. Key components of data center design include routers, switches,
firewalls, storage systems, servers, and controllers for application delivery.
 Computers. A computer is an electronic device that manipulates information and
data. It has the ability to save, retrieve and process data. You may already know
that you can use your computer to enter documents, send emails, play games,
and browse the Internet. It can also be used to edit or create spreadsheets,
presentations, and even videos.
 Servers. A server is a software or hardware device that accepts and responds to
requests made over the network. A device that makes a request from the server
and receives a response from the server is called a client. On the Internet, the
term "server" usually refers to a computer system that receives requests for web
files and sends those files to clients.
 Storage. Storage devices, also known as digital storage, storage, storage media,
or storage media, are hardware that can store information temporarily or
permanently.
 Databases. A database, also known as a database or data store, sometimes
abbreviated as DB, is a large amount of indexed digital information. You can
search, browse, compare, modify, or otherwise operate with optimal speed and
minimal processing effort.
 Data and Data Management. Data management refers to the professional approach to
building and maintaining a framework for collecting, storing, mining, and archiving the data
essential to modern business. Data management is the backbone that connects all the
segments of the information lifecycle.
 Operating Systems. An operating system, or operating system, is software
installed on your computer's hard drive that allows your computer's hardware to
communicate with and operate with your computer's software. Without a
computer operating system, computer and software programs would be useless.
 Applications. Applications and apps are synonyms for the word "program" when
it comes to software developed for a particular task. However, full-form
 applications are often used to describe application software running on a
computer.
 Networks. A network is a collection of computers, servers, mainframes, network
devices, peripherals, or other devices connected to allow data sharing. An
example of a network is the Internet, which connects millions of people all over
the world. To the right is an example image of a home network with multiple
computers and other network devices all connected.
 Telecommunications. Telecommunications, or telecom, is a term used to
describe the process of electronically transferring data over any communication
line.
 Application development. Application development is the process of gathering
business requirements, designing, prototyping, coding, testing and ongoing
improvements and debugging of software.
 Security. Computer security is about protecting your computer's hardware and
the data it stores. Computer security can be implemented using passwords,
encryption, and firewalls to deny physical access to your computer's location.
 Websites and Web Portals
o A site or website is a central location of web pages that are related and
accessed by visiting the home page of the website using a browser.
o A portal is an idea of a website or service that offers a broad range of
services, such as e-mail, games, quotes, search, news, and stocks. A
portal, web portal, or vortex site offers such a broad range of commonly
accessed services that visitors are more likely to visit more often.
 Internet. a system architecture that has revolutionized communications and
methods of commerce by allowing various computer networks around the world
to interconnect.

Example of Information Technology

 Server upgrade. One or more data center servers near the end of the
operational and maintenance lifecycle. IT staff can select and source
replacement servers, configure and provision new servers, back up applications
and data on existing servers, transfer those data and applications to new
servers, and new servers are functioning properly. Make sure they are there and
then use them again or save the old server and discard it.
 Security monitoring. Organizations regularly use tools to monitor and log
application, network, and system activity. IT staff receive alerts about potential
threats or non-compliant behavior. For example, send an alert and take
immediate action to address and fix the threat. This will prevent similar events
from happening in the future.
 New software. The company recognizes the need for new mobile applications
that customers can use to log in and access their account information and
perform other transactions from their smartphones and tablets. Developers are
working to create and improve the right applications according to the planned
roadmap. Operations staff will be able to download all iterations of the new
mobile application and provide the app's back-end components to the
company's infrastructure.
  Business improvement. Enterprises need more availability from critical
applications to support their sales or business continuity strategies. IT staff may
be required to design a high availability cluster to provide high performance and
resiliency to an application so that it can continue to function in the event of a
single failure. This can be combined with improved data storage protection and
recovery.
 User support. Developers create major upgrades for critical business
applications. Developers and administrators work together to create new
documentation for the upgrade. IT staff can deploy limited beta test upgrades.
This allows selected user groups to try out the new version while developing and
providing extensive training to prepare all users for future releases of the new
version.

Software vs. Hardware

IT includes multiple layers of physical equipment (hardware), virtualization,
management systems, automation tools, operating systems, other system software, and
applications used to perform critical functions. increase. You can integrate user devices,
peripherals, and software into your IT domain. IT can also see architectures, methods,
and regulations that control the use and storage of data.

Software
Two categories of software:
 System Software. Contains computer programs that manage basic computer
functions.
 Application Software. These applications use programmed instructions to
manipulate, integrate, distribute, or otherwise manipulate data for business
purposes.
o These applications have created new categories of software and
telecommunications that require expertise to expand and maintain the
scope of computing.

Hardware
There are different types of computer hardware. Computer servers run business
applications. The server interacts with the client device in the client-server model. It also
communicates with other servers over a computer network that is normally connected to
the Internet.

Memory is another type of hardware. This is a technology that contains information as

data. Storage can be local to a specific server, shared between many servers, installed
onsite, or accessed through cloud services. The stored information can be in a variety of
formats, including files, multimedia, telephone, web, and sensor data. Storage hardware
includes volatile random access memory (RAM), as well as non-volatile tape, hard
disks, and solid state drives.
Communication devices, which consist of network interface cards (NICs), cables,
wireless communications, and switching devices, interconnect hardware elements and
connect to external networks.

ICT (Information and Communication Technology)

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is the technology used to
process communications processes such as telecommunications, broadcast media,
intelligent building management systems, audiovisual and transmission systems, and
network-based control and monitoring capabilities.

ICT is often regarded as an extended synonym for information and information

technology (IT), but its scope is rather broad. ICT is widely used to describe the
integration of multiple technologies and the use of common transmission lines with
vastly different types and formats of data and communication.

References:
https://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/definition/IT
https://www.cisco.com/c/en_ph/solutions/data-center-virtualization/what-is-a-data-
center.html
https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/computerbasics/what-is-a-computer/1/
https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/s/stordevi.htm
https://www.talend.com/resources/what-is-data-management/
https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/o/os.htm
https://www.cognizant.com/us/en/glossary/application-development