MIS500_Ch5_IT_Infrastructure_MBA_Lecture (5) (1) (1) (1) (1)

1. IT Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies

MIS500 Management Information Systems | Chapter 5 | MBA Lecture
Based on Laudon & Laudon, Management Information Systems: Managing the Digital Firm. Technology reference date:
October 2026.

2. Learning objectives

All LOs
Learning objectives
LO 5-1
What is IT infrastructure, and what are the stages and
drivers of its evolution?
LO 5-2
What are the components of IT infrastructure?
LO 5-3
What are the current trends in computer hardware
platforms?
LO 5-4
What are the current computer software platforms and
trends?
LO 5-5
What are the challenges of managing IT infrastructure,
and what are the management solutions?
MIS500 | Chapter 5: IT Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies
OVERARCHING MBA OBJECTIVE
Evaluate how IT infrastructure
decisions influence strategy,
business performance, scalability,
operating costs, cybersecurity,
innovation and competitive
advantage.
2

3. Lecture roadmap

All LOs
Lecture roadmap
Section
LO
A
Why IT infrastructure matters
5-1
B
Evolution and technology drivers
5-1
C
The seven infrastructure components
5-2
D
Hardware platforms and emerging
technologies
5-3
E
Cloud computing and software platforms
F
AI infrastructure
G
Managing IT infrastructure and TCO
5-5
H
Integrated case and knowledge check
All
MIS500 | Chapter 5: IT Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies
5-3, 5-4
5-3, 5-4, 5-5
3

4. Activity 1: Banking services go dark

LO 5-1
Imagine that major banking digital services in Kuwait become
unavailable for six hours on a weekday.
What business activities could be disrupted?
Consider:
customer transactions
electronic payments
retail sales
business operations
customer confidence
operational and reputational risk
MIS500 | Chapter 5: IT Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies
4

5. Activity 1 - Debrief: one outage, many business impacts

Customers
Cannot pay, transfer or check balances; failed transactions and
complaints
Merchants and retail
Card, wallet and online payments fail; lost sales; queues
Business operations
Payroll, supplier payments and treasury operations delayed
LO 5-1
VERIFIED REAL -WOR LD EXAM PLE
85%
share of non-cash transactions in total transaction
value in Kuwait, Q2 2026, up from about 34% in
2010
Why it matters: the more an economy runs on digital
payments, the more a single infrastructure failure
costs.
Bank operations
Call-centre overload, manual workarounds, reconciliation backlog
Confidence and reputation
Trust erodes; social-media amplification; regulator questions
Root cause in every row: shared IT infrastructure
(applications, networks, data centres, payment systems).
Source: Central Bank of Kuwait figures reported by KUNA / Kuwait Times, 'Kuwait expands digital payments', 30 Sep 2026.
MIS500 | Chapter 5: IT Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies
5

6. Defining IT infrastructure

LO 5-1
Defining IT infrastructure
- The shared technology resources that provide the platform for the firm's specific information system
applications.
- Set of physical devices and software required to operate an enterprise
Technology view
Computer hardware
Computer software
Services view
Platform view
Computing and telecom
services
One shared foundation
supports all applications
Data management technology
Data management services
Networking and
telecommunications
Application software services
ERP, CRM, e-commerce and
analytics all reuse it
Physical facilities management
Data centres / cloud facilities
IT management, standards,
education, R&D
Weak infrastructure limits
every application on top
MIS500 | Chapter 5: IT Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies
6

7. The infrastructure stack: from users to data

LO 5-1, 5-2
The infrastructure stack: from users to data
Business users
Employees, customers, partners, regulators
Applications
Servers / cloud
IT management
LAN/Wi-Fi, WAN, internet, 5G/mobile, VPN
Governance
Networks
Cybersecurity
ERP, CRM, e-commerce, mobile apps, analytics, AI assistants
On-premises servers, virtual machines, containers, public cloud
Databases / storage
Relational and NoSQL databases, data warehouses, backups
Cross-cutting responsibilities apply to every layer.
MIS500 | Chapter 5: IT Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies
7

8. Evolution of IT infrastructure

LO 5-1
Evolution of IT infrastructure
02
Six eras, overlapping rather than replacing each other, plus the developments
shaping 2026
MIS500 | Chapter 5: IT Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies
8

9. Stages of IT infrastructure evolution: overlapping eras

LO 5-1
Stages of IT infrastructure evolution: overlapping eras
General-purpose mainframe
1950s - present
continues
Minicomputer
c. 1960 - 1980 (approx.)
Personal computer
1981 - present
continues
Client/server
1983 - present
continues
Enterprise computing
1992 - present
continues
Cloud and mobile
2000 - present
continues
1950
1960
1970
1964 IBM System/360
1980
1981 IBM PC
1990
2000
2010
2006 AWS EC2/S3
2020
2022 ChatGPT
2007 iPhone
2014 Kubernetes
MIS500 | Chapter 5: IT Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies
9

10. From mainframes to personal computers

LO 5-1
From mainframes to personal computers
Mainframe era
Minicomputer era
Personal computer era
Centralised, powerful
computers shared by many
users through terminals
Smaller, cheaper machines
(e.g., DEC) bought by
departments
IBM PC (1981) and compatible
PCs put computing on every
desk
Run and controlled by
specialist IT staff
Decentralised computing to
business units
Office productivity software
drives adoption
Strength: high-volume,
reliable transaction processing
Strength: lower cost, local
control
Initially stand-alone, then
networked through LANs
Today: Still used for core banking,
insurance and airline systems
MIS500 | Chapter 5: IT Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies
Today: Role largely absorbed by
servers
Today: Evolved into today's laptops
and mobile devices
10

11. Client/server computing

LO 5-1
Client/server computing
Client
Laptop
Client
Network
Server
LAN / internet
shared data and services
Desktop PC
Client
Smartphone
Client: the user's device and
software that requests services
and presents results.
Server: a computer (physical or
virtual) that provides data,
processing or applications to
many clients.
Why it spread: computing
capacity could be added
gradually in smaller, cheaper
units.
Today: the web, mobile apps
and cloud services all follow
the client/server requestresponse pattern.
Requests flow from clients to the server; responses flow back.
MIS500 | Chapter 5: IT Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies
11

12. Multitiered (N-tier) application architecture

LO 5-1, 5-2
Multitiered (N-tier) application architecture
Internet
Client tier
Web server
Application server
Data tier
Browser or mobile app
Receives requests, serves pages
/ API endpoints
Business logic: pricing, orders,
rules
Database servers: customers,
orders, inventory
Separation of concerns
Each tier can be changed, secured
and scaled on its own.
Scalability
Add web or application servers
when traffic grows, without
redesigning the database.
Security
The database is not exposed
directly to the internet.
Responses travel back through the same tiers to the client.
MIS500 | Chapter 5: IT Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies
12

13. Beyond the textbook eras: what changed after 2000

LO 5-1
UPDATED FOR 2026
Virtualization
Software (a hypervisor) runs
many virtual machines on
one physical server.
Distributed and edge
Processing spread across
many sites, including near
devices (edge).
Cloud-native
Systems designed for cloud
elasticity, automation and
managed services.
Microservices
An application built as many
small, independently
deployable services.
AI infrastructure
GPU/accelerator clusters
and services for training and
running AI models.
VERIFIED REAL -WOR LD EXAM PLE
Netflix: after a major database corruption in 2008, Netflix spent about seven years moving to AWS, rebuilding a
monolithic application as hundreds of microservices; it shut down its last streaming data-centre infrastructure in
January 2016.
Source: Izrailevsky, Vlaovic & Meshenberg, 'Completing the Netflix Cloud Migration', Netflix, 12 Feb 2016.
MIS500 | Chapter 5: IT Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies
13

14. Technology drivers (1): Moore, storage and Metcalfe

LO 5-1
Technology drivers (1): Moore, storage and Metcalfe
Moore's Law
The number of components
on a chip doubles roughly
every two years (Moore 1965:
every year; revised 1975:
about every two years).
Law of Mass Digital Storage
The amount of data stored
keeps growing rapidly while
the cost of storing each unit
keeps falling.
Metcalfe's Law
The value of a network grows
with the square of its number of
users (n²), not 'exponentially’.
• If only 2 people use
WhatsApp, there is just 1
possible connection.
• If 10 people use it, there are
45 possible connections.
Connections =