A Problem-Solving Framework for IS Resources Management

With increasing use of computers in the operations and activities of almost all types of business organizations, a major component of support service costs of any type of business is the information systems (IS) management cost. IS management involves management of physical IS resources such as hardware and software, and the more expensive human resources. Human expertise is required at several levels in rational allocation and dynamic reallocation of the available IS resources in order to optimise their utilisation. Computing environments are similar for different applications with similar business activities. The author visualizes that similar resource requirements by different applications within a business environment from one or many organization(s) could be supported by a shareable support service centre. This paper attempts to look into the issues involved in IS resource management and proposes a strategy based on effective integration and communication, using a blackboard architecture. The suitability of the proposed architecture is discussed. Each application, user and organisation operates independently and asynchronously. It is proposed that we resolve conflicting demands on resources opportunistically, based on pre-defined protocols. The Proposed architecture alleviates the necessity of hiring or maintaining expertise on the hardware and software management of computer and communication systems, for each user or organisation. This expertise is independent of the application domain and can be hired or maintained at one location such as the support service centre, i.e. at the central panel.