Global information technology infrastructure for a global non-profit organisation : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Technology at Massey University

Page 103 missing from vault and scanned copyWith the recent worldwide growth of the Internet, computers are becoming interconnected in a global communications network. Most people view the Internet as a universal communications medium that can replace telephone, television, and radio. Historically, for organisations and enterprises that could afford to do so, expensive telecommunication lines and Wide Area Network technologies were used for global communications, which allowed computers to communicate using proprietary protocols. For non-profit organisations in particular, the Internet has made it possible to connect offices and individuals, using open standard protocols, at a fraction of the cost of other alternatives. This study focuses on the investigation and development of a global communication system and information technology (IT) infrastructure that uses the Internet as its communication platform for a particular non-profit organisation, OMF International. Without a clear understanding of the limitations of the technologies involved, the development of an IT project is likely to be flawed or fail. (Standish Group, 1995) The findings from this investigation revealed that a global communication system and IT infrastructure, suitable for OMF International, needed to overcome limitations in the use and access of the Internet, the unreliability of different email systems to deliver email messages, and financial and human resource constraints. The study found that methods used in 'for-profit' organisations for the development of an IT infrastructure, were applicable to this non-profit organisation, resulting in the successful implementation of a global communication system and IT infrastructure. The choice of IT solutions and technologies within OMF was often based on functionality rather than feasibility, and its global IT infrastructure requirements were overlooked. The study found that by comparison Lotus Notes' client/server IT infrastructure requirements were considerably less than that of Microsoft Exchange client/server, however, alternative low-cost open standard messaging options were more affordable. Conclusively, open standard IT solutions for global communications are better suited that for this non-profit organisation, than proprietary solutions. The study also highlighted the need for an IT architecture, that would provide a plan and strategic context for future IT development within OMF International, which would overcome problems with concurrent IT projects using different technologies

A framework for FPGA functional units in high performance computing

FPGAs make it practical to speed up a program by defining hardware functional units that perform calculations faster than can be achieved in software. Specialised digital circuits avoid the overhead of executing sequences of instructions, and they make available the massive parallelism of the components. The FPGA operates as a coprocessor controlled by a conventional computer. An application that combines software with hardware in this way needs an interface between a communications port to the processor and the signals connected to the functional units. We present a framework that supports the design of such systems. The framework consists of a generic controller circuit defined in VHDL that can be configured by the user according to the needs of the functional units and the I/O channel. The controller contains a register file and a pipelined programmable register transfer machine, and it supports the design of both stateless and stateful functional units. Two examples are described: the implementation of a set of basic stateless arithmetic functional units, and the implementation of a stateful algorithm that exploits circuit parallelism

Managing evolution and change in web-based teaching and learning environments

The state of the art in information technology and educational technologies is evolving constantly. Courses taught are subject to constant change from organisational and subject-specific reasons. Evolution and change affect educators and developers of computer-based teaching and learning environments alike – both often being unprepared to respond effectively. A large number of educational systems are designed and developed without change and evolution in mind. We will present our approach to the design and maintenance of these systems in rapidly evolving environments and illustrate the consequences of evolution and change for these systems and for the educators and developers responsible for their implementation and deployment. We discuss various factors of change, illustrated by a Web-based virtual course, with the objective of raising an awareness of this issue of evolution and change in computer-supported teaching and learning environments. This discussion leads towards the establishment of a development and management framework for teaching and learning systems

Towards a bio-inspired mixed-signal retinal processor

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The Octopus switch

This chapter1 discusses the interconnection architecture of the Mobile Digital Companion. The approach to build a low-power handheld multimedia computer presented here is to have autonomous, reconfigurable modules such as network, video and audio devices, interconnected by a switch rather than by a bus, and to offload as much as work as possible from the CPU to programmable modules placed in the data streams. Thus, communication between components is not broadcast over a bus but delivered exactly where it is needed, work is carried out where the data passes through, bypassing the memory. The amount of buffering is minimised, and if it is required at all, it is placed right on the data path, where it is needed. A reconfigurable internal communication network switch called Octopus exploits locality of reference and eliminates wasteful data copies. The switch is implemented as a simplified ATM switch and provides Quality of Service guarantees and enough bandwidth for multimedia applications. We have built a testbed of the architecture, of which we will present performance and energy consumption characteristics

Competences of IT Architects

The field of architecture in the digital world uses a plethora of terms to refer to different kinds of architects, and recognises a confusing variety of competences that these architects are required to have. Different service providers use different terms for similar architects and even if they use the same term, they may mean something different. This makes it hard for customers to know what competences an architect can be expected to have.\ud \ud This book combines competence profiles of the NGI Platform for IT Professionals, The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), as well as a number of Dutch IT service providers in a comprehensive framework. Using this framework, the book shows that notwithstanding a large variety in terminology, there is convergence towards a common set of competence profiles. In other words, when looking beyond terminological differences by using the framework, one sees that organizations recognize similar types of architects, and that similar architects in different organisations have similar competence profiles. The framework presented in this book thus provides an instrument to position architecture services as offered by IT service providers and as used by their customers.\ud \ud The framework and the competence profiles presented in this book are the main results of the special interest group “Professionalisation” of the Netherlands Architecture Forum for the Digital World (NAF). Members of this group, as well as students of the universities of Twente and Nijmegen have contributed to the research on which this book is based

Computing Substrates and Life

Alive matter distinguishes itself from inanimate matter by actively maintaining a high degree of inhomogenous organisation. Information processing is quintessential to this capability. The present paper inquires into the degree to which the information processing aspect of living systems can be abstracted from the physical medium of its implementation. Information processing serving to sustain the complex organisation of a living system faces both the harsh reality of real-time requirements and severe constraints on energy and material that can be expended on the task. This issue is of interest for the potential scope of Artificial Life and its interaction with Synthetic Biology. It is pertinent also for information technology. With regard to the latter aspect, the use of a living cell in a robot control architecture is considered

Systematic development of courseware systems

Various difficulties have been reported in relation to the development of courseware systems. A central problem is to address the needs of not only the learner, but also instructor, developer, and other stakeholders, and to integrate these different needs. Another problem area is courseware architectures, to which much work has been dedicated recently. We present a systematic approach to courseware development – a methodology for courseware engineering – that addresses these problems. This methodology is rooted in the educational domain and is based on methods for software development in this context. We illustrate how this methodology can improve the quality of courseware systems and the development process