Information Technology Building Blocks for IBM

The IT building blocks that IBM has been using are compute, storage, and network. These building blocks have been the underlying force that IBM has relied upon over the years in order to build its business and meet the needs of its customers. Since its inception, IBM has been a technology company and it used to focus on hardware, software, and service agreements. These fall under the computer building block. Heavily investing in computer technology has ensured that the employees are able to work with the best hardware and they can meet their daily requirements or targets with ease (De Haes, Van Grembergen, & Debreceny, 2013). With the advancement of technology, the company was forced to adapt to the changing times and they are now focused on storage especially in the cloud. Cloud computing has been the best solution that most businesses have been opting for due the advantages they can reap. IBM has managed to build its own cloud-based storage and systems that have ensured that the company is able to meet the needs of its customers. Networking within the company is highly encouraged and the company needs to ensure that all its employees can interact with each other and they can share vital information securely, fast, and easily. With offices located across the globe, the company had to invest heavily in networking so that teams could interact with each other irrespective of their current location. Telecommunications have also played a crucial part in the interaction of the employees with current and potential clients.
Within the company, the major building blocks are being used by the employees to improve their productivity and to also interact with other employees and clients (Piotrowicz & Cuthbertson, 2014). The compute building block is the most used building block within the company and this is the backbone of IBM. Hardware and software are essential for the performance of the employees’ roles. The employees have to ensure that they are able to interact with the systems being used within the company in order for them to either develop or create better systems that can be deployed to clients. All the company data has to be stored securely and in an easily accessible place by the authorized individuals. For this reason, IBM has heavily invested in storage solutions that are both used by the company and by the clients. Having solutions that leverage upon the cloud storage that is used within the company allows the company to continuously innovate and improve upon their storage facilities, which in turn results in better access by the employees and clients. Data storage is essential and the company has the most secure systems in place to ensure that the data is stored securely. Intrusion detection systems have been deployed to safeguard the data and there are teams that monitor access to the data.
Compute building block is essential to the business in that without the necessary hardware and software in place, it would be difficult for the employees to work, and the business would find it hard to keep track of its clients and their needs. The company has also been in the technology business and there is no way the business could continue operating if it eliminated the compute building block. This building block is what has informed the decisions made by the business. All the innovation and decisions made rely on the hardware and software that the company creates in order to meet the needs of its clients. IBM has been more focused on service agreements and the company needs to have the requisite technology to back it when the needs arise (Cash et al., 2016). The storage building block allows for the access and storage of business operation files and vital documents that can be used across the enterprise. There is also need to ensure that the data stored is easily accessible by the employees and decision makers when the needs arise. With multiple offices located across the globe, IBM needs to ensure that its storage systems can be accessed by all the authorized employees. Key information should be securely stored and only accessed by those who are authorized to access the information. Therefore, the organization has made use of cloud storage and secured its servers to ensure that no intruders can gain access. Network building block is also essential because, with cloud storage, the employees would not be able to access the information if they do not have an active connection. The company must ensure that all its computers are networked and the network is secure at all times (Goutas, Sutanto, & Aldarbesti, 2015). Communication would also be affected if the network is not working because most of the employees would rely on remote access to either interact with other employees or clients.
The current IT operations at IBM are prone to some issues like Denial of Service attack, and intrusion. With the current attacks being targeted towards large corporations, IBM could find that its systems are not accessed due to Denial of Service attacks that are initiated by hackers who would like to access the storage systems of the organization (Kim et al., 2016). The best way to counter this would be to have enough backup systems, that are located in different locations. This will ensure that clients will still be able to access their information even if there is an attack. Intrusion is quite likely especially with the company adopting cloud computing. Attackers can mask themselves and if they manage to gain access they would get away with huge data or information. Therefore, the company needs to ensure that it has implemented intrusion detection systems and create security policies that will guard against such kind of intrusion.
References
Cash, S., Jain, V., Jiang, L., Karve, A., Kidambi, J., Lyons, M., . . . Patel, N. (2016). Managed infrastructure with ibm cloud openstack services. IBM Journal of Research and Development, 60(2-3), 6: 1-6: 12.
De Haes, S., Van Grembergen, W., & Debreceny, R. S. (2013). COBIT 5 and enterprise governance of information technology: Building blocks and research opportunities. Journal of Information Systems, 27(1), 307-324.
Goutas, L., Sutanto, J., & Aldarbesti, H. (2015). The building blocks of a cloud strategy: evidence from three SaaS providers. Communications of the ACM, 59(1), 90-97.
Kim, M., Mohindra, A., Muthusamy, V., Ranchal, R., Salapura, V., Slominski, A., & Khalaf, R. (2016). Building scalable, secure, multi-tenant cloud services on IBM Bluemix. IBM Journal of Research and Development, 60(2-3), 8: 1-8: 12.
Piotrowicz, W., & Cuthbertson, R. (2014). Introduction to the special issue information technology in retail: Toward omnichannel retailing. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 18(4), 5-16.