SubscribeBook review: Information Architecture for Information Professionals, by Sue Batley
In Information Architecture for Information Professionals, Sue Batley provides an excellent overview of Information Architecture, with particular focus on the aspects requiring the skills already practiced by Information Professionals.
If you’re responsible for helping an organisation make the most of it’s information, there’s a lot in this book which will help. While aimed at the Information Professional, it’s very approachable and perfectly suited to those who want to learn more about the theory and practise of Information Management.
How Green is OneIS?
Some estimates suggest that 2% of global CO2 emissions come from the information technology industry. In the UK, running servers uses 1.5% of the country’s total energy consumption. And making computers and then disposing of them has a huge environmental impact.
It’s hard to argue that computing can ever be a “green” activity, but stopping all potentially damaging activities is unrealistic as most people would be reluctant to abandon the modern world. If we accept that the internet and computers are here to stay, we have to work to minimise their impact on the environment.
Global mega-corporation in good service shocker!
However good your computer equipment is, it’ll break, especially the bits with moving parts. If you buy quality servers, you reduce the chances of breakage to more or less the day it arrives, because the courier shook it too much, or after it’s worn out from years of service.
If your business relies on always-on computing you need to do two things. Firstly, plan for failure by building and testing a system where essential parts can break but the system continues. Secondly, find a good hardware supplier who can send spare parts reliably and swiftly.
The OneIS servers are fully redundant and our hardware supplier has a great reputation, so we’re confident of the reliability of our service. But a broken fan in our newly arrived backup server gave us the chance to test our supplier sooner than expected.
Who Named My Cheese?
I know where the parmesan cheese is in my local supermarket. Since I’m treating myself by getting my shopping delivered, I’ve just tried to find the parmesan I use on the Tesco home delivery website. But I can’t find it!
Infrastructure complete
There are two visible parts to OneIS, the information management service and the OneIS application which our customers use to store their information. But there’s also an invisible part, the infrastructure which runs the OneIS application. It’s just as important as the other two parts, but it’s success is judged by our users not noticing it.
Today, we took delivery of the final server for the infrastructure needed to launch OneIS. I thought I’d write a little bit about what we use, and why we chose it.
Why is Information Management important?
Imagine what it’d be like if every decision was based upon good quality, up-to-date information? Where everyone had ready and equal access to the information they need? Where good quality information was available to support all the work you do?
What would it be like if it was easy to find the experts you need to talk to? Where you could share your expertise with those who needed to know it? And if the relevant information you needed to keep up to date was delivered to your desk automatically?
You’re imagining a world that’s recognised the value of information management.
Welcome to the OneIS blog
We’re now at the stage where more and more people are using OneIS. It’s not quite out of beta, but getting close. So we thought it was about time we launched a blog to give some background about what we’re doing, and discuss some of the issues surrounding OneIS.