Designing and Rightsizing the Information System Architecture

Information system design and sizing constitute a complex, top-down process that tailors the technology architecture to application requirements. Practitioners usually tackle this topdown process by focusing on individual design aspects, such as data or specific applications, and by relying on their previous experiences to compare alternative architectural solutions. Acquisition costs are usually accounted for, but related operating and maintenance costs are often neglected or underestimated. The complexity of optimizing individual design problems leads researchers to avoid a global optimization perspective and, thus, the IS architecture is usually a result of the juxtaposition of mul-