Business Information Systems is a multidisciplinary field of study that is concerned with how information and communication technologies (ICTs) can be leveraged to improve business processes by automating manual tasks.

Business Information Systems makes companies more competitive, responsive, and agile but also improves the following factors:

• Productivity
• Performance
• Customer satisfaction
• Employee satisfaction
• Compliance
• Revenue

An information system is a set of hardware, software, and communication networks working together to collect, filter, process, store, organize, and disseminate data throughout the organization. Information systems are used to support decision making, coordination, control, analysis, and visualization in an organization. Information systems are made up of five components: hardware, software, data, network communication, and people.

The term business intelligence refers to technologies, applications and practices for the collection, integration, analysis, and presentation of business information.

The physical parts of computing devices are referred to as hardware. The user can see and touch hardware. The examples of hardware are:

• Computers (laptop, desktop, tablet)
• Mobile phones
• Hand terminals
• Storage devices (hard disk, flash disk)
• Input devices (keyboard, mouse, optical scanner)
• Output devices (printers, speakers)
• Video monitor

Computers are the key components of the information and communication technology. A computer might be described as “an apparatus that automatically executes a set of instructions that performs a user task.”

Computers are comprised of two main components: hardware and software. Hardware is the tangible parts of a computer; thus, it is the physical piece of technology. On the other hand, software is a program that runs within hardware.

The differences between software and hardware are listed below:

• Software is a set of instructions that encapsulate a task to be accomplished. Hardware is the physical parts of computer.
• Software cannot be run without hardware. Hardware does not know what to do without software.
• Software is intangible. Hardware is tangible.
• Software is debugged or reinstalled in case of a problem. Hardware is repaired or replaced in case of a problem.

Data are the processes which are stored in a computer system through electronic signals that represent either a one (“on”) or a zero (“off”). This is called a “two-state” or binary representation of data. The binary number system is the basis for representing data in computer systems. For example, the decimal number 13 is written as 1101 in the binary system. This is how the conversion done: 13 = 2³ + 2² + 2⁰ = 8 + 4 + 1 = 13

The smallest element of data is called a bit, a group of eight bits is called a byte. The capacity of memory and persistent data storage are measured in terms of bytes (p:40, Table 2.2).

ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. It is based on 27 = 128 symbols including 10 numbers, 26 letters of English alphabet, a number of punctuation marks and certain symbols such as @ and $

A typical computer has the following hardware components: a CPU, memory, motherboard, storage device(s), and input/output devices. The core hardware components reside in a computer case, which acts as a protector as well as a house. The most commonly used computer case type is the tower (p:41, Figure 2.2). At the back of the computer case, there are some connectors for input/output devices such as keyword, mouse, monitor, joystick, printer, scanner, etc. These external peripheral devices are called either input devices or output devices depending on the direction of data flow between computer and the peripheral device.

The input devices, such as mouse and keyboard, can send data to a computer system but cannot receive from. On the contrary, the output devices such as monitors and printers receive data from a computer, usually for the purposes of displaying. In this perspective, webcam, barcode reader, microphone, scanners, and sensors (e.g. heat or humidity) are the examples of input devices. Headphone, projector, speaker, printer, monitor are the examples of output devices.

The motherboard is the main circuit board on the computer. It holds and allows communication between the central processing unit (CPU), memory, and storage components, among other things. Motherboards are available in a variety of shapes and sizes, depending on the compactness of the computer. Most modern motherboards provide connectors for other internal peripherals such as video and sound processing. The motherboard provides electrical connection between different components of the computer where the computer’s overall speed largely depends on the speed and capacity of this connection.

Random access memory (RAM) is used to store programs that are currently running. It can transfer data much faster than the hard disk since information is accessed randomly instead of sequentially. However, unlike the hard drive, RAM is volatile. If the computer is turned off, all data stored in RAM is lost. Thus, the computer also needs a persistent data storage that retains data when the computer is turned off. Hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs) are the two commonly used types of persistent storage. The SDDs have faster reading and more speed writing systems compared to HDDs. Read only memory (ROM) is a permeant memory. ROM can be read but not erased or overwritten. Firmware is a small and permanent software programmed into a read-only memory.

Booting is a process or set of operations that starts a computer when it is turned on.

Basic Input Output System (BIOS) is a software stored on a small memory chip on the motherboard thus it is part of the motherboard hardware. BIOS instructs the computer on how to perform booting and keyboard control.

The Central Processing Unit (CPU) is the brain of computer that executes instructions. Each CPU has an instruction set which is a group of commands in the machine language. Computer programs are usually written in the high-level programming languages. In order for the CPU to run them they must be converted into the processor’s instruction set. This task is carried out by compilers.

The speed of a CPU is measured in hertz. A hertz is defined as one cycle per second. This is commonly called the clock speed of a processor. 

Cache memory is a high-speed temporary storage located in a CPU for storing parts of a program or data during computer processing.

The Graphics Processing Unit (CPU) is an electronic circuit (processor) specialized for display functions. The GPU renders images, animations and video for the computer’s screen. Modern GPUs are very efficient at manipulating computer graphics and image processing; thus, they are used primarily for 3D game rendering.

There is a fundamental difference between a GPU and a CPU, which is based on how they process tasks. A CPU consists of a few cores with lots of cache memory and it is optimized for sequential serial processing of tasks. By contrast, a GPU consists of thousands of smaller cores and
it is designed for parallel processing from the very beginning. The ability to handle thousands of threads simultaneously makes GPUs more efficient than the general-purpose of CPUs for algorithms where the compute-intensive portions can be executed in parallel. If CPU is the brains of the computer, then GPU is the soul of the computer.

Software is a set of instructions for a computer to follow to accomplish a user defined task. It can be thought as a set of orders assigned to a computer. Computers obey and follow the orders without any mistakes or exceptions. Software is written in a programming language, which is also a software. High level programming languages (e.g., Java and C#) offer instructions or commands that are close to natural language. Thus, the computer code written in the high-level programming language codes can be understood (to some extent) by non-programmers. Programming languages are some sort of communication media that are used to pass orders to a computer. Later on, a compiler transforms the computer code written in one of the programming languages into the machine language. Computers only understand the machine language. The interesting point is that, both programming languages and compilers are computer softwares.

Computer software falls into two broad classes: system software and application software.

System software is written in a low-level programming language (e.g., C and C++), which is close to machine language. System software performs tasks that are close to the computer hardware. In a sense, system software manages the hardware resources and operations of a computer system. On the other hand, application software is written in the high-level programming langue, which is close to the natural langue.

The application software is designed to perform a group of correlated tasks for the sake of the end user. Thus, application software is end-user
oriented.

General-purpose application software includes such things as word processors, Web browsers, spreadsheets, presentation software, media players, photo editors and games.

A browser is a software used to connect to the Internet (World Wide Web) and display Web pages. Each Web page is distinguished and accessed by its Uniform Resource Locator (URL), which is a human-memorable address used to locate the resources on the Internet.

An office suite bundles all the software tools required to get office work (collaboration, editing tools, and design) done quickly and efficiently. The
most commonly bundled tools in a typical office suite are: word processor, spreadsheet application, and presentation software.

The tasks of composing, editing and formatting text documents are carried out by word processors. Documents created by the word processors look great and they are easy to edit. However, it is desirable to redistribute them in a format that locks the layout or does not require a word processing software for opening them. Portable Document Format (PDF) has become the de facto standard for satisfying this requirement.

Spreadsheet programs are powerful tools for getting meaning out of raw data by means of discovering trends and patterns using data bars, spark lines, color coding, and icons.

Presentation software offers various built-in themes and templates to give slides of your talk in an attractive, and a professional look. 

The LibreOffice and the Microsoft Office are the most commonly used office suite worldwide. The LibreOffice is completely free to use, share, and modify. By contrast, Microsoft Office is a proprietary software.

Proprietary software is software that is owned by an individual or a company (usually the one that developed it). There are almost always major restrictions on its use, and its source code is almost always kept secret. The term proprietary is derived from the Latin word proprietas meaning property.

Application software which is exclusively developed to satisfy the needs of an organization rather than individual users is called enterprise software. Business Intelligence (BI) software, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, Enterprise Recourse Planning (ERP) software, and accounting software are all the samples of enterprise software.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software allows an organization to use a system of integrated applications (e.g., product planning, development, manufacturing, sales and marketing) in order to manage the business and automate many back office functions.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software collects, manages and links information about the customer in order to create marketing campaigns, view a customer’s entire of history of interactions with a business.

Business Intelligence (BI) software extracts important data from an organization’s raw data in order to infer insights to help a business make faster and more accurate decisions.

Accounting software are small business financial software that records and processes the accounting transactions within the functional modules such as trial balance, payroll, general ledger, accounts receivable, accounts payable.

Malicious software, malware in short, is an umbrella term that covers a variety of forms of hostile or intrusive software. Computer viruses, worms, Trojan horses, ransomware, spyware, adware, and scareware are the examples of malicious software.

An operating system is a program that manages the computer hardware. It provides a container environment in which other application programs can work.

The main purpose of an OS is to provide basic functionality needed by users so that users can run programs in a convenient and efficient manner. An operating system must be installed on a computer at the bare
minimum. All the other applications of software run on the top of the OS; thus, they require an OS to function. That’s why personal computers are usually sold with an OS installed on them.

The main objectives of the operating system can be summarized as follows:

• Enables the users to use computer in a convenient and efficient manner
• Hides complexity of the hardware resources from the users
• Acts as an intermediary between the computer hardware and its users
• Manages the resources of a computer system
• Keeps track of who is using which resource in order to grant resource requests
• Mediates conflicting requests from different programs and users
• Provides efficient and fair sharing of resources among users and programs

The basic functions of an operating system can be summarized as follows:

• Memory Management
• Processor Management
• File Management
• Device Management
• Protection and Security

Microsoft Windows, also shortened as Windows, is a family of commercial operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft Inc. It is the dominant OS in the desktop operating system market share.

MacOS (Macintosh OS) is the current series of Unix-based operating systems developed Apple Inc. exclusively for Apple’s Macintosh computers, which are popular among graphic designers and software developers.

Linux is an operating system originally designed by Linus Torvalds while a student at the University of Helsinki. Since Linux is freely available along with its source code, it is a non-proprietary software. Hence, Linux is an alternative to the commercial OS on the market.

Pardus is a Linux distribution developed by the Turkish government. In addition to being an open source operating system, Pardus is the first effort to make open source and free software more prevalent in public institutions of Turkey.

Android is a mobile operating system developed by Google Inc., based on the Linux kernel and designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.

iOS (iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. for the company’s mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

Software versioning is the process of assigning either unique version names or unique version numbers to unique states of computer software. 

In the semantic versioning scheme, a version number is composed of three number categories named major, minor, and patch. These numbers are incremented when a new development is made in the software. Given a version number in the form of MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, an increment in the:

1. MAJOR version corresponds incompatible API changes
2. MINOR version corresponds addition of functionality in a backwards-compatible manner
3. PATCH version corresponds backwards compatible bug fixes

A bug is a mistake, flaw or fault in a computer software that causes incorrect or unexpected results.

Data are obtained by means of measurement, counting, experimentation, observation or research.

The data collected through measurement and counting are called quantitative data type. For example, the age of your car and the temperature of your room are quantitative.

The data that cannot be written down with numbers are called qualitative data. Some examples of qualitative data are the softness of your hair and
the color of your skin.

Qualitative data can be further classified into two subcategories: nominal and ordinal.

Nominal scales are used for labelling variables. Some examples of nominal data are gender (male, female),traffic light colors (red, yellow, green) and blood type (0, A, B, AB).

In ordinal data, the order of labels is known and important, but the difference between each label is not clearly known. Suppose that you issue a query to a commercial search engine and you receive a list of documents. You can rank the relevance of each document in the list as “2” for highly relevant, “1” for relevant, “0” for irrelevant. The data collected by this assessment are the examples of ordinal data. Here, the relevance grades have an order or rank; that is, a grade of “2” is better than a grade of “1.” However, even though you have assigned a relevance grade to a document, this number is not a quantitative measure: Although a grade of “2” is clearly more relevant than a grade of “1,” it is not necessarily twice as relevant. The numbers are not mathematically measured or determined, but are merely assigned as labels for relevance grade.

Data are raw facts that can be recorded and that have implicit meaning. Raw data without information processing do not mean anything. Therefore, it is desirable to extract useful information from raw data in information systems. Data can be converted into information by collecting, organizing, analyzing, and processing raw data. This information processing steps can be summarized as “getting meaning out of war data.” When data is converted into information, its usefulness increases. Knowledge is a collection of related information. The word knowledge is derived from the word know, which means be aware of through observation, inquiry, or information. Wisdom is the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense, and insight. The implicit assumption that can be made here is that data can be used to create information; information can be used to create knowledge, and knowledge can be used to create wisdom.

The hierarchical relationship between data, information, knowledge, and wisdom (DIKW) can be represented in a pyramid, in which data are placed at the bottom whereas wisdom is placed at the top. As we go from bottom to top of the DIKW pyramid, magnitude decreases while understanding increases. There is plenty of raw data, but wisdom is limited. Thus, wisdom is the pinnacle of the pyramid.

Data management is the development and execution of architectures, policies, practices and procedures in order to manage the information lifecycle needs of an enterprise in an effective manner.

In information systems, data resources must be organized and structured in a logical way so that data can be processed, accessed, and queried easily and quickly.

A collection of related data is stored into what is called database. A Database Management System (DBMS) is a collection software packages that is used for creating and maintaining a database.

The DBMS is a software that facilitates the following processes:

• Defining a database (determining the data types, structures and constraints)
• Constructing the database (storing the data on some storage device)
• Manipulating the database (querying, updating the database and generating reports)

The database and DBMS software together are referred to as a database system.

The advantages of using a DBMS in information system are:

• Controlling redundancy
• Restricting unauthorized access
• Providing persistent storage for program objects and data structures
• Permitting inferencing and actions using rules
• Providing multiple user interfaces
• Representing complex relationships among data
• Enforcing integrity constraints
• Providing backup and recovery

The relational database model is the most widely used database structure. In the relational model, all data are stored in the form simple two-dimensional tables (p:48, Figure 2.7).

In this database, “Departments Table” holds records of departments represented with four fields. Here, department number is the primary key. All the rows (records) must have a unique department name.

Each row of “Projects Table” represents a project. The columns in the tables are fields. “Department Number” column exists in both of the Department table and the Projects tables. With the aim of this column, the two tables can be joined together. That is, “Department Number” field, which is a primary key in the Department Table, is called foreign key in Projects table. A foreign key is used to link two tables.

A primary key is a special relational database table column (or combination of columns) designated to uniquely identify all table records. A primary key cannot be null and must be unique for each row of data.

A foreign key is a field (or collection of fields) in one table that refers to the primary key in another table.

The most popular relational database management systems are MySQL,
Oracle Database, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Access, Sybase, IBM Informix, PostgreSQL, and IBM Db2.

The steps of the database design and data planning are summarized as can be seen below (p:49, Figure 2.8):

1. Data Planning: Develops a model of business processes. Enterprise model of business processes with documentation
2. Requirements Specification: Define information needs of end users in a business process. Description of users’ needs may be represented in natural language or using the tools of a particular design methodology.
3. Conceptual Design: Expresses all information requirements in the form of a high-level model. Conceptual Data Models often expressed as entity relationship models
4. Logical Design: Translates the conceptual models into the data model of a DBMS. Logical Data Models e.g., relational, network, hierarchical, multidimensional, or object-oriented models
5. Physical Design: Determines the data storage structures and access methods Physical Data Models Storage representations and access methods

SQL is a standard language for storing, manipulating and retrieving data in databases. SQL is an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard (p:50, Table 2.5).

NoSQL databases are the new alternatives to the relational databases for big data and real-time Web applications. Such databases have become popular by the needs of Web 2.0 companies such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon. Most of the modern applications require to scale horizontally, which is a problem for relational databases. Unlike the relational databases, NoSQL databases are designed to cope with the scale and agility challenges. NoSQL databases are useful when the data at hand exceed capacity of a single server. When this happens, data should be split into smaller pieces in a way that each piece can fit in to a single server. This is called sharding. NoSQL databases usually support auto-sharding; thus, they are natively able to handle load by spreading data among multiple servers. This ability makes NoSQL databases a natural fit for the cloud computing environments such as Amazon Web Services. The data model of NoSQL databases addresses several shortcomings of the relational databases.

NoSQL database types are: Document databases, key-value stores, graph
databases, and column-oriented stores. The most popular NoSQL databases are MongoDB, Cassandra, HBase, and Neo4j.

The main benefit of NoSQL compared to relational databases is that NoSQL databases are more scalable and provide superior performance for
certain operations.

A data warehouse is a special type of relational database that is specifically designed and optimized for query and analysis. It may contain not only the historical data derived from transaction data, but also data from the other sources. Thus, data from several external or internal sources are consolidated by organizations.

A data warehouse environment includes following the additional components compared to a relational database:

• extraction, transportation, transformation, and loading (ETL) solution
• an online analytical processing (OLAP) engine
• client analysis tools
• other applications that manage the process of gathering data and delivering it to business users.

Data warehouses are subject oriented: they are designed to help people analyze data. For example, to learn more about your company’s sales data, you can build a warehouse that concentrates on sales. Using this warehouse, it is possible to answer questions like “Who was our best customer for this item last year?” This ability to define a data warehouse by subject matter, sales in this case, makes the data warehouse subject oriented.

Data mining techniques can be used to deeply analyze the data stored in a data warehouse. Data mining is the processes of discovering patterns in a large volume of data involving methods of machine learning, statistics, and database systems.

Data mining, sometimes entitled “knowledge discovery” in the context of databases, plays a critical role in the business or science world.

A computer network is a system that enables computing devices to exchange data among themselves. With the help of computer networks, the users can exchange files, communicate with each other via e-mails, share hardware devices such as printers and faxes, and store data centrally.

The primary hardware components are:

• Network Interface Controllers (NIC)
• Repeaters
• Hubs
• Bridges
• Switches
• Routers
• Modems
• Firewalls

NIC is an interface between the computer and physical network connection in order to transmit data through the cable, address data with an identifier, control data flow, and connect to another computer (p:51, Figure 2.9).

A repeater is a device that receive and retransmit the signal in order to protect the signal strength required to reach further away on the network.

A hub is a device that transmits the data to the all connected computers without checking the destination address.

A bridge is a device including software that connects two networks which uses the same protocol.

A switch connects computers in a network like hubs but unlike hubs, switches learn destination address after the first communication and do not disturb irrelevant computers with message traffic.

A router is a hardware that receives, analyzes and forwards the data to the another network. A router is programmable and it can divide a network into various subnets.

A model is a device that enables computers to exchange information and communicate using telephone lines (p:52, Figure 2.10).

A firewall is a software utility or hardware device that acts as a filter for data entering or leaving a network or computer. It monitors incoming and outgoing network traffic and decides whether to allow or block specific traffic based on a predefined set of security rules.

The Internet is the network of networks that connects millions of computers and people around the world. The participants of this huge network communicate with each other by using a set of protocols and standards.

The Internet is a network of networks, defined by the TPC/IP standards.

A protocol defines rules and conventions between two or more devices over a network. The Internet uses TCP/IP to link billions of devices.

The World Wide Web (WWW) is the most commonly used and fastest growing application of the Internet.

The main components of this famous application are described below:

• Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the language that describes and defines the content of a web page.
• Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application protocol that contains the rules for transferring text, image, sound, and other multimedia.
• Web servers are the computers that host web pages on the Internet.
• Web browser are the client programs that allow us to access and explore web pages.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community that develops open standards to ensure the long-term growth of the Web.

In computer networks, the connections among the communicating devices are established using transmission media which is the pathway that carries information from sender to receiver.

Transmission media is classified into two groups as guided media and unguided media:

1. Guided Media

• Twisted pair (shielded twisted pair, unshielded twisted pair)
• Coaxial cable
• Optical fiber

2. Unguided Media

• Radio wave
• Microwave

Guided media is the type of transmission media that is physically tangible. The signals propagate over a solid substance. Three types of guided media are twisted pair cables, coaxial cables, and fiber optic cables.

These cables are the most commonly used transmission media due to easy installation and low costs. However, they have high error rates and they are limited in bandwidth. Twisted pairs can be either shielded or unshielded (p:53, Figure 2.12).

These cables contain two parallel conductors and they can be used over long distances. However, they are more expensive than twisted pair cables (p:53, Figure 2.13).

Having a core made of high-quality glass or plastic, optical fibers provide an efficient way of transmission with high speed. Furthermore, the optical fibers have unidirectional and bidirectional capabilities. However, they are expensive and they have difficulties in installation and maintenance (p:54, Figure 2.14).

Unguided media is the type of transmission media that sends the data through the air. Two types of unguided media are radio waves and microwaves.

In this media type, the information is carried by modulating electromagnetic waves through space. Due to the large wavelengths, radio waves can penetrate through obstacles like walls and buildings.

Although radio waves and microwaves are quite similar, microwaves cannot penetrate through obstacles due to having smaller wavelengths.

One way of classifying the computer networks is using their geographical scale. Ranging from smallest to largest, computer networks are classified into four groups as personal area networks, local area networks, metropolitan area networks, and wide area networks.

A personal area network (PAN) connects electronic devices such as laptops, smart phones, and tablets around a person. The idea of building a PAN is to allow data transmission between nearby devices without moving the data to an external network. By this way, the devices around a person can communicate much faster. When the connections in a PAN are wireless, the network is called wireless personal area network (WPAN).

A local area network (LAN) interconnects communication devices within a small geographical area such as an office, home, building, or factory. The main purpose of building a LAN is to provide an environment for workstations and personal computers to exchange information and share resources (e.g., network storage, printers, and applications).

A metropolitan area network (MAN) is a computer network that usually covers a campus or a city. A typical example of a MAN is the cable television network of a city.

A wide area network (WAN) is a computer network that connects multiple LANs that are located in different geographical regions. Typically, WANs are built by using leased telecommunication circuits.

WANs are very popular and widely used networks as they provide a convenient way to share, exchange, and manage data among organizations and individuals. By connecting different LANs together, computers in one location can communicate with the other computers at other sites.

Network topology is a schematic description that shows the arrangement of the elements in the network. The most commonly used topologies are bus, star, ring, mesh, and tree topologies.

The devices in this topology share a single communication line named bus. A device sends a message by broadcasting it to the bus, and the intended receiver accepts the message and processes it. Since the network performance decreases under massive traffic, bus topology is suitable for small networks (p:55, Figure 2.15).

In this topology, all the devices connect to a central device, which is usually a network hub. Since each device has its connection to the hub, the failure of one device does not affect the functionality of the others (p:55, Figure 2.16).

In this topology, all the devices are connected in a closed loop that forms a ring. Data transmission occurs around this ring, allowing the intended devices to read the data. Ring topology is easy to install and expand, but a failure in a single device disturbs the whole network (p:55, Figure 2.17).

Each device in this topology has a point-to-point connection with a single or multiple devices. Since there are redundant connections in the network, the cost of cabling is high in this topology. Mesh topology can be either full mesh or partial mesh (p:56, Figure 2.18).

A tree topology is an approach that brings star and bus topologies together. Multiple hub devices are connected to the bus and each of these hubs acts as the root of a singular star topology. Tree topology is efficient to manage large networks as it divides the network into smaller parts (p:56, Figure 2.19).

Network management is the process of administering the computer networks by using various tools and techniques. Since the networks get more complex as the number of devices increases and the distance between devices grows, network management becomes much more important. The requirements of network management are described with the FCAPS model. FCAPS is an acronym for fault, configuration, accounting, performance, and security.

A network system should ensure that all of its components work properly. In the case of a fault, the system should be able to detect, isolate, resolve and log the event.

When a fault occurs, the following steps should be implemented:

• Identify the component of the network that causes the failure.
• Isolate the rest of the network to continue functioning without any interruption.
• Resolve the problem which is the cause of the fault and restore the network to its initial state.
• Log the reason and solution of the fault.

The primary functions of the configuration management include naming managed devices, initializing or shutting down controlled devices, changing the network settings, and obtaining notifications about device updates.

Accounting management aims to track the usage of computation and network resources in order to provide a fair distribution of resources among the users. The benefits of accounting management are as follows:

• The detailed information about network activities of the users is helpful for the network manager to plan future growth of the network.
• The users who abuse their access privileges can be detected.
• The users who make inefficient usage of the network resources can be exposed.

In general, the communications over a network system should happen within specified performance limits. Performance management is concerned with keeping the network performance at acceptable levels. In order to monitor and control the performance of a network, statistical information is gathered. By analyzing these statistics, baseline performance levels are established. If the fulfillment of a component is lower than the baseline, it indicates a possible issue that requires attention.

Security management is concerned with the application of security policies. The main issues in security management are controlling the access to the resources and protecting the system against cyber or physical attacks.