The course introduces computer the principles and the practical aspects of the Information  Technology (IT) infrastructures Management, seen in its intrinsic technological aspects and in the pervasive impact that it has on the enterprises.
In the last decades, the field of IT started a significant transition, progressively evolving from a role of support to the business operations of an enterprise, guaranteed by ERP platforms, to new functions, services and roles capable of supporting new forms of organization. In particular, a key aspect is represented by the capacity of supporting innovation and therefore the competitive advantage for a company. In essence, the enterprises that will be able to make the ‘quantum leap’, moving from the traditional adoption and use of the IT assets to an innovation-oriented usage, will be placed on the forefront of the competitive edge, while the ‘traditional’ IT adopters will be lagging behind.
After a rather introduction to the principles supporting IT architectures, their design and alignment with the enterprise characteristics and needs, the course will focus on best practices for the analysis and design of an IT infrastructure. Particular emphasis will be given to the problem of a IT architecture design aimed at minimizing the problems of Business/IT Alignment. To this end, a first introduction of the Model-Driven Architecture approach will be introduced to the participants. Then, the IT architectures will be presented along the two mentioned dimensions: IT for enterprise management and IT for business innovation.

Course content

The course will be organised in three modules, plus a Laboratory of Enterprise Knowledge Management.
Principles of Information Technology Management
-    Data, Information, Knowledge
-    Cloud computing
-    Networking
-    Enterprise Software Applications
-    Principles of Content and Knowledge Management
-    Service-Oriented Architectures
Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence
-    The Knowledge Technology infrastructure
-    The Enterprise as a ‘Knowledge Factory’
-    Principles of knowledge representation and management
-    Knowledge management for enterprise competitiveness
-    Social networking and cooperative business spaces
-    To manage is to measure, and understand
Business Activities and Business Process Modeling
-    The Enterprise Architectural Frameworks: Zachman, CIMOSA, DODAF
-    Modeling the architecture of an enterprise
-    Modeling the operations of an enterprise
-    Global markets and the continuous change: modeling and managing the evolving enterprises
Laboratory on Enterprise Knowledge Management
-    Survey on practical tools for  EKM
-    Download and installation of a Free/Open Source EKM tool
-    Creation of a trial Spin-Off Company
-    Implementation of a first knowledge base for the created SOC