3. The Information Architecture and Infrastructure Challenge: How can organizations develop
an information architecture and information technology infrastructure that can support their
goals when business conditions and technologies are changing so rapidly? Meeting the business
and technology challenges of today's digital economy requires redesigning the organization and
building a new information architecture and information technology (IT) infrastructure.
Information architecture is the particular form that information technology takes in an organization
to achieve selected goals or functions. It is a design for the business application systems that serve
each functional specialty and level of the organization and the specific ways that they are used by
each organization. As firms move toward digital firm organizations and technologies, information
architectures are increasingly being designed around business processes and clusters of system
applications spanning multiple functions and organizational levels (Kalakota and Robinson, 2001).
Because managers and employees directly interact with these systems, it is critical for organizational
success that the information architecture meet business requirements now and in the future.