Int. Journal of Business Science and Applied Management / Business-and-Management.org
BOOK REVIEW
This book doses a thorough job in identifying the business continuity (BC) in modern enterprises,
and fills an acknowledged void in the field of present Information Systems (IS) management.
The Information Systems landscape has evolved significantly in the last few years; a serious
challenge facing modern enterprise information systems is the expectation to be resilient and
operational on an ‘always-on’ basis (24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year). This is
particularly important for multinational companies and e-business oriented organizations in order to
stay competitive.
The book has capably achieved it aim of providing high quality chapters that describing in more
details the structure of information systems pertaining to enabling technologies, aspects of their current
implementation, IT governing, risk management, disaster management, interrelated manufacturing and
supply chain strategies, and new IT paradigms.
The background and rationale for this book is given clearly by the editor in the preface, as well as
the title and a brief description for each of the seventeen chapters, making it easy to navigate the book’s
organisation. Moreover, each chapter provides appropriate definitions, clear discussion, chapter-by-
chapter references, as well as using endnote features in most of the chapters, giving extra information
much easier
The first three chapters enlighten the concept of IT governance, risk and disaster management in
term of decision-making quality. Chapters four, five six, seven, eight and nine makes a strong
contribution to knowledge in the area with a comprehensive input on enterprise information system
availability (Always-on). These different chapters deal with the term ‘Always-on’ from different
angles. For example, chapter four, talks about designing and building enterprise information system;
chapter seven is about challenges of data management in always-on enterprise information system, and
chapter nine about some aspects of implementing always-on IT-solutions and standards in the banking
system. From the reviewer point of view, this is a superior choice as the banking sector is a significant
sector in any market. The following chapters keep touching upon important aspects related to
enterprise information technology management in an integrated manner with previous chapters in the
book.
Nijaz Bajgoric and chapter’s authors in this piece of work are able to target IT management
students at undergraduate and postgraduate level, as well as practitioners. Authors successfully present
a comprehensive guide to all aspects of deploying enterprises information systems within businesses
and demonstrate these principals in practise. The contributors also covers a wide range of applications
as well as a valuable selection of real-world cases such as Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM in (Chapter six,
eight). The familiarity of these cases to most readers would help provide a good understanding.
In the introduction of each chapter, the writers start with a clear justification, definitions, and the
significance of the chapter goals. This helps the readers from different backgrounds and different
academic levels to feel confident and excited about going further into each chapter. This is followed by
a detailed outline of each subject area. This also allows the reader to engage with the topics covered,
and gain useful knowledge. However, in the second part of each chapter, each author makes the most
important contribution to their topics. Here they talk about the solution; this can be a proposed
frameworks or models or even a result of study that can enhance in solving particular challenges or
issues. For instance: chapter one proposes a corporate IT risk management framework of IT
governance and IT audit. Chapter five, suggests a model that aims at achieving continuous EIS
operations in terms of hardware and software components, and so on.
Chapters in this book use common concepts as a foundation and expand into the different core
areas. This sense of integration is notable in many places in this book. For instance, EIS concept has
presented in the beginning of chapter five as opening to the following sections. Likewise, authors in
chapter six and seven, sufficiently used the information about EIS in the chapter five, and build upon
it in their own chapters.
Moreover, another form of integration appears when chapters link their conclusions to a specific
significant point. This makes you feel as each chapter contribute and serve this point from different
angles. For example, Decision making. Chapter two conclude that at all business level, business
intelligence consider as glue between operative system and decision support system (DSS). Chapter
three in page 42, illustrate how decision support system (DSS) and knowledge system used to support
organisational decision making. Chapter seven presented the most challenging aspects of data
management like data availability, data security, and data integrity, and how they are important for
decision-making purposes. And so on.
