Abstract:

HEI (Higher Education Institutions) usually does not have a plan to make equipment purchases that impacts on the fulfilment of institutional strategic objectives. Generally, the acquisitions are carried out with a short-term vision, to solve the urgent problems, which generates an inefficient use of the resources destined to technological acquisitions.

At the UAM (Metropolitan Autonomous University), with an organizational structure made up of departments and academic divisions, each entity assumes the individual responsability for acquiring technological infrastructure according to its own needs, often based on immediacy, which generates unplanned acquisitions And inconsistent with the need to solve fundamentally problems of ad hoc equipment to the educational and research requirements, which, therefore, does not allow to achieve a significant impact in what is reflected in the institutional development plan

One way of approaching the solution of this problem is to define the needs of technological architecture based on the key processes of the institution. In the particular case of the UAM-Lerma this approach has been used taking as reference the best practices in the design of management systems, integrating four architectures; A process architecture, a data architecture, which manages information, an applied architecture for data management and information management, and finally a technological architecture that defines software and hardware.

From this perspective, this paper proposes a technological architecture capable of supporting the critical processes of an HEI. With the design and development of this technological architecture, we seek to reduce costs to such a degree that only what is strictly necessary to operate is possible, avoiding unplanned purchases. The use of Cloud Computing solutions allows optimizing the use of memory on disk and processing time, in addition to having high availability of the services offered. Another aspect that allows to reduce costs is the use of free software, generating great savings in the payment of licenses.

In designing this technological architecture it is important to take into account the adequate definition of the key processes so that, from this, they are classified into three groups: strategic, operational and support, which constitute the business architecture. In parallel, it describes the identification of the necessary data for a correct management of the key processes, deriving in the following classification: master data, system data and catalogs. Applications are aligned based on the key processes and data identified. Finally, the architecture integrates the software and hardware (Cloud Computing scheme) used to support the applications.

As a conclusion, the design and development of the institutional architecture, based on an adequate definition of key processes, contributes to the optimization of the use of the financial resources of the UAM-Lerma and contributes effectively to compliance of the strategic objectives of the Development Plan of the Institution. This is the case of the acquisition of a perimeter security solution based on Cloud Computing that, in addition to ensuring a higher level of security in the data that is handled inside the UAM-Lerma, will impact with the use of new technological resources to The Digital Management System and the Virtual Campus, optimizing the use of financial resources for the acquisition of technological infrastructure.

Keywords:

Institutional architecture, decision-making support, strategic planning, infrastructure technology.