IT Solutions for Growing Business: Enterprise Architecture Development Assignment - Prof. , Assignments of Computer Science

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Enterprise Architecture Development Assignment

INTRODUCTION

A significant assumption underlying this course is that, either as a provider or a user of information technology, you will eventually be called upon to participate in choosing among various IT products. To make such a selection, individuals generally need to understand how the product functions and be able to identify appropriate technical and functional criteria on which to base their purchasing decisions. In a business context, individuals may be required to perform an analysis and report their results to higher-level management who will make the purchasing decision. Consequently, the objectives of this assignment are several:

1. To acquire a better understanding of elements comprising enterprise-level information infrastructures
2. To experience researching IT products including locating, evaluating, and presenting technical information.
3. To provide an opportunity to think about the process of product evaluation and the selection and use of evaluation criteria.
4. To create an opportunity to practice your presentation and writing skills. ASSIGNMENT DUE DATE As indicated on the syllabus. ASSIGNMENT DETAILS The group is to prepare two sets of papers and one presentation. Paper #1 is to be prepared by the group. In addition, each member of the group is to prepare his or her own Paper #2. Details for each paper and the presentation are provided below. Paper # Paper #1 is in the form of a formal business report that is prepared by the group and:  Provides an accurate functional and technical description of the products within a product category.  Describes the criteria used to evaluate these products.  Identifies, evaluates, and recommends purchase of the top performing product(s) within your chosen category based on your review of professional literature, including description of hands-on evaluation if at all possible. Paper #1 paper should be 1,200-2,000 words, not including appendices. Use clear and concise business-style writing. Middle management is your target audience. Use of tables to compare features by products is encouraged. Use citations to support your report and to lend credibility to your evaluation when appropriate.

To prepare Paper #1 you first need to choose a product category. You can choose from the topic areas listed below. Once a topic is chosen it is no longer available to other groups. Topics are awarded on a first-come-first-service basis. I suggest that you make your selections early to get a topic that interests you.  Network firewalls or intrusion detection systems (Be careful with this topic. Many products now combine both capabilities. Trying to analyze the features of both products is too much for one group. You may, however, choose to coordinate with another group to more effectively address the combined topic. Be sure to talk to me if you want to pursue a joint effort with another group).  Host/workstation firewalls.  Network mgmt applications.  Server mgmt applications (Unix, Linux or multi-platform support).  Security scanning applications.  Configuration mgmt applications.  Network sniffer/diagnostic applications.  Third-party directory services.  Others?? (topics of your choice, but with instructor’s permission). A good place to look for software applications available for downloading is the Network Fusion site: http://www.nwfusion.com/links/Downloads/ The goal of Paper #1 is to show that you have developed an understanding of market offerings within your selected topic area. You are then to develop, evaluate, and recommend the selection of specific products for purchase by your company. Your recommendations are to be based on the criteria specified in the Vignette, below. Following are elements that are to be included in your report. How you organize your report and how you present each element is up to you, but a report cannot be deemed “adequate” without thoroughly addressing each element discussed below.

1. Provide a summary of products in your evaluation including an explanation of intended benefits. Remember, you are preparing the summary for middle management personnel. Hence, they will need to see details of your evaluation process. Explicitly identify the criteria that you intend to use. Explain what each criterion means and why you have included it. Consider weighting the criteria if you believe some are more important than others. Provide logic justifying your weighting scheme if applicable. Be creative in your presentation. 2. Evaluate products within your topic area against the criteria specified (or implied) in the Vignette below. Your job is to match up product performance and price characteristics to evaluation criteria to make your recommendations. Consider tables and other means of conveying large amounts of information in an efficient manner.

3. Identify the recommended product(s) in your evaluation. State your basis for determining the top product(s) and explain why your choice(s) rose to the top. In other words, clearly explain you application of your evaluation criteria and why the recommended product best satisfies the business’s requirements. 4. Additional clarification. This paper provides a management summary supporting a recommendation to purchase a product. While you may need to explain some of the features of the products, this paper is not intended as a technical tutorial. Do not spend all of your alloted words explaining the product and then short change the actual evaluation. Additionally, write this as you would be writing a real business paper. Do not think of this as a term paper. If you need clarification of what I mean, let me know. Vignette Two brothers from a Basque farming family stood to inherit a large ranch, and family holdings. Neither brother was interested in running the ranch. They decided to cash out and use the considerable equity they would accrue to go into business for themselves. One brother loved to eat; the other loved to play with computers. One brother wanted to start a retail outlet chain marketing artisan cheeses, sausages, and imported specialty foods from Europe, particularly the Basque region of Spain. His desire was to start relatively small and gradually build the business, adding products as well as retail outlets. The intent was to start out with locations in Boise and Pocatello, ID with near-term expansion into Coeur d’Alene and Moscow. With success, additional retail outlets would be added in Idaho, Utah, Nevada and Wyoming. The other brother was interested in establishing an IT services firm targeted to serving small-to medium-sized businesses with reliable and affordable IT support by operating IT service centers and performing remote administration of customer premise systems. Key services would include: centralized provision of secure, reliable email, web-hosting and financial application hosting services. Additionally, the business would support remote administration of user desktops, including point-of-sale terminals; and security services such as firewalls, intrusion-detection systems, and virtual private networks. The firm would provide limited development services emphasizing provision of secure, reliable, yet cost-effective infrastructure services. The brothers believed there could be synergy between the two startups. The first brother could concentrate on developing the retail side of the business while outsourcing needed IT resources. This, in turn, provided the IT services company a guaranteed customer as a source of revenue while the company grew and acquired additional customers The IT services company currently includes a mix of 10 Windows and 10 Linux servers centrally located and nearly 250 network users (attached to PCs) located both locally and remotely via a combination of private line and Internet connections. The brother running the IT services company has just recognized that his environment has grown too large

and too complex to effectively manage in an ad hoc manner. Your job is to recommend different types of management and security applications to improve his overall operations. Paper # The purpose of Paper #2 is to give each member of the group practice in boiling down a large report (i.e., Paper #1) to only the key issues and recommendations so that it is suitable for presentation to top management of an organization. Each member of the group is to prepare a separate 500-600-word paper that summarizes the key points in Paper #1. Your target audience is the CFO (Chief Financial Officer) of the organization. Think of Paper #2 as a high-level executive summary of Paper #1. How you organize and present topics is up to you, but you should address:  A problem statement – tell the reader the primary problem or issue you are addressing.  State the methodology employed – i.e., summarize the key issues in your evaluation of products within your category.  Summarize the criteria that you used to evaluate products.  State your recommendation(s) and provide brief rationale for your choices. Presentation – Technical Tutorial The purpose of the this presentation is to provide the rest of the class with a class or technical tutorial that explains the “business” purpose that the software is intended to fulfill, key product features and a fairly comprehensive and technical explanation of how to configure and use the product. This presentation should be approximately 45 to 60 minutes and include live demonstration if practical. If it is not practical to provide live demonstration, I will expect you to make extensive use of screen captures. GRADING Grading of the assignment will be based on how adequately your reports (Paper #1 for the group, the group presentation, and Paper #2 for each group member) meet the following criteria:

1. Thoroughness – did Paper #1 adequately evaluate products in your product category?
2. Clarity of presentation – Was Paper #1 presented in such a way that your evaluation process was understandable?
3. Credibility – Did Paper #1 convince the reader that your evaluation considered all the relevant issues in arriving at your recommendations?
4. Satisfying criteria – Did your recommendations in Paper #1 best satisfy the criteria specified in the Vignette? In making this assessment, I will adopt the perspective of the brothers. To be deemed “good,” your report must address the issues raised in the Vignette and questions that the brothers would likely raise as they read your report.

5. Writing, story telling – Was the writing in Paper #1 crisp, punchy, free from grammatical errors, and told a good story in an understandable and believable way? Good writing is important. So important, in fact, that any report that fails to meet threshold standards for writing will be returned to the team for rewriting (with a corresponding reduction in final grade).
6. Ability to summarize – Were the collective sets of Paper #2 good summaries of Paper #1? Were they presented in such a way that the CFO would have the relevant facts to make a purchase decision?