Description
Information Infrastructure Network Project Scenario
Current Network
My cousin, Kyle Gavotte, owns and manages a specialty products manufacturing company, Gifts of Fortune Enterprises. The warehouse, a one-story 1200 sq. ft. building, is located in Midtown. He has 20 employees, five in the main office and 15 in the warehouse. His current network supports five desktop computers in the main office and one laptop and a connected dot matrix printer in the warehouse. Each computer is running Windows 7 Pro. There is one laser printer that is connected to Kyle’s assistant’s computer. The other employees often email the assistant their print jobs. They usually get their printouts within four hours of the request.
Kyle and his assistant’s computers are the only ones with Internet connection directly from the router switch provided by the ISP, Nation Online (NOL). There is an older (from 1999) 8-port switch that connects all of the workstations and the laptop so that they can share files in a peer-to-peer network configuration. In terms of security, Kyle makes sure to lock the doors at night, other than that he has not considered security for his operations. He thinks there may be a firewall on the router supplied by the ISP, but is not sure what it does. He is very concerned that competitors might steal his customer and product information.
New Network Needs
Things are going very well for Gifts of Fortune Enterprises. Kyle wants to expand his business to include an e-commerce website and school fundraiser division. With the increase in sales, he will need to find 14 more warehouse employees, two more office staff employees, and 3 field sales reps that can place orders electronically. The school fundraiser division will need to have a separate warehouse/office location as space is tight now in the current location. Kyle will expand his operations in the warehouse next to the current location. He is prepared to spend some money to bring his network into a high-performance state that will easily facilitate his employee’s efforts and all his business processes.
Kyle has a contract signed with an application development consultant in order to develop a CRM database/application that will be used to track customers and fulfill orders. He also plans to add an integrated central accounting application. He has been told that he will need new servers but is not sure what they are or how to build a network around them. Currently, his applications are a combination of single-user Access databases and Excel Spreadsheets. He is not sure about Cloud-based services and SAAS but he feels that they lack security and so he is very hesitant to use them and definitely wants his own network including private email and access control features.
He needs your help in upgrading the company network. He looks forward to your complete analysis as well as a comprehensive proposal including some detailed cost breakdowns on equipment.
You decide to apply what you know about ITIL to ensure that your cousin gets the service he deserves.
