IFSM 370 Project 4: Architectural Diagram Instructions

IFSM 370 Project 4: Architectural Diagram Instructions

Introduction

This is an individual project. This project is related to the Case Study project. Each student must complete an Architectural Diagram that illustrates the placement of security and other technologies within the converged network solution. The foundationfor this project is the requirements analysis and proposal document that you completed for the Case Study project. The target audience will be the organization’s Chief Information Officer (CIO). The Architectural Diagram deliverable is an MS Word document. If you use a drawing tool to complete the diagram you must copy and paste the images into a Word document so that you only submit one Word document for grading.

The completed Architectural Diagram deliverable is due by 11:59 PM Eastern Time on the due date shown in the Course Schedule. See the Additional Information section of the syllabus for the penalty for late or missed assignments and projects.

The diagram is valued at 10% of the course grade.

Case Study

Company Overview

Universal Transport, Inc. (UTI) is a global logistics provider that offers fully integrated freight and supply chain services through managed warehousing and domestic and international freight forwarding. Services range from door-to-door domestic and international delivery services to total supply chain management. With branches across the United States and Europe and partners worldwide, UTI continues to expand, and it has experienced rapid growth through acquisitions.

Note: The termsupply chainrefers to all the elements involved in bringing anorganization's products from the raw-goods stage to the customer.

The Association for Operations Management (APICS) dictionary ((http://www.apics.org/Resources/APICSDictionary.htm) defines “supply chain management (SCM)” as the design, planning, execution, control, and monitoring of supply chain activities with the objective of creating net value, building a competitive infrastructure, leveraging worldwide logistics, synchronizing supply with demand and measuring performance globally.

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IFSM 370 Project 4: Architectural Diagram Instructions

The Business Challenge

UTI is competing in an environment where freight transport is as much about keeping customers informed as it is about on-time delivery. The company has adopted web-based technologies for tracking freight, differentiating its services, keeping customers informed, and ensuring the on-time delivery that is UTI's hallmark. As a result, UTI enjoys a very high level of customer satisfaction.

Its mobile workforce has rapidly increased, with drivers using PDAs to scan consignments, which are then synced in real time via GPRS links to headquarters applications that track the consignments. Customers use UTI’s web services to view the progress of orders, from dispatch to warehousing to final delivery. Customers also use UTI’s web-based systems to create freight documentation and generate reports. With the EDI interface, invoices and payments are transferred directly between the customers' systems and UTI, saving both time and money.

As the company has expanded, the data flowing in the system have increased as well. Now, with more than 5,000 employees and thousands of customers worldwide, UTI is suffering from the effects of explosive growth. Demands on its wide area network (WAN) are exceeding capacity. The main data center has experienced several network outages and unscheduled downtime. The aging ISDN telephone system is failing, as the company has avoided the costly upgrades necessary to keep it operating at optimal performance. Telephone bills have increased without warning, and the voice mail system is overloaded.

The Opportunity

UTI wants to provide increased bandwidth between all 47 of its US offices and the main data center located in Chicago. There are three regional business centers that have four to eight satellite locations that need to able communicate and exchange data daily.

These are located in Chicago, Kansas City, and Tampa. The company desires a reliable and secure network to accommodate its planned growth without exceeding 85% of capacity.

The company does not want to spend any more on telephone services than it does today, and its goal is to upgrade the services while protecting against escalating costs from its ISDN service provider.

Efficiency and productivity goals for this rapidly growing company are of paramount importance, and there is a desire to provide capabilities and services that incorporate technology solutions to improve in those areas as well as retain the high level of customer satisfaction. UTI is also interested in reducing travel between its sites by implementing video conferencing.

In addition, UTI wants to be able to monitor and manage data and voice services, and ensure that capacity and performance is consistent with its business needs.

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IFSM 370 Project 4: Architectural Diagram Instructions

The Deliverable

For this assignment, you will use your proposed solution for the UTI requirements analysis. Briefly describe the proposed technology solution and list the business requirements (including security requirements) that are satisfied. This should be done on one (1) page. Then provide a diagram that illustrates the placement of various communications components within the context of developing an effective, efficient, security posture for the proposed solution for TUI's converged network.

Your deliverable will be one MS Word document that includes a 1-page business requirements summary and an architectural drawing. Your deliverable will be scored according to the scoring rubric below. Successful documents use the bolded rubric attributes as major section headings.Be sure you have incorporated all requiredaspects of the assignment, and that the diagram satisfies what you have described in the summary.

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IFSM 370 Project 4: Architectural Diagram Instructions

Scoring Rubric

Attribute	Full points	Partial points	No points	Possible
				Points
Business	Business requirements	Business	Business	2
Requirements	of the converged	requirements of the	requirements are
	network are	proposed solution	not included, or do
(including clearly	appropriately identified	are partially	not apply to the
identified security	from the proposed	identified and/or	proposed solution.
requirements)	solution; work	explained; work
	demonstrates	may be lacking in
	understanding of course	demonstration of
	concepts, analysis, and	understanding of
	critical thinking.	course concepts,
		analysis, and/or
		critical thinking.
Technology	All communications	Some	Communications	6
Diagram	components are clearly	communications	components and
	identified and the layout	components are	the layout are not
	is appropriately	identified and the	included in the
	integrated in the	layout is somewhat	architectural
	architectural diagram.	appropriately	diagram, or are not
	Work demonstrates	integrated into the	incorporated
	understanding of course	architectural	correctly.
	concepts, analysis, and	diagram; work may
	critical thinking.	be lacking in
		demonstration of
		understanding of
		course concepts,
		analysis, and/or
		critical thinking.
Diagram quality	The architectural	The architectural	No architectural	1
	diagram is professionally	diagram could be	diagram is
	presented, is clear, and	clearer, and/or	provided.
	appropriately conveys	could be improved
	the information.	to adequately
		convey the
		information.

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IFSM 370 Project 4: Architectural Diagram Instructions

Attribute	Full points	Partial points	No points	Possible
				Points
Document format	The document reflects	The document is	The document is	1
	effective organization	not well-organized,	extremely poorly
	and correct sentence	and/or contains	written and does
	structure, grammar, and	grammar and/or	not convey the
	spelling; it is presented	spelling errors;	information.
	in a professional format;	and/or it does not
	and any references used	follow APA style for
	are appropriately	references and
	incorporated and cited,	citations.
	using APA style.
			Total Points	10

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