ICT120 | Networks | Future Network Infrastructure For EZY-Books

1. Network Infrastructure

1. Network convergence and unified communications

2. LAN types

3. Cabling plan for the head office and branches, including transmission media and connecting devices

4. WAN connection for the head office and branches

2. Networked Services

Propose to deploy 4 types of network services. Candidates can be, but not limited to, VOIP, WWW, Intranet, Extranet, and Email.

3. Data Processing Facilities

1. 3.1 Data storage solution.

2. 3.2 Data processing model.

When you provide solutions to each topic, remember to explain their benefits to some of the following items:

4. The operation of the head office and/or branches

5. The collaborations between the head office and branches

6. The operation of the business

7. The satisfaction of customers

Answer:

Introduction

EZY Books is a publication organization that specializes in the publication of books as per the customizations asked by the customer. The organization has its headquarters in Sydney, while it has its other branches located in Brisbane and Melbourne. The business organization has still been continuing its business processes and operations in the old fashioned way, which is proving to be distressful for the customers as well as the workforce in the organization. This is because; the organization still continues its operations in paper based forms. Thus, the organization is considering a change in the operations by rebuilding its IT infrastructure that would elevate the customer experience and make sure that the organization would not lose its reputation given the age old business operations (Laudon and Laudon 2016). That is why, the following report would be based on the changing of the network infrastructure and the requirements it would need to establish a feasible network convergence and unified communications including the types of LAN required. The Cabling plan for the head office and branches, including transmission media and connecting devices would also be mentioned as a result. Next it would define the WAN connection required for the Head Office at Sydney and the branches with the Networked Services that the entire process would include. Along with it, the entire process would describe the changes in the operation of the head office and branches, the collaborations between them and the supposed satisfaction that it would bring about in the customers.

1. Network Infrastructure

Network convergence and unified communications

Network Convergence forms an ideal and efficient coexisting over telephonic communications as well as video and data communication within a single network. Therefore, it is a feasible operational change in the IT infrastructure by implementing the Cisco Network Convergence System 6000 Series Routers within the operation system that enables a superfast network agility to help the maintenance of unified communication at bulk from the customers’ end to the organization (Dubey, Gunasekaran and Ali 2015). The problem that was found before this applied change with the age old telephonic process would be mitigated and there would not be any problem regarding communication within the organization between the customer and the organization.

LAN types

The organization has been facing various complaints from different clients regarding the processing cycles of the company that take up too much of the valuable time. During the change in the IT operations for the process, the type of LAN that should be implemented in the system should thus be much robust and redundant in the network cycle from top down. The LAN should be structured as a properly layered model and each model infrastructure should be developed one at a time (Wickboldt et al. 2015). This would enable the LAN infrastructure to be redundant, fault tolerant and highly available, thus clearing the delays due to network congestions that created a problem for the customers before.

Cabling plan for the head office and branches, including transmission media and connecting devices

The cabling plan for the head office in Sydney as well as the branches in Melbourne and Brisbane would most benefitted if the category 3 cabling is used for the purpose. This category of cabling plan is most suited for IP communications when phones are attached to the PC with a PC port. This enables the 10 Mbps full duplex communication which would make it easy for the customers as well as the sales representatives to keep on seamless communications without thinking of the data being mishandled or missed (Fjeldstad and Snow 2018). The transmission media used for the purpose would be the PC NIC port and the connecting device would be the Cisco Unified IP Phone 7940.

WAN connection for the head office and branches

It is required that there should be proper WAN infrastructure is set before the IP telephony operations within the organization can take place seamlessly when the IT infrastructure of the organization is remodeled (Soleimani and Kannan 2015). For effortless and efficient IP telephony operations voice and data both should remain converged at the WAN exactly like they remain converged at LAN. This should be followed throughout the entire head office at Sydney and both the branches at Melbourne and Brisbane.

2. Networked Services

4 types of network services

When the LAN infrastructure is being enabled in a layered model the network services should also be implemented so that the system would be fault tolerant, available at any time, and provided redundant network. Therefore it is suggested that when these layers have been properly designed, the network services like DHCP and TFTP should be implemented to provide additional functionality to the network. In addition to that NTP and DNS or Network Time Protocol and Domain Name System should also be deployed to enable the mapping of hostname to IP addresses within a network (Wang et al. 2015). The dynamic host configuration protocol or DHCP would provide initial configuration information for the IP addresses and the TFTP server. The trivial file transfer protocol or TFTP would acquire the configuration information for the system further.

3. Data Processing Facilities

Data storage solution

For the data storage solutions in the latest IT infrastructure for the operations in EZY Books it is suggested that the Cisco storage network solutions be utilized. This is core storage solution helps a business in improving the resilience and also make sure that the system response to the demands of latest and improved application and at the same time control the power consumption (Daft 2015). It also enables data center virtualization and reduces the business risks with SAN consolidation. The virtualization of the data would implement cloud storage which is supposed to be a feasible solution given the generated data within the organization to be of a huge amount.

The operation of the head office and/or branches

The operations in the Sydney head office as well as the branches in Melbourne and Brisbane should conduct their operation with the help of the given IT infrastructure that has been proposed in the business plan above. Through the technicalities and revamped system the sales representatives would be able to serve the customers over phone; but not through a paper order phone (Annarelli and Nonino 2016). Instead they would be saving the data directly into the connecting devices for digitally storing the generated data. The process would that be made much easier and the system would update itself to the latest updates as provided input from the company about all the promotions and discounts that previously could not be handed over to the customer at the ready (Garg et al. 2015). All the information would not be stored locally and the data would be available through a file server that the sales representatives can access any time with the help of any device possible. The IT operations infrastructure will call to enable the people working within the organization to share the work documents with the administration team at any point of time.

5. The collaborations between the head office and branches

The planned structure of the revamped IT operations infrastructure would easily help to collaborate between the head office and the branches and there would be no communication gap or mismanagement of knowledge within the head office and the branches (Eskandarpour et al. 2015). There would be global devices, sharing the information in any department within the organization at the ready and would enable the sales representatives to share their what documents with the administration team at any given point of time irrespective of the office location.

6. The operation of the business

The previous problems regarding the smooth propagation of the business operations is supposed to be solved with the implementation of this new IT network operations system. The problem that the sales representative previously had with handling the customers and providing them with the updated information about the promotions and discounts would now have all the information updated for the customers immediately (Zhang et al. 2016). The devices that they would use for the purpose would be able to store any document within the network of the organization and the file server would be able to access any file located at any office location at any given point of time from any device. The sharing of what documents with administration team would also be made easy which was a major problem with the previous operation and networking system in your organization.

7. The satisfaction of customers

It is assumed that the customers would not be dissatisfied more with the organization and all that complaints regarding the processing cycles of Orders would be mitigated. Since the business organization is not adopting their old fashioned business operations systems there is no provision of paper based forms within the organization to process the cycles beyond the estimated time (Farahani et al. 2014). In addition, there would be no loss of data due to the paper based forms and all the orders would be enabled to submit electronically through manuscripts provided by the customers. In addition to that the new refurbished IT network system within the organization would enable online order status tracking capability as well.

Conclusion

Thus, it can be concluded by saying that the entire IT reconstruction as planned for EZY Books would provide benefit to the organization as it has been considering a change in the operations that would elevate the customer experience and make sure that the organization would not lose its reputation given the age old business operations. It would also make them be ahead of their competitors rather than fading from the market due to their age old operational infrastructure. This has been identified with the above report based on the changing of the network infrastructure and the requirements it would need to establish a feasible network convergence and unified communications including the types of LAN required. The Cabling plan for the head office and branches, including transmission media and connecting devices has been mentioned as a result. Next it defined the WAN connection required for the Head Office at Sydney and the branches with the Networked Services that the entire process had planned to incorporate. Along with it, the entire process described the changes in the operation of the head office and branches, the collaborations between them and the supposed satisfaction that it would bring about in the customers. This has provided a clear perception on how the change in IT operations for EZY Books would bring in positive changes in the business for further development of the business process.

References

Annarelli, A. and Nonino, F., 2016. Strategic and operational management of organizational resilience: Current state of research and future directions. Omega, 62, pp.1-18.

Daft, R.L., 2015. Organization theory and design. Cengage learning.

Dubey, R., Gunasekaran, A. and Ali, S.S., 2015. Exploring the relationship between leadership, operational practices, institutional pressures and environmental performance: A framework for green supply chain. International Journal of Production Economics, 160, pp.120-132.

Eskandarpour, M., Dejax, P., Miemczyk, J. and Péton, O., 2015. Sustainable supply chain network design: An optimization-oriented review. Omega, 54, pp.11-32.

Farahani, R.Z., Rezapour, S., Drezner, T. and Fallah, S., 2014. Competitive supply chain network design: An overview of classifications, models, solution techniques and applications. Omega, 45, pp.92-118.

Fjeldstad, Ø.D. and Snow, C.C., 2018. Business models and organization design. Long Range Planning, 51(1), pp.32-39.

Garg, K., Kannan, D., Diabat, A. and Jha, P.C., 2015. A multi-criteria optimization approach to manage environmental issues in closed loop supply chain network design. Journal of Cleaner Production, 100, pp.297-314.

Laudon, K.C. and Laudon, J.P., 2016. Management information system. Pearson Education India.

Soleimani, H. and Kannan, G., 2015. A hybrid particle swarm optimization and genetic algorithm for closed-loop supply chain network design in large-scale networks. Applied Mathematical Modelling, 39(14), pp.3990-4012.

Wang, Y., Wallace, S.W., Shen, B. and Choi, T.M., 2015. Service supply chain management: A review of operational models. European Journal of Operational Research, 247(3), pp.685-698.

Wickboldt, J.A., De Jesus, W.P., Isolani, P.H., Both, C.B., Rochol, J. and Granville, L.Z., 2015. Software-defined networking: management requirements and challenges. IEEE Communications Magazine, 53(1), pp.278-285.

Zhang, H., Jiang, C., Hu, R.Q. and Qian, Y., 2016. Self-organization in disaster-resilient heterogeneous small cell networks. IEEE Network, 30(2), pp.116-121.