¶ … IT Services of BuildingDNA®
I am an IT consultant with the objectives of providing recommendations for BuildingDNA Inc. To assist the company increasing its output and the productivity in the competitive business environment. I am also to provide recommendations for the BuildingDNA on the strategy to employ in implementing IT infrastructure design to achieve a leading ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). The design packages are to assist the company to achieve a leading position in IT infrastructures that include: Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, IT Management and Information Assurance.
More importantly, the goal of the project is to use the IT infrastructures to assist the BuildingDNA, Inc. To fuel very rapid growth by delivering 10-20 maps monthly and reach between 3,000 and 7,000 per month within 3 years. The project also identifies scalable, systematic process and procedure that BuildingDNA will employ in organizing, planning, tracking as well as evaluating the production of online maps in combination of appropriate interfaces to an enterprise level IT infrastructures capable of delivery approximately 3,000 maps monthly
Problem Statement
The critical challenges that BuildingDNA, Inc. is facing is the strategy to employ in identifying the scalable, systematic process to create an effective IT infrastructures. The company is also facing challenges in implementing procedure planning evaluating and tracking online mapping as well as creating appropriate interface to create enterprise-level IT infrastructures that can handle and deliver up to 3,000 maps monthly.
Additional client's business problems are as follows:
BuildingDNA current IT infrastructure, storage capacity, and amount of personnel are not enough to handle the amount of production.
It has also been identified that there are fundamental issues found to be hindering growth of BuildingDNA, Inc. within the existing infrastructure.
Other problem is that the existing IT infrastructures of the BuildingDNA does not have adequate capacity to accommodate the company's growth aspirations.
BuildingDNA also lacks a proper governance to limit unnecessary technology diversity that can occur as the company grows since the technology diversity can lead to an increase in sustainable costs.
The company also lacks the workflow management necessary to ensure that the organization functions at peak efficiency.
With cyber-threats on the rise, BuildingDNA also faces challenges to maintain proper security policy and enforcement.
BuildingDNA does not currently have a sustainable enterprise architecture necessary to maintain the anticipated productivity increase.
The company is also not able to perform functions such as billing customers, tracking orders, scheduling tasks, and several other enterprise resource planning processes.
Moreover, BuildingDNA currently produces dozen building maps monthly for various customers.
The company also aims to expand the production capability by producing a dozen maps monthly between 3000 and 7000 maps per month within three years.
To sustain appropriately-sized IT infrastructure, it is very critical to implement improvements to systems as well as providing a rigorous process of governance and initiate workflow management.
The following BuildingDNA needs are broken down into three major categories: Customer needs, Employee Needs, and Supplier Needs:
Customer Need #1: Improve response time for customer orders
Customer Need #2: Improve scalability to increase production
Customer Need #3: Improve customer experience with ordering services
Customer Need #4: Ensure quality at all levels
Employee Need #1: Provide rapid training for staff on new system
Employee Need #2: Establish easy access to resources needed to accomplish tasks
Employee Need #3: Provide business intelligence for executives
Employee Need #4: Provide time keeping and payment system
Employee Need #5: Provide easy access to company benefits.
The Opportunity
This section provides different goals that can open opportunities for the BuildingDNA:
Goal #1: Support the increase productivity up to 7000 maps per month
Goal #2: Integrate Customer Relationships Management, Human Resources Management, Financial Management, Business Intelligence, Supply Chain, and Workflow Management on new ERP system
Goal #3: Monitor performance, sales volume, productivity, and quality using key performance indicators
Goal#4: Provide all necessary training to employees and customers.
My Recommended Approach
Recommendation #1: Establish virtual datacenter via Amazon Web Services
Recommendation #2: Implement Oracle-based Enterprise Resource Planning system
Recommendation #3: Provide capability to monitor return rates, sales volume, and key satisfaction metrics
Recommendation #4: Institute information assurance best practices
Recommendation #5: Continually monitor system performance and provide change management
Recommendation #6:Provide a performance measurement system to achieve organizational performances.
Recommendation #7:Collecting conformance data and process performances to deliver systematic and timely services.
Recommendation #8: Integrate high quality and effective security systems to protect the IT infrastructures against the internal and external threats.
Recommendation #9: Establish the emerging IT technologies such as high-level configurations to achieve continuous application availability.
Recommendation #10: Provide a dynamic reporting capability to deliver...
The following best practices combine with my experience define the foundation on which this proposal is designed.
Systems Engineering Best Practices
To assist the BuildingDNA delivering quality products to its customers, I decide to design and implement the best systems engineering for the company. The approach to develop and implement BuildingDNA's new infrastructure are follows:
Develop software and hardware conforming to the defined standards that promote interoperability for data, applications, and technology .standards to assist in consistency, improving ability to manage systems, improve user satisfaction, and protect existing IT investments to maximize returns on investment and reduce the cost of operations.
Outsource to a cloud service-provider in order to capitalize on specialized expertise from among vendors. Industry experts should be sourced to assist in the development of the IT infrastructure and adhering to Enterprise Architecture best practices.
Software Engineering Best Practices
Selection and integration of software engineering best practices are critical for the BuildingDNA to follow industry best practices. Different strategies to be used for the project design are as follows:
My design strategies are to use the software engineering tools to provide building service providers their maps in a timely fashion. Building service providers should enjoy competitive market advantages and assist commercial buildings to deliver peak efficiency and profitability. The best practice is also to ensure that customers receive the maps in a timely manner to make BuildingDNA services appreciative and increase the rates of customers returns.
My design method is to assist BuildingDNA improving production methods and customer experience. BuildingDNA plans to increase the number of maps per month from 10-20 per month to 3,000 to 7,000 per month in the next three years. Finding better production methods will help BuildingDNA reach their goals.
Information Assurance Best Practices
The proposal is to integrate effective security system to ensure data is protected from unauthorized use and disclosure and pre-decisional because of the data sensitivity, and level of the proprietary information. "Existing laws and regulations require organization to safeguard the national security through data privacy, while permitting open and free access. Pre-decisional (work-in-progress, not yet authorized for release) information is to be protected to avoid misinterpretation, unwarranted speculation, and inappropriate use." (Minoli, 2008 p 78).
Our solution is to ensure that the enterprise's IP ( Intellectual Property) is protected. This protection is reflected in the IT implementation, architecture, and governance processes.
The technical approach to enhance information assurance is to use firewall, IDS, IPS, and encryption to protect IT infrastructures. The non-technical approach is use security guards to protect the IT infrastructures.
Information Technology Management
As an expert in IT, and years of experience accumulated in IT infrastructures have assisted me to develop necessary extensive knowledge and objectivity to construct a reliable and comprehensive infrastructures management systems that will serve BuildingDNA for several years.
Infrastructure management solutions are based on proven methodology and customized to fit BuildingDNA IT objectives. The key to success lies in putting together the right group of people, drawing on the subject-matter expertise and intimate knowledge for the staff of BuildingDNA.
The IT management approach is also to examine the factors that drive BuildingDNA to achieve market opportunities, cost reduction, risk avoidance, compliance, and creating a roadmap to achieve business advantages for the BuildingDNA.
In essence, my proposed design solutions follow software and hardware standards to promote data application, and technology interoperability standards to ensure coherence, and improve ability to manage systems, raise user satisfaction, and protect current IT investments. The strategy is also to maximize the return on investment and reduces costs to derive support from suppliers, and facilitate integration.
My proposed governance strategy is also to establish that changes in technologies and applications to assist the company to meet business needs. Business driven changes promote an atmosphere where the information environment changes are to reflect business needs, rather than changing the business to reflect IT changes. The strategy is to achieve the continuity of the business operations.
Execution Strategy
My strategy is to incorporate best practices, expertise, and an effective approach to manage IT deliverables. The following section describes my project methods, including how the project will be managed, a proposed execution schedule, and rationale for the suggested project approach.
Technical/Project Approach
Systems Engineering Technical Approach
My approach to employ in assisting BuildingDNA developing and implementing new infrastructure is to adopt standards and best practices as put forth by The Open Group. The Open Group are the developers of the TOGAF®, which is a de-facto global framework standard for Enterprise Architecture (The Open Group, 2011). My approach is also to utilize standard systems engineering phases for the design strategy as…
