Project Plan: HighTech Data Collection Company - Assignment Example

? Executive Summary of Project Plan s College Executive Summary High – Tech Data Collection Company today, is a $25 million company that sells data as its primary unique selling proposition. The company basically combines data from various operating systems and builds an intelligent engine of Web Analytics to convert islands of data into useful information for business users. The company is getting really good business in the information management domain niche and the growth for the next three halves is projected to be 60%. The Human resources are also projected to increase by more than 100% to cover up this cost. In order to reside the increasing number of employees, the organization will be occupying two more floors in the same building. Therefore, to catch up this growth and increasing business, the organization needs to modify its current strategy that pertains to two main drivers of its business: the operations strategy across the business and the human resource need of the business. The scope of this project plan covers how this business will react to increase demands of the business. It is obvious that we need to upgrade our existing systems that are used for extracting data from silos and legacy systems. Moreover, the Web Analytics system hardware needs to be optimized since it’s not able to handle the increasing volumes of data. There is also a need to ensure the security of networks and storage media. A consideration should also be given to fine tuning the software as service and cloud based computing methodology that are to be adopted in near future for the increasing requirement of the business. For implementing this scope of changes, certain controls need to be enacted while changes to some are to be made. In all, following are the controls that need implementation in the current organization setup (these controls cover the overall steps that the organization needs to take and doesn’t focus solely on one specific department): Human resources will go through a new compensation information system program that will strictly monitor their work and compensation Finance department will now enact formal accounting procedures and payroll systems Branding activities and budgets will now be officially audited through the main finance system Project Managers would have to submit their project progress on weekly basis to the executive management and other team members would be putting their daily timesheets or work report to their designated line manager Clients will be billed 50% in advance because there have been incidents of credit locks in the recent past. This will be done as soon as the project is signed Several authentication controls will be added to the existing list. New controls like biometrics, cryptographs and smart cards will be given to employees based on their roles and privileges (Cavoukian & Stoianov, 2007). Networks needs to be segregated based on clients, personal users and corporate users. Middleware for legacy systems will be separated from the main system. Honeycomb networks will also be implemented which will not only act as sacrificial network but will also provide an eye on insider or proposed outsider sniffing activity Work-areas will be separated. The first floor will be designated for main IT and support for operations. Floor two will have operations and third floor would be separated for client engagements and executive’s residence. The reception will decide where to send each guests and will issue them smart cards based on access levels and privileges Systems for testing and development will be an exact replica of live system to ensure timely back-ups and disaster recovery activities Source Control will be in place for each project, regardless of its size or client. Incremental backups will be the closing process of the day. Full backups are time consuming and expensive Goals and Objectives of the Plan Following are the goals and objectives of this plan: To ensure that project deadlines are met in a timely fashion To ensure that changes in the information technology infrastructure are phased out properly and not in a haphazard manner To ensure that we have a right mix of team ready to take on newer project To ensure all projects transitions are smooth To ensure that data privacy laws are followed and supplied data is free from distortions and noise To ensure that all malicious and sniffing activities are eliminated To ensure that Web Analytics Application is the best in the market and goes through phases of continuous development and efficiency To ensure that newer and older employees form a good mix so that the organization is benefitted and returns are distributed on merit To ensure that newer information systems are properly implemented, thereby, automating all manual activities like granting IP or leave request form. These automated systems will internally audit the procedures To ensure that information management failures are rare To ensure that client satisfaction’s is achieved on every project through proper maintenance, monitoring and support for the specific project Cost Analysis The cost analysis for this complete project, (component – wise) is given below 1) Cost of hiring twenty new people: A) Twelve Software Engineers @ $2500 per month B) Four Senior Software Engineers @ $4000 per month C) Four Senior Information Managers @ $5500 per month D) To manage, these twenty people, we need two people managers who would be given a salary of $4000 per month 2) Cost of new Networking Equipment: $50,000 3) Cost of new Hardware (including new servers and machines): $100,000 4) Cost of new Office Furniture: 2 * $50,000 5) Cost of new software licenses (include licenses of OS, ERP and other OEM tools): $1 million 6) Cost of existing software maintenance: $100,000 7) Cost of hiring a network architect consultant (implementer of all IS policies and honeycomb network): $15,000 per month (for six months) Competitive Advantages The following competitive advantages can be gained once this information strategy plan is implemented: A) Distribution and delegation of tasks and responsibilities. A data analyst won’t be doing ETL now, resulting in greater efficiency and client satisfaction B) Data privacy which is our USP will be catered to C) Optimization of Web-Analytics application means more business and users can connect to it without any hassle in a more secure environment D) Better infrastructure would means lesser failures and proper testing would ensure great products E) Testing and Development Environment would be separated, therefore, developers with innovative and creative ideas will have luxury to experiment more F) Honeycombs and intrusion detectors will give us first mover advantage G) New information systems will ensure lesser delays and quality service to the client Solution Providers The recommended, cost-effective solution providers (vendors) for different products are: 1) Accenture, for network architect consultant 2) IBM, for Informatica and Data Stage (Tools for Extract, Transform, Load) process 3) Tibco, for Spotfire (used for Internal Reporting) 4) Huawei, for cost – effective network routers and switches 5) General Electric, for wire and other installations 6) Intel, for new iCore Servers 7) Microsoft, for all MS-Office 360, MS Cloud, Azure and SQL Server 8) Oracle, for databases References Cavoukian, A., & Stoianov, A. (2007). Information and Privacy Commissioner, Ontario, Canada, Biometric encryption: A positive-sum technology that achieves strong authentication, security and privacy. Retrieved from website: http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/cew/repository/papers/Biometric_Encryption.pdf Read More