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Primary Task Response: Within the Discussion Board area, write 400–600 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions by your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas.

Use the library and Internet to find information about enterprise architectures and distributed systems.

Most corporate systems are distributed systems, meaning they are made up of a number of different components that are not necessarily located in the same place. If you have a home computer system with a shared printer and Wi-Fi, you have a simple distributed system. If you have multiple computers physically connected together, you have a more complicated distributed system. Some companies and government agencies have hundreds, if not thousands of computers linked together which are massive distributed systems. The technology employee’s use to access these computers is also part of the distributed system.

The establishment of technology standards for an organization is called the Enterprise Technical Architecture. This is a portion of the Enterprise Architecture. An Enterprise Architecture is a definition and standard for all aspects of an organization. Both private industry and government agencies have developed Enterprise Architectures which define the data, processes, organization, technology, product lifecycles and strategies of the organization. For an organization to be effective it must develop standards, particularly in technology so communication among departments is seamless, consistent, and efficient. By standardizing all aspects of the organization through the development of an Enterprise Architecture, organizations find it much easier to provide systems that meet the business needs effectively.

  • Compare and contrast the meaning of enterprise architecture versus distributed system.
  • Provide at least 1 example each of enterprise architecture and a distributed system.
  • Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of distributed systems in a business environment.

Responses to Other Students: Respond to at least 2 of your fellow classmates with a reply of at least 100 words about their primary task response regarding items you found to be compelling and enlightening. To help you with your discussion, please consider the following questions:

  • What did you learn from your classmate’s posting?
  • What additional questions do you have after reading the posting?
  • What clarification do you need regarding the posting?
  • What differences or similarities do you see between your posting and other classmates’ postings?

Consultant’s Analysis Report on Enterprise System

Throughout this course, you will be preparing a Consultant’s Analysis Report on Enterprise Systems for a project of your choosing that will culminate in the Final Key Assignment. You will not be developing any software or actually implementing a system, but you will work extensively with the concepts of good analysis of enterprise systems implementation. Additional information and the deliverables for each Individual Project will be provided in the assignment description for that project.

Project Selection:

The first step will be to select a project as the target for your analysis. This project will be used as the basis for each of the assignments throughout the course and should conform to the following guidelines:

  • Nontrivial: The selected project should be large enough to allow reasonable exercise of the system analysis and design process.
  • Domain Knowledge: You should be familiar enough with the organization or system category to allow focus on the planning tasks without significant time required for domain education.
  • Accessibility: You should have good access to the people and other information related to the organization or system because this will be an important part of the process.

Select an enterprise system project that fits these requirements and submit your proposal to your instructor before proceeding further with the assignments in the course. Approval should be sought within the first several days of the course. Your instructor will tell you how to submit this proposal and what notification will be given for project approval.

Assignment:

For the assignments in this course you will be developing a comprehensive document entitled Consultant’s Analysis Report on Enterprise Systems. Your first task in this process will be to select a project to use as the basis of your plan. You will also create the shell document for the final project deliverable that you will be working on during each unit. As you proceed through each project week, you will add content to each section of the final document to gradually complete the final project delivery. Appropriate research should be conducted to support the analysis in your plan, and assumptions may be made when necessary.

The project deliverables are:

  • Submit project proposal to instructor for approval
  • Consultant’s Analysis Report on Enterprise Systems Shell
    • Use MS Word
    • Title page
      • Course number and name
      • Project name
      • Student name
      • Date
    • Table of contents
      • Use autogenerated TOC.
      • Separate page
      • Maximum of 3 levels deep
      • Be sure to update fields of TOC so it is up-to-date before submitting project
    • Section headings (create each heading on a new page with TBD as content except for sections listed under “New content” below)
      • Project Outline
      • System Requirements
      • Architecture Selection
      • Resources and Timeline
      • Security
      • Final Analysis and Recommendations
  • New content
    • Project Outline
      • Give a brief description of the project.
        • Information from the assignment description may be used, but additional details should be provided based on assumptions about the company and project that you feel are appropriate. This section should include the reason for the new distributed system, approximate timeframe and budget to complete the project, and some major deliverables of the project.
    • System Requirements
      • This section should list the requirements of the system in sufficient detail to allow a design team to create the design document.
      • Describe the functions the system should perform.
      • Identify the method of delivery (Web, client software, etc.).
      • List the types of target users.
      • Provide any additional information you feel will affect the design of the system, such as projected load on the system, globalization, or regulatory issues regarding the information that will be handled in the system.
  • Name the document yourname_IT401_IP1.doc
  • Submit the document for grading.

3

Students will be expected to post their first initial discussion board posting by Friday of each week. Discussion posts will be graded and late submissions will be assigned a late penalty in accordance with the late penalty policy found in the syllabus. NOTE: All submission posting times are based on midnight Central Time.

Students are expected to post their responses to peers by Tuesday. NOTE: All submission posting times are based on midnight Central Time.

Primary Task Response: Within the Discussion Board area, write 400–600 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions by your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas.

Use the library and Internet to find information about distributed systems architectures.

  • Describe the fundamental components of a distributed system.
  • Compare and contrast the advantages and disadvantages of at least 2 distributed system architectures.
  • Use examples to illustrate your points.

Responses to Other Students: Respond to at least 2 of your fellow classmates with a reply of at least 100 words about their primary task response regarding items you found to be compelling and enlightening. To help you with your discussion, please consider the following questions:

  • What did you learn from your classmate’s posting?
  • What additional questions do you have after reading the posting?
  • What clarification do you need regarding the posting?
  • What differences or similarities do you see between your posting and other classmates’ postings?

For assistance with your assignment, please use your text, Web resources, and all course materials.

4

One of the first tasks in distributed systems development is the selection of the architecture. The architecture determines how the various parts of the distributed system will operate and communicate.

For this assignment, you will identify the architecture that will be used in your distributed system project and you will modify your consultant’s analysis report to address any new issues you discover.

The following are the project deliverables:

  • Update the Consultant’s Analysis Report document title page with a new date and project name.
  • Update the previously completed sections based on your instructor’s feedback.
  • Include the following new content:
    • Architecture Selection
      • Compare and contrast at least 3 potential architectures for your system, and then select the one that applies the best to your project. In addition to hardware architectures you may also consider “The Cloud”.
      • Describe the architecture that is appropriate for your distributed system based on the results of your analysis.
      • Justify your architecture selection with a summary of your analysis results and conclusions.
  • Be sure to update your table of contents before submission.
  • Name the document yourname_IT401_IP2.doc.
  • Submit the document for grading.

Students will be expected to post their first initial discussion board posting by Friday of each week. Discussion posts will be graded and late submissions will be assigned a late penalty in accordance with the late penalty policy found in the syllabus. NOTE: All submission posting times are based on midnight Central Time.

Students are expected to post their responses to peers by Tuesday. NOTE: All submission posting times are based on midnight Central Time.

Primary Task Response: Within the Discussion Board area, write 400–600 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions by your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas.

Use the library and Internet to find information about distributed systems development.

  • Select at least 2 development processes for distributed systems, such as the CORBA distributed object environment, Java 2 Enterprise Architecture (J2EE), SOA, etc.
  • Describe the features and components of these environments that you selected and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each system.

Responses to Other Students: Respond to at least 2 of your fellow classmates with a reply of at least 100 words about their primary task response regarding items you found to be compelling and enlightening. To help you with your discussion, please consider the following questions:

  • What did you learn from your classmate’s posting?
  • What additional questions do you have after reading the posting?
  • What clarification do you need regarding the posting?
  • What differences or similarities do you see between your posting and other classmates’ postings?

The discussion assignment for this week includes a review of the Key Assignment Outline completed by one of your classmates, as well as a substantial response to at least one other student.

Primary Task Response: Your first task is to post your own Key Assignment Outline to the discussion area so that other students are able to review your plan. Attach your document to the main discussion post, and include any notes you feel are appropriate. The purpose of this assignment is to help improve the quality of the Key Assignment Draft you will complete next week.

Respond to Another Student: Review at least 1 other student’s Key Assignment Outline and provide meaningful feedback. Refrain from general feedback, such as simply stating “good job.” Your feedback to other students is most helpful if you not only point out weak areas but also offer suggestions for improvement. The best feedback takes a three-stage approach to identify what was done well, weaknesses, and areas for improvement.

7

Distributed systems are particularly vulnerable to security threats because they are exposed in many areas over networks. Also, distributed systems are often business-critical applications that must not be compromised.

For this assignment, you will identify the security risks that may be present for your distributed system project. You will also modify the consultant’s analysis report to address any new issues you discover.

The following are the project deliverables:

  • Update the Consultant’s Analysis Report document title page with new date and project name.
  • Update the previously completed sections based on your instructor’s feedback.
  • Include the following new content:
    • Security
      • Identify the primary security risks and threats your distributed system might face. Research and include threats such as phishing, Internet scams, etc.
      • Determine the severity level of the risks and threats in terms of likelihood and impact on the business.
      • Based on the likelihood and impact of the security threats, determine the order in which threats should be addressed, and prepare an action plan to reduce the impact of each risk/threat listed in priority order.
  • Be sure to update your table of contents before submission.
  • Name the document yourname_IT401_IP4.doc.

 
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