Current system:
In that Corporate Financial System is a 25-year-old IBM 3090 mainframe running under a Virtual Machine/Conversational Mode System (VM/CMS) operating system. Many of the business applications used by the system are written in COBOL, and data that is stored in a non-SQL-compliant FOCUS database. Personal computers (PCs) containing an office productivity software is centrally located throughout the Corporate headquarters. Many day-to-day operations that happen across the corporation are conducted using desktop dumb terminals.
The data processing transactions are conducted using the Vandelay Metropolitan Area Network (MAN). Because of strains on system resources and the over workload of the Vandelay corporation’s IT staff, The Pendant Consulting Group, an independent IT consulting firm, has contracted to study its current network environment and they recommend improvements to its affected environments. The consultants will also confirm the validity of information presented in this profile.
Data is currently not shared between corporate departments. In addition, access to corporate data is unavailable to organizations external to the corporate headquarters. Note: there have been a growing number of complaints from field offices regarding the lack of compatibility between office productivity software and the corporate financial system. In addition, executive management has expressed an interest in being able to perform "what-if" analysis on financial data at their desktops. Presently, this is not possible. These are some of the issues facing the corporation.
Solution:
To create a centralized system (client/server) at the headquarters of Vandelay. The corporation allows the different distributing centres to store data and access relevant data.
Database side:
To upgrade its main frame IBM 5090 to an IBM system i590 and reduce the amount of main frames from 5 to 2.
The 2 main frames would be decided on the
Bibliography: 1. Seconds, Wayne. Wide Area Network. Networking 7 –WANS.ppt. 2. IBM System I 570. IBM Corporation. 19th November, 2007. http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/i/hardware/570/ 3. ERP software: Microsoft Dynamics GP product overview. 2007 Microsoft Corporation. 26th November, 2007. http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/gp/product/productoverview.mspx#E1E