MIS 589 Project Milestone 0—Proposal Draft complete solutions correct answers key

MIS 589 Project Milestone 0—Proposal Draft complete solutions correct answers key

Objectives

The goal of this Applied Research Project is to provide a learning experience for students to apply their knowledge to a specific context. The textbook readings, discussions, quizzes, and iLab is expected to equip the learners with knowledge required to attempt the project. The context for the project, to which the key networking concepts are applied, is a business service that the students choose by themselves. This business service will make use of a network infrastructure in order to meet specific business objectives and to serve certain clients. The project is designed to meet the following learning objectives. 

·         Identify business and application layer requirements of a service that uses network infrastructure.

·         Apply the key concepts of OSI layers to identify network requirements for the chosen business service.

·         Propose network solutions based on identified network requirements.

·         Document and present network requirements and solutions in a professional manner.

·         Identify, document, and present security and management aspects of the proposed network.

·         Learn to wisely manage time and resources to deliver the milestones on time with high quality.

·         Learn to effectively interact with instructor and peers to solve specific problems and questions related to the project.

·         Learn problem-solving skills and the ability to deal with large amount of information.

General Guidelines

This is an Applied Research Project in which students will learn to apply their knowledge to a particular context of their choice. The project is divided into milestones, and the objectives of the milestones roughly coincide with the topics covered in the respective weeks. The project provides a deliverable submission template for each milestone that students are required to fill up based on their research and analysis. Please check the project milestone sections below for more detailed guidance on completing items in each project milestone.

Here are some general guidelines for students.

·         Please read through this Course Project page entirely during Week 1 to get a feel for the project and to understand the requirements.

·         You are given one submission template for the entire project. During each week or milestone, you will complete the required pages of the templates. Please submit the entire template during each week so that the instructor can refer back to the previous submissions if needed.

·         The project will require you to put aside some time each week on a regular basis. The project deliverable of a week is dependent on the previous week's work. Therefore, it is important to be on schedule. Like any project out there in the real world, you will have to manage your time and resources to submit a high-quality deliverable on time.

·         The project narrative and guidelines may seem extensive and that is because of the detailed guidance provided to help you think through the process. This project is an attempt to make you think in a disciplined and structured manner to analyze networks.

·         Week 1 of the project is when you decide what kind of business service you want to work on for the rest of the weeks. The Milestone 0 section in this Course Project page will help you find the business service for your project by walking you through a structured thinking process.

·         Please begin the project in Week 1 itself, although the proposal is not due until Week 2. Choosing a business context for your project may be time consuming. Starting early will give you time to submit your draft and obtain feedback from your instructor.

·         Interaction with peers and your instructor will be very valuable. Please make use of the class meeting time, either through iConnect or in a face-face class, to discuss the project. Because each of you will have a different business scenario for the project, you may share each others' opinions and approaches during the class meetings or in the discussion board.

·         You will have graded project deliverables for Weeks 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7.

·         Please take a look at the grading rubric for each week's deliverable.

·         It will be helpful for the instructor if you use clear, direct language in your narrative. Use bullet points, figures, and tables whenever possible. Learn to organize your information clearly. Use extra pages if needed to depict diagrams, tables, or figures as needed. Don't forget to cite your sources of information. Learning to write clearly and to present your information in a manner that makes it easy for the reader are very valuable skills.

Project Milestone 0—Proposal Draft

I. Proposal Guidance—Brainstorming

As we look around, we can see numerous examples of business services that have used networked applications in order to meet various business objectives. For example, the Internet and broadband networks have made it possible to sell and source products for the retail industry. We see information technology has made it possible to offer online education and online banking. We also see how access to high-speed wireless networks has made it possible to offer free Wi-Fi and access to the Internet in municipalities, parks, restaurants, and buses. Cloud services have made it possible to run platform, infrastructure, and software as a service. Mobile devices and networks have made it possible to reach customers anytime and anywhere.

Some of the common business objectives are

1.    to provide valued added information and services to customers and employees (i.e., online flight and train reservations, online locating and sourcing of materials, online news or magazine subscription, tracking courier shipments, wireless hotspots in public places, etc.).

2.    to reduce the cost of operation (i.e., online education, use of Cloud infrastructure services, video conferencing, online kiosks, online music downloads, etc.).

3.    to build customer relation (i.e., 24/7 online customer service, online catalog and coupon services, online recommended systems, etc.).

For your Course Project that will span all seven weeks of this course, please pick a business or industry of your choice, such as healthcare, transportation, manufacturing, education, retail, and so forth. Think about some of the key information technology drivers that have a deep impact on the industry or business area of your choice. Some of these drivers might be use of mobile devices, videoconferencing and VoIP, use of online medium to conduct business, cloud services, and so forth. What are some of the networked (or online) applications that interest you in your chosen area of business? You may even create your own network application service for any business of your choice.

How does this networked application that you chose help you solve one or more business objectives (refer to bullet points 1, 2, and 3 above)? For instance, you may choose to incorporate online shopping to a retail business, or you may plan to equip video conferencing applications on all desktops in your medium size business that spans several locations in a region. You may be a coffee shop that plans to offer free Wi-Fi and paid music download kiosks, or you may be an owner of a of couple slot machines who wants to keep track of sales in real time.

Please make sure that you pick an application that makes use of a LAN and a WAN (or Internet). Also, make sure that you know what kind of business problem will be solved by the use of this networked application. 

II. Proposal Guidance—Clarifying your project proposal

In order to clarify the nature of the networked application, ask yourself the following questions, whose answers will be included in your project proposal.

1.    Who are the clients or customers who will benefit from your proposed networked application service?

2.    What business objective does the proposed service meet for the company or business that plans to offer such a service to its clients or customers? Please use bullet points to organize multiple objectives.

3.    What will be the application architecture for the networked application under consideration? Refer to Section 2.2 in the textbook. Please try to use figures to explain the architecture.

4.    What kind of information will the client obtain through your networked application? Will you provide them with text, video, and voice information? If possible, provide a snapshot or picture of similar applications.

5.    What will be the application layers used: e-mail, HTTP, VoIP, instant messaging, video conferencing? If your application used multiple application layer protocols, please mention what kinds of data (voice, video, text) will each protocol carry?

6.    What will be some of the performance requirements of your application: latency, availability, security, cost effectiveness, accessibility? How will you prioritize your requirements?

7.    What will be some of the basic initial requirements that you can identify at this point in order to provide the application to your clients? Is cost effectiveness your priority, or do you worry more about the quality or your application? What is some of the infrastructure you will need? Do you have the staff to manage your infrastructure, or do you plan to outsource management to an external service provider? Please organize the requirements using bullet points.

III. Proposal Guidance—Format and submit your proposal draft

Using all the above information, generate a proposal describing the proposed network application service. Your writing should be persuasive and clear enough to explain the rationale and scope of the project. Please cite any external sources of information you might have used in your proposal.

·         Please submit your proposal draft in Week 1 Dropbox.

·         Please use the proposal submission template for the Proposal/Milestone 0, and save it as a Word document file called MIS589_Lastname_Firstname_Project.docx.

·         If your proposal draft is approved, please make any required adjustments, and submit the final proposal in the Week 2 Dropbox.