Overview
This assessment item requires you to find two organisations that you will be using for the other assignments in this course.
In your essay, you need to provide information about these two organisations you selected.
Background:
You are required to find two organisations: one large organisation with more than 5,000 employees and one small-to-medium organisation with between 50-1,000 employees.
The size of these organisations is important as their current and future requirements would be different. When you are selecting these organisations, consider their footprint, such as are they operating within one country only, are they branching out to another country or are planning to do so, or are they already operating on a global scale? Other points you need to consider at this point is the type of business (pharmaceutical versus distribution for example). You may find some information on their history that provides some clues. You could look at their mission, vision, values statements. An organisation may be small now (they might have just started) and has the potential to grow. Some organisations pride themselves to be a family business and their expansion would encompass minimal risks, while large conglomerate organisations may have more assets to take larger risks. Some organisations are owned by another organisation, and this may impact their current and future situation differently.
Please do not contact any organisation to obtain information. There are security reasons why this information is not availably publicly. What you need to do for your assignments it to use the technical aspect of this course to make your own assumptions and deductions from the information that is publicly available. Then translate this into a managerial view.
In addition, it would be more beneficial and workable to select two organisations that do not have the same product or type or operation. This will assist you in the requirements of the other assignments in this course.
Essay:
In your essay for this assignment you need to provide the following for each organisation:
• describe these two organisations
• explain why you have selected them
• provide the URL of the web sites
• describe their main product(s)
• provide the number of employees
• details about their presence (global, local)
• type of business (family owned, multinational)
One last point to consider is that in your other assignments you will be looking at the organisations requirements for the technologies we are covering in this course. Not how an organisation is going to provide this technology to their customers - a big difference to be aware of when selecting your organisations.
Structure:
The structure of this assignment is essay type – please refer to the communications handbook for guidelines.
Please note that all assessment items in this course must adhere to the correct Harvard specifications for in text citing and reference list. For this purpose links have been provided to you on the study desk. However, you can consult the library web site for further details and clarifications. It is optional to use Endnote, and the links are provided to you on the study desk for the course. Endnote is of great assistance to get the citing and referring correct. However, you can do this without Endnote, but you need to make sure that the format of in text citing and the format of the list of references are correct according to the Harvard guidelines.
Overview:
In this assignment you now need to address how these two organisations can improve business operations by changing their communication systems and network elements and by adopting new network technologies and/or improvements to management thereof.
Background:
Continuing on your previous work, you are now required to determine what is needed to support the two organisations competitive advantage. You have gained a good understanding about these organisations through these previous assignments, where you used your assumptions to create a whole picture of the current communication systems and network elements. This will have to be tailored to the type of the organisation, their overall history (taking both previous assignments into consideration).
Consider that you may have been employed as a management consultant to advise the organisation on the most cost effective and most suitable recommendation addressing the organisations particular needs. You need to determine how each of these organisations can adopt to improve the existing communication systems and network elements to build on top of the existing ones.
This requires you to find a balance that provides a workable custom solution. Rather than taking the best of everything, financial costs and the impact of the changes to the organisation will need to be considered and justified. It would be acceptable to phase certain changes to find the most suitable solution.
It is vitally important to have a good understanding of how the organisations services are delivered and how the different components connect to provide these services. This is fundamental for selecting a solution.
For example, considering the application layer firewalls require the whole domain of knowledge to be able to make an appropriate decision. The application layer provides information on the type of services this can be used on, and things that may be affected by its implementation, such as the likelihood of bottleneck in processing. The application layer also provides information about the appropriate network structure and the separations that need to be in place to make it an effective solution. This in turn then requires determining if the current infrastructure and services have the right design to allow the implementation. It also requires determining if employees have the necessary skills. It questions its suitability for the business needs and connections with external partners. Any changes in the IT infrastructure will most likely have some ripple effect on how services are utilised and delivered, internally and externally, to the organisation.
When considering these technologies it is easy to arrive at a conclusion that one type of solution is better than another. However, the technologies must be integrated within the existing network, and therefore it is necessary to determine which new technologies are appropriate for the organisation.
Clarify how the organisation and its partners use the current services and structure to determine feasible level of adoption of technologies that are to be integrated into these existing networks. This needs to be achieved with the least amount of conversion or rebuilding to provide the predicted benefits. It also requires keeping in mind that in the industry time is money, and to get approval for these changes, costs need to be kept reasonable. It is also important to keep in mind that the costs include not only the new technologies, but also the cost of rebuilding or converting the existing network and training. When you reflect on your recommendations to management of these organisations, you need to consider if all of this is really feasible to implement. Your recommendations must be something that the organisation can adopt to enhance their current communication systems and network elements. Your design will need to ensure that it does not only bring the organisation to a more up to date state, but places the organisation in a position of further expansion and upgrade.
Therefore, you need to consider what information is needed to make appropriate decisions of information needs. This should be geared toward understanding the issues. Anything that is not directly related to the question or strengthens the argument or aids the understanding of issues is hindering the objective of this paper. You need to be very focused and selective on the information you provide and how you present it. The word limit is aimed at ensuring that you do. Be succinct, use in text citing to back up your suggestions and view so that you are able to argue your suggestions for the new technologies. Organisations are very critical of the potential gains that costly changes will bring to them, and the better you can argue and backup through citing, the more convincing you will be.
Structure of research paper:
The reading of the journal papers for your first assignment, the Essay, has already provided you with good understanding on how a paper is written. When you write your research paper, you will be addressing it to the specific situation of your organisation. However, imagine that you would want to publish it in a journal so that other organisations can also think about your guidelines.
Organise your research paper in the following way:
• Title (you are required to provide your paper’s title)
• Your name and student number
• Abstract (about 100 words)
• Introduction
• Body context (you could divide into several sub-sections if required)
• Conclusion
• References.
The word-count limit for the introduction, body and conclusion of this paper is set at about 3,000 words. Use five (5) or more resources for your citing and referencing in Harvard style. Make sure to provide the name of the organisation as well as the URL, values, vision, and mission statement.
Please note that all assessment items in this course must adhere to the correct Harvard citing and referencing. For this purpose links have been provided to you on the study desk. However, you can consult the library web site for further details and clarifications.