Your team has been assembled to provide Information Technology consulting services to a newly formed fictitious company. Your team is to select one the following: This medium-sized company was formed by combining several smaller companies within the same industry into a single entity. Each of the smaller companies had their own IT system, and some were not so good, usually because the systems were cobbled together from different sources over the years. The new organization intends to avoid that undesirable outcome. This organization intends to bring all of the disparate systems together into one comprehensive system. Your team was assembled by selecting individuals from some of those smaller companies described above, so you have never worked together before. Also, the levels of experience and training for the various team members can be quite variable. Your mission is to develop an overall systems architecture plan from top to bottom for the new organization. This will involve several different platforms from the data center to the smartphone level including some levels in between. You may or may not be concerned with the specific source or brand name for a platform or subsystem as your team sees fit. The team needs to consider all the possible roles that need to be supported in this organization that includes light manufacturing, procurement, sales, distribution, and customer support. A good portion of the sales staff will operate from mobile platforms while traveling to customer sites. The primary business channel is wholesale to other businesses but the organization intends to provide some in-house retail operations through brick & mortar facilities as well as online operations.
