Description

Introduction

This is an individual project.  The target audience will be the organization’s senior leadership, the founders.  The Case Study deliverable is an MS Word document.

The completed Case Study deliverable is due by 11:59 PM Eastern Time on the due date shown in the Course Schedule.  See the Additional Information section of the syllabus for the penalty for late or missed assignments and projects.

The Case Study is valued at 12% of the course grade.

Case Study

Company Overview

FractalApps is a software development start-up. It was founded by three friends who went to undergrad school together at the University of Maryland.  They founded their startup recently and set up headquarters at the condo of the two founders in Washington, DC.  They have focused their attention on mobile app development and have developed and successfully marketed a popular app for job seekers.  Now they are expanding their company into a full-fledged software development house.

They have recently received a cash infusion from an angel investor in Silicon Valley and are ready to build out their business.  Their plan is to have three locations:  a small headquarters in DC where the founders and senior staff reside, a sales office based in NYC (Brooklyn), and a development house in San Francisco where the bulk of the developers live and work.

They are looking for you to develop a network design for their business.  They are seeking a standardized LAN design (using consistent hardware/software) for the three offices, and a cost-effective WAN design that allows all of their staff to communicate and collaborate quickly, efficiently, without a lot of network delay.  The network should support both their voice and data needs.

Further, they require a secure way for mobile workers to remote in to the network and participate as if they were in the office.  Many of the sales staff are in the field, as well as the development staff who want to be able to work practically anywhere.  A VPN solution is what they are seeking but need guidance on what the hardware/software requirements are.

The Deliverable

Using this case study, you are to identify a minimum of five (5) requirements, analyze them, and offer a proposal that provides FractalApps with a converged network solution and explains how the components of the solution, and the solution as a whole, meet the identified requirements. The proposed solution must address each of the requirements identified. At least one network diagram must be incorporated to illustrate your proposed solution. You should do some research to address the cost issues and defend the proposed solution from a cost-benefit perspective. This is to be a general analysis of the benefits versus the cost of a converged network, not a full cost-benefit analysis with cost data.

1.    Identify five specific business requirements that relate to the design and implementation of the network.

2.    Define the cabling for the local area network(s); define the network components in the local area network and explain your reasoning for selecting each of these.

3.    Define the wide area network infrastructure (technology); define the network components in the wide area network and explain your reasoning for selecting each of these.

4.    Define the VPN components (hardware/software) for the organization.  Explain what components go where, and what is required on the mobile devices.  Justify your recommendation.

Your deliverable will be a 4 – 5-page Microsoft Word document. The page count includes the diagram(s), but does not count the cover page and references page. At least two (2) external sources (other than the assigned readings and other course materials) must be used, and citations and references must be in APA format. Your paper will be scored according to the Scoring Rubric below.  The bolded attributes in the Scoring Rubric must be used as section headings in the paper. Be sure you have incorporated all required aspects of the assignment.