System architecture and integration

Migrate AIM Services Inc. from Exchange 2013 to Office 365 cloud service by May 11th, 2019.

· Access from anywhere

· Reduce losing email data

· Decrease procurement of new license for Microsoft Office suite

· Backup and decommission Exchange 2013

· Setup Office 365

· Migrate users’ mailbox, calendar, and rules

· Skype for Business

· SharePoint

· Email security (encryption)

· Setup anti-spam and anti-malware filtering options

· Setup a secure channel to and from Outlook 365 (TLS)

The project will not address traveling, installing Office 2016 suit to clients’ workstations, laptops, and mobile device. Moreover, there will be a flexible budget allocated to help with any additional and unexpected cost incurred during the migration to assist with project completion.

Figure 1. Showing a detailed Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

Notes:

Project Manager (PM): Riaad Kamaludeen

Migration Team (MT): Kevin Calvin, Andre Williams, Brain Hass, John Williams

Stakeholders (STKH): June Friday, Chis Irwin

Security Engineer (SEC): Adam West

Quality Assurance Testers (QA): Dave Hall

System/Network Administrator (SNA): Tommy Taylor

Using request for proposal (RFP) process will help the company to outsource qualified and experienced professional who deals with Office 365 migration on a daily basis. It will avoid downtime and ease the process of migration from Exchange 2013 to Office 365. As shown in figure 2, it first goes about planning the project which includes requirement, scope, budget and so forth. After which the RFP process moves to the drafting and issuing stages and completes when AIM Services Inc. reviews the proposals and award the contract to the best-suited vendor. In summary, a request for proposal (RFP) is a document that describes what AIM Services Inc. needs are and asks for a proposed solution from qualified vendors to complete the migration from Exchange 2013 to Office 365 (Ferriere, 2017). Figure 2. showing RFP process workflow.

Before implementing Office 365 to AIM Services Inc. infrastructure, it is essential that requirements gathering is conducted because it is used to capture the request of the project. By eliciting the requirements, it leads to a fruitful completion and outcome of the project. A few methods for gathering the requirement for the said project includes interviews and questionnaires. Interviews – this is one of the most commonly used methods of eliciting requirements, However, for this project, it goes about first, by conducting an unstructured interview with the CEO, IT Director, and Administrator to get an understanding of the work environment and problems. After an unstructured interview, the next step is a structured interview which involves questions design for technical personnel like the IT Director, and Administrator to gather technical information about the existing Exchange server like mailbox sizes and amount, DNS information, server information, software change or upgrades and so forth. Questionnaires – This is useful for AIM Services Inc. because it gathers information from all employees about their technical knowledge and how familiar are they with Office 365 and Microsoft Outlook.

In this project, a three-tier architecture designed is used to show how Office 365 can be embedded into AIM Services Inc. infrastructure. The three-tier architecture design, consist of a presentation tier, application tier and a data tier. Firstly, the presentation tier is the front end layer which consists of the user interface that is accessible via a web browser or a web-based application that display the content and information to end users. It also involves user devices like laptops, tablets, and smartphones. As shown in figure 3. below, the front end user interface is Office 365 Portal which gives access to Office 365 cloud services through multiple end-user devices that supports strong security standards (JReport, 2018). Secondly, the application tier is where all information is passed between tiers and is where most of the configurations, computing, and customizations are done. However, this project does not use an in-house custom built application but uses computing resources and applications that are housed by the cloud vendor (Microsoft). The applications include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint, Teams, Azure AD Connect, DirSync to name a few (JReport, 2018). Thirdly, the Data tier is comprised of one or more databases, bid data sources, or another type of database system hosted in the cloud for end users to access and retrieve information and content. It also provides reporting and analytical information for users’ mailboxes and so forth (JReport, 2018).

Figure 3. showing an infrastructure design for Office 365 implementation.

· Security to keep company data safe (Certificates, TLS).

· On-premise and Cloud email access.

· Office 365 services like teams, SharePoint, Skype for Business.

· Manage and maintain mailboxes online using Office 365 portal.

· Microsoft Office 2016 Suite

· Redundant WAN Links

· Email encryption

· Email Filtering

· Usability

· Availability

· Reliability

· The schedule is adhered to. This includes vendor selection, tasks, and subtasks (Espy, 2018).

· Project teams will follow team governance guidelines and requirements (Espy, 2018).

· Flexible budget for an unexpected cost (Espy, 2018).

· The scope of the project will not change once signed off (Espy, 2018).

Cloud services from Microsoft such as Office 365 offer many advantages to AIM Services Inc. Some of these advantages include Teams and SharePoint which give employees the ability to collaborate and be more productive, cloud and on-premise email access from any device with internet access, management and reporting, and more importantly free licenses for a non-profit agency. Nevertheless, as with all technology, there are disadvantages. Office 365 is no exception if the internet is down then the services are down, and this can have a significant impact on the business. However, implementing a secondly WAN link can mitigate the risk. Another disadvantage is AIM Services Inc., or any company that chooses to implement Office 365 should get or already have an anti-spam filtering solution because Office 365 anti-spam solution is not robust as a solution design for that purpose. For example, Barracuda anti-spam appliance.

· Performance, load, and stress testing - Performance testing is how the system behaves under an increased load. For example, increase user and resource utilization. Loading testing is verifying that application operates at a defined response time when the application is subjected to an extreme load, and stress testing is finding points of failure for the application under unfavorable conditions/load (Inflectra, 2018).

· Security, vulnerability testing – Previously security was done after the implementation of software, but in today’s technological advances and the rise of cybercrimes testing is done at the same time of development and implementation. Security testing test the software for confidentiality, integrity, authentication, and availability. Testing is also done to prevent authorized access to resources and application vulnerabilities.

· Usability testing – takes a look at the end user usability aspect of the software it focusses on learnability, efficiency, satisfaction, memorability, and errors (Inflectra, 2018).

· Compatibility Testing – Testing the software or product to check if it is compatible with the operating systems, hardware, web-browsers, and mobile devices. This ensures the application works across all the different hardware /software and that all the functionality is consistent across devices.

· Acceptance testing – Making sure all the project requirements are met, and end users have tested the system to ensures it operates as expected (Inflectra, 2018).

Cloud Solution

Cloud Computing or often referred to as “The Cloud” which is a metaphor for the internet. It is the delivery of computing services like storage, Servers, networking, software, and databases to name a few all over the internet, to offer innovation, and flexible resources to companies. However, application like Microsoft Exchange can be challenging, time-consuming, and costly for many organizations to support as such cloud services like Office 365 was born to alleviate the problems of licensing, deployment, and maintenance of Exchange. Office 365 provides many features for businesses to enjoy, primarily Exchange Online which dramatically reduces the capital expenditure on licenses, support, and maintenance. Moreover, each user mailbox is 25GB of storage and is accessed from anywhere dependent on the internet connection. Also, Office 365 can be used on many devices like tablets, smartphones and so forth, it is reliable with 99.9% uptime, secure, and for a non-profit agency its free (Bigelow, 2018).

On-Premise Solution

Microsoft Exchange Server hosted onsite has many advantages to the company especially control, data security and privacy which when moving data to a public cloud vendor like Microsoft companies are usually skeptical because of potential implication of data privacy and so forth. However, with Exchange on-premise it increases capital expenditure on licenses, maintenance of Servers, and many more. It requires administrators to manage and update servers, manage backups, troubleshoot and fix issues, security implementations and vulnerability testing, and disaster recovery to ensure the operation of Exchange goes smoothly (Venter, 2017).

Hybrid Solution

Like the name, it is a hybrid deployment which offers organizations the ability to extend the feature-rich experience and administrative control they have with their existing on-premises Microsoft Exchange organization to the cloud. A hybrid deployment provides the seamless look and feel of a single Exchange organization between an on-premises Exchange organization and Exchange Online in Microsoft Office 365. Besides, a hybrid deployment can serve as an intermediate step to moving entirely to an Exchange Online organization (Venter, 2017).

A criteria matrix or decision matrix is a chart that is used to assess, and rank options based on a specific criterion. It is also especially useful for assessing each relative factor importance. Moreover, it is used to evaluate the alternative solution to problems. By using this chart, it treats the criteria independently helping avoid the over influence or emphasis on a specific individual criterion (Lucid, 2018). The Matrix itself is constructed with options listed along one side and the review criteria along the other. Then a box is inserted the assigned weight along each criterion. The total is then calculated and used in ranking or to determine the best option.

Figure 4. showing a criteria matrix table.

By analyzing the matrix chart provided above, it can be determined that option A is the best suited for the system integration project and it meets the requirements of the project in question. The reasons include robust security features, access to SharePoint, Skype for Business and Teams, provides redundancy and backups automatically, maintenance and license free and most importantly its future proof. Moreover, using the cloud makes it easier for employees to access their emails via multiple devices and from anywhere. Also, employees can download the latest version of Microsoft Office products without the need to purchase new licenses when newer editions are out.

Description of software architecture

Using the software architecture design shown in figure 5. shows how Office 365 and other cloud related services offered by Microsoft can be integrated into AIM Services Inc. this three (3) tier design consist of a presentation, business logic, and data layer. Although there are more complex and details architectural designed for a cloud-based system.

Firstly, the presentation layer is the front-end layer which consists of the user interface that is accessible via a web browser or a web-based application that display the content and information to end users. It also involves user devices like laptops, tablets, and smartphones. As shown in figure 3. below, the front-end user interface is Office 365 Portal which gives access to Office 365 cloud services through multiple end-user devices that supports strong security standards (JReport, 2018). Secondly, the business logic layer is where all information is passed between layers and is where most of the configurations, computing, and customizations are done. However, this project does not use an in-house custom-built application but uses computing resources and applications that are housed by the cloud vendor (Microsoft). The applications include Office 365 application suite, SharePoint, DirSync, and Skype for business (JReport, 2018). These SaaS applications is accessible to license users and is accessible when users sign in using their front-end devices. SharePoint is a document management and collaboration tool developed by Microsoft, while skype for business, office 365, DirSync and many other are also services provided by Microsoft and can be accessible with the proper licenses. Thirdly, the Data layer is comprised of one or more databases, bid data sources, or another type of database system hosted in the cloud for end users to access and retrieve information and content. It also provides reporting and analytical information for users’ mailboxes and so forth (JReport, 2018).

Lastly, security, encryption and email filtering are security mechanisms designed to enforce stick standards on protecting company data and its integrity.

Software architecture

Figure 5. showing a software architecture of office 365.

When integrating a cloud solution into a network no hardware cost is incurred providing that the cloud solution is cloud based and not a hybrid solution. Software is provided as a services to customers and requires cost for licenses. The cloud services provided by Microsoft allows administrators to easily integrate the system with not much overhead and cost attached for equipment such as servers, COTS, switches, firewall and so forth.

Implementation Framework

TBD

TBD

References Bigelow, S. J. (2018, November 12). Microsoft Exchange Online explained. Retrieved from https://searchwindowsserver.techtarget.com/feature/Microsoft-Exchange-Online-explained Eriksson, U. (2012, April 5). Functional vs Non Functional Requirements. Retrieved from https://reqtest.com/requirements-blog/functional-vs-non-functional-requirements/ Espy, L. (2018, February 21). How to Create a Project Assumptions List: Examples and Template Included. Retrieved from https://projectbliss.net/project-assumptions-list/ Ferriere, T. (2017, August 28). RFP: Everything You Need to Know About the RFP Process. Retrieved from https://tenderspage.com/everything-need-know-rfp-process/ Inc., A. S. (2018, October 26). About Us. Retrieved from https://www.aimservicesinc.org/about-us/ JReport. (2018, November 06). 3-Tier Architecture: A Complete Overview. Retrieved from https://www.jinfonet.com/resources/bi-defined/3-tier-architecture-complete-overview/ Lucid. (2018, November 9). Criteria Matrix. Retrieved from https://www.lucidmeetings.com/glossary/criteria-matrix Venter, J. (2017, March 17). Exchange: On-Premises vs Exchange Online. Retrieved from http://www.firstforcloud.com/exchange-on-premises-vs-exchange-online/