Wk 6 Individual: International Plastics, Inc. IT Infrastructure Review and Upgrade Recommendations [due Mon] Wk 6 Individual: International Plastics, Inc. IT Infrastructure Review and Upgrade Recommendations

International Plastics Inc. is a corporation that is known for its manufacture of plastic parts which are customized, plastic fans and plastic beverage bottles and other containers. The company originally started its operations in the United States but over time due to the increase in demand by more customers grown to other three locations across the world. The other locations are a Plastic container plant in Albany, a fan plant in China and plastic parts plant in Pontiac. The corporate headquarters of the Inc. are based in San Jose. Due to the expansion, there was need to make changes to the original design and networks so as to accommodate the growing changes and allow for future expansion.

The company uses state of the art technology which is up to date to ensure that the customer needs are met satisfactorily by ensuring that the packaging team advises on the best solutions to the client. Being that the company is committed to excellence in serving its customers, International Plastics Inc. ensures that it has all the required documents to show that it has met ISO certifications to ensure that the business is not at risk closing down due to non-compliance. Making changes to the network that the company uses will help International Plastics Inc. reduce the operation costs and those of maintenance of equipment. The changes will make it possible for the company to be eligible to compete with other similar organizations in the market. The WAN design that International Plastics Inc. has adopted uses a star arrangement which ensures that all the subsidiaries to the company are interconnected in one place.

When one plant is affected by a network hitch in such an arrangement then the whole plants that are interconnected from across the world will likely go down too. To avoid the problem of having the four plants or three of them going down at once, International Plastics Inc. should consider a network system which has a main source but several outlets to avoid having a single point of collapse when there is a failure in one of the systems. The plants at Pontiac and Albany almost run on the same hardware where they have their own servers from a single point. Similarly the plants in the HQ and those in China almost run in the same hardware by having an identical infrastructure. The plants should be grouped together regarding the type of setup that they operate on and have a separate service provider to avoid any interruption to the plants all at once.