Performance Architecture Paper

Introduction

Famhost Company is a small software development company that has been in operation since 2011. The company deals in web applications, mobile applications and other cloud services for business organizations. The company’s organizational structure includes the company chief executive officer at the top, three divisional officers (Information technology and technical division, marketing and human resource division and also finance division). The three divisional managers are responsible for overseeing tasks in their departments as well as reporting strategic decisions to the CEO. In each department are employees to perform various business operations. Both the finance and marketing divisions have 4 employees each and the technical department has about 36 employees.

Business Operations

Famhost Software Company primarily deals in developing software solutions for enterprise applications. The business operations focus on providing a superior product for the customer. The business operations for this company are;

· Identification of business needs: The Company identifies various needs of their customers and assesses then for better service delivery. The process of identifying the needs of customers is complex and at times involves remote customers who have to fill online forms or make video calls.

· Product development; this process involves creation of various software solution to the identified needs. Famhost is focused on rapid application development process to ensure the developers bring a solution that will meet the needs of the customers.

· Marketing; at times, the company has to market its solutions to various markets. It also utilizes extensive merchandizing knowledge, adverts and promotions to gather its potential customers.

What the Company Does

Famhost Company specializes in software development and data management. The company creates and manages cloud-based software applications including web, mobile and native applications. In addition, the company also provide data management services where it helps design data warehouses and data mining systems for small and medium companies.

Customers of the Company

In its software development services, Famhost provides services to small and medium companies, individuals, government bodies and non-governmental organizations. Most of these clients are spread across the globe and the company rarely meets them but through other telecommunication media. In the recent past, startups have been in constant contact with the company through media for customized web applications, mobile applications and database management systems. The company has managed to provide high level services despite the challenges in distance, language barriers, and varying time zones.

Types of Employees

There are 36 technical employees who are full remote apart from the four employees in marketing and the four employees in the finance division who are partly in office and partly in motion. Some of the technical employees are from Asia, Africa and Europe. When working on various systems, these employees group themselves to create virtual teams where they create the solutions and share with the senior developers situated at the main office. The remote employees also communicate through emails, calls and video chats (Eubanks, 2016).

Business operations and 5 operational activities affecting the network

In addition to the business operations discussed earlier, there are also operational activities that need to be carried out in this organization. However, due to the nature of virtual teams, there are several challenges that may lead to poor system development (Eubanks, 2016). Some of these operations affect the organization’s network and should therefore be considered. These operations include;

1. Virtual team management; this operation involves lots of communication among the virtual teams at the main office. Most of the time, written messages become ineffective especially when analyzing the needs of a client (Eubanks, 2016). The organization has to ensure alternative methods like video calls are used alongside phone calls. This creates a need to have satellites and a proper network design to accommodate both data and voice packets.

2. Software development; those employees working from the office need a secure network which can be reliable for program during system development.

3. Meeting customers and analysis of customer needs; initial meetings with customers are challenging since some of the customers are remote. Like virtual teams, remote customers are hard to engage without a proper network for the organization.

Improving the Network

There is no satellite for effective voice communication between the remote members and the employees at the company’s headquarter. The company also has little data backup since its network is not connected to the network backup servers. To improve the network of Famhost, there is need to acquire a remote server that can be used to backup data or have a cloud-based data backup. Cloud-based data backup are less expensive, secure and available for the organization. There is also need to utilize public network infrastructure for voice packets like satellites to minimize costs and ensure network reliability (Yao & Gong, 2015).

Conclusion

Famhost is a relatively small company that provides of software solutions by means of customized web applications, mobile applications and database management systems. Famhost has several challenges to overcome because much of the managing of the company is done virtually as well as the communication with its customers. It is imperative that Famhost establishes a network which can accommodate the heavy use of data transfers related to video conferencing and VoIP services along with data requirements needed to provide customers with access to the web applications.

References

Englander, I. (2014). THE ARCHITECTURE OF COMPUTER HARDWARE, SYSTEMS SOFTWARE, & NETWORKING: AN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY APPROACH (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Yao, J., Lu, P., Gong, L., & Zhu, Z. (2015). On fast and coordinated data backup in geo- distributed optical inter-datacenter networks. Journal of Lightwave Technology, 33(14), 3005-3015.