WK 1: Assignment - International Plastics, Inc. Infrastructure
This summary provides a general overview about the current IT infrastructure of International
Plastics Inc. and necessary upgrades needed for a better business improvement. The aim of this
summary is to highlight the necessary upgrades to IT infrastructure that will help in reducing
operation cost, increase speed, making compatible with future changes.
International Plastics Inc. is an ISO 9001 certified manufacturer and wholesale distributor of
specialized plastic items, beverage containers, and plastic fan accessories. Since 1964,
International Plastics has specialized in polyethylene film and bags.
Its’ corporate headquarters is in Greenville, South Caroline, US and has expanded to Albany
(US), Pontiac (US) and China. The US based International Plastics Inc are interconnected by
using Wide Area Network (WAN) infrastructure. The China headquarter is connected to US
headquarter through Ka band satellite link which is setup to handle an OC1 data rate with end-to-
end encryption. With the emerging business system changes and the new technology updates,
there is need to modify the existing IT infrastructure.
The company’s WAN is based on star topology system that connects every node to the central
system. Although it is very reliable but if a hub or switch fails, all devices connected to it will be
affected. Hence, a system upgrades should be implemented so that other devices will not be
affected if there a hitch in the system.
The company is using a 100base T backbone while the R&D function is using 1000base F
network. We need to upgrade 100baseT backbone to a 1000baseT BACKBONE utilizing a fiber
optic or 10G Ethernet backbone. The servers being used include WIN server, a WIN exchange
server, a UNIX server which hosts the corporate SAP ERP SW. This server needs to be updated
as they are outdated. The company need to upgrade its’ hard drive by purchasing Solid-State
Drive and Multi-Terabyte Hard Drive. The SSD hard drives are cost-effective, consumes low
power, reliable compared to floppy and memory cards and has a speed 400 times faster than
traditional drive. Operating an SSD hard drive will increase the storage capacity and speed of
