Case Study Architectural Diagram
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case_study_fei_revised.docxCASE STUDY (FREIGHT EXPRESS INC.) 5
Case Study: Freight Express Inc.
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Freight Express Inc. is a global logistics company that is committed to offering fully integrated freight and supply chain services through managed warehousing, domestic and international freight forwarding. The services of FEI range from door to door domestic and international delivery services to total supply chain management. The company has branches across the United States, Europe and partnership programs globally. Freight Express Inc. continues to expand rapidly and has also experienced rapid growth through acquisitions.
Freight Express Inc. is committed to designing, planning, executing, and monitoring of its supply chain activities with the goals of creating net value, building a competitive infrastructure, leveraging worldwide logistics, synchronizing supply with demand and improving performance globally. The market where FEI operates is a competitive market whereby the freight transport is not just about keeping the customers informed but also being on time in delivering goods and services. The company has adopted web-based technologies for tracking freight, differentiating its services, keeping customers informed and at the same time, ensuring on time delivery of goods and services. This has given the company a high level of customer satisfaction.
Freight Express Inc. has experienced major growth and data flow in the network and has increased rapidly. Currently there are more than five thousands employees and thousands of customers worldwide; this growth has made the organization to suffer from effects of explosive growth. The demands of its WAN are exceeding its capacity and the main data center has experienced several network outages and unscheduled downtime. Its aging ISDN telephone system has increased the company telephone bills and the voice mail system has become overloaded.
Freight Express Inc. should implement a converged network solution to support it in running the business activities globally. The converged network solution will enable the company to achieve the following:
· Improve the efficiency of operations
· Decrease costs of operations
· Provide better services to its customers.
· Automate the processes of supply chain management.
The converged network solution will improve on the efficiency and effectiveness of all the organizational operations. There will be reduced cost of operations as well as reduced workload. The employees will be relieved of much of their daily workload which will increase their service delivery and in the long run there will be improved overall quality of work.
Freight Express needs increased bandwidth between all its 47 offices in the United States and the main data center, I propose to implement a converged network solution with a data storage that will build the software stack to provide a low-cost, easy to manage, and all-in-one data center. I propose an idea which will provide a system leveraging open source software and commodity servers or cloud storage. The management layer will give FEI employees multiple administrative options through a simple web based GUI. The technology will be offered in multiple flavors, allowing employees to deploy data on their own selected hardware, on certified hardware, as a virtual machine, or entirely in the cloud.
A mix of different cloud storage providers can be used to diversify the underlying technology and reduce risk. The end result is that the concept of creating large-scale data storage is no longer a combined development and architecture project. The packaged converged network solution offers time and money saving opportunities, resource efficiency, risk mitigation, and a reduction in overall costs compared to the alternatives. This solution will also enable secure coordination of the metropolitan areas (Chicago, Los Angeles, and Baltimore) as well as be able to handle the planned growth and any unexpected data warehousing issues. This data storage solution will be integrated with the web based services to enable customers to view the progress of their orders from the dispatch to warehousing and ultimately, to final delivery securely with less network traffic.
I propose the implementation of Cisco Unified VoIP phones to replace the ISDN telephones, this will bring full advantage of converged voice and data networks while at the same time retaining the convenience and user friendly communications between FEI and its customers. The Cisco Unified VoIP phones will provide:
· VoIP phones with a color LCD with soft keys for call functions and features.
· They will support information services inclusive of XML capabilities to extend the VoIP phones systems.
· The Cisco VoIP phones will also provide the capability of customized XML-based services to let customers access a variety of information such as employee directory and web content.
· Cisco VoIP phones will also provide extended unified communications capabilities for mobile workers.
These features will enable FEI to manage data and voice services and at the same time implement video conferencing. The proposed converged network solution will help FEI to improve its competitive advantage in the global business environment through improving its efficiency, effectiveness, quality of service delivery, and ultimately customer satisfaction.
The following diagram illustrates the converged network solution for Freight Express Inc.
References
White, C. M. (2013). Data communications and computer networks: a business user's approach (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Course Technology.
Kryvinska, N. (2010). Converged network service architecture: A platform for integrated services delivery and interworking. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Paul, S. (2011). Digital video distribution in broadband, television, mobile, and converged networks: Trends, challenges, and solutions. Chichester, U.K: Wiley.
