Case Study: Engineering a Small Organizational / Home Office (SOHO) Network

MGMT 393 Activity 3.4 Case Study

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Activity 3.4, Solo SOHO Case Study

This assignment will task you to examine a particular hypothetical small office / home office networking “situation,” in a scenario-based approach, and see how you can apply the concepts and ideas we have been addressing thus far in class. You will be cast in the role of an external consultant, who’s been approached by a small business owner about his situation. You may find it useful to PRINT this document, and keep it handy, throughout this week as you work on your Case Study. OVERVIEW Scenario: Henry Books is a small specialty bookseller, located in Elgin, Illinois. Ray Henry started as a private book collector, back in the early 1950s; as Elgin grew and Ray did, so did his book collection. Finally, about 1972, Ray started his first store-front operation, buying and selling a variety of rare, collectible, and just curious works. In the mid - 1980s, he got persuaded by some friends to buy an Apple computer, and they helped him build a database system that he could use to keep track of his inventory, sales, and (eventually) all of his financial data about the business. By 1989, he was running four Macs, on an Appletalk network, in his one store location, and was quite content. One Mac acted as the inventory server; one acted as the financial systems and back office machine; the other two were out on the sales counters, helping staff use the inventory system to address customer requests, evaluate books brought in for sale to Henry Books, etc. And for nearly twenty years, he stayed a small, one-store business, with four full-time employees and a few part-time hands. He never bothered to upgrade the Macs, or the software. If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it, he says. Over time, his local ISP has “forced” him to upgrade his modem and router, but until quite recently, those were literally “black boxes” to him. But a series of savvy business and investing moves have caught up with his network, you might say. Two years ago, he bought a huge estate collection, and he got overwhelmed with trying to inventory it, price it, and put it on the shelves. That caused him to buy a laptop (a Dell laptop, his first Windows experience, and... he likes it!), and start finding out what was “out there” on the Web that could help him appraise and price his collections. Then another opportunity caused him to buy up two other specialist bookstores, one in Rockford, Illinois, and the other in Milwaukee. And while traveling to a bookseller’s convention, he let all of the “back office” and “point of sales” exhibitors open his eyes to what his next investment in his business ought to be. Maybe it was a blinding flash of the obvious, but the upshot of all of that is that Ray Henry woke up, smelled the coffee, and decided a four-Mac Appletalk one-location network wasn’t big enough. He’s got a programmer who helps with the database and the accounting software, and they are busily discussing ideas about how to grow what Henry Books has now, or replace it completely. But Sally is not a networks expert. (Neither is Ray Henry, after all this time. He does books...) Ray would like each sales location to have several point of sales systems, at least two workstations that can support inventory management, Internet search and appraisal tools, and the like. Right now he thinks the smart choice is to have his Elgin store (which is expanding into the storefront next door, doubling its floor space) be the site for any central servers for his network. Ray has also decided that he wants a “Henry Books” website, which will grow with the company. This will interface with his inventory system, and then later grow into an online sales and inquiry system. But past that, Ray is still... thinking. He needs your help to try to lay out a growth plan for his business network and computing needs. He wants to be able to plan for further growth in the business, but is worried about a lot of up-front costs (as would anybody!). He has stressed to Sally, and he says to you as well, that he “is not married” to his Macs or to Apple, Apple products, or Apple approaches to things.

MGMT 393 Activity 3.4 Case Study

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One more thing about Ray: at that booksellers’ convention, he really got his nose rubbed the wrong way by so many vendors whose first quick answer had brand names, makes and models, equipment nomenclature, and all of that sort of stuff. Ray says he wouldn’t know a Citrix from a Citrus, even if he can tell an Apple from an Orange... but his old-fashioned horse sense says “first, figure out what we need it to do, and how well. Then figure out who sells what we need.” He is not interested in answers to that second question yet. Analysis Approach: You will need to develop a list of questions that you, Ray and his staff will need to work through to refine the requirements picture for this growing SOHO network. Some of the issues you need to work through might include:

 IP addressing: as a single point of service customer, with no web presence, the ISP has been providing Henry Books with dynamic IP addressing. Should this change?

 Network services: email, secure access, etc. What else is needed here? What sort of driving requirements do you need to discuss with Ray and his staff, before you can bid on the job?

 Graceful degradation: Clearly, Henry Books is not a 24/7 operation today. Nor are its response time requirements all that strenuous. And right now, at one store location, if a system goes down, it’s not that much of an impact. How might this change, as the system expands to cover the new sites? For example, Sally has been making suggestions about how the database applications that they use (for inventory, sales, etc.) can be configured to provide a reliable, distributed operation – so that if one store loses power or their servers crash, that will not affect the other stores. What does this mean for the network? What other ideas could provide additional degrees of robustness to the network, and thence, to the system as a whole?

 Network connections at each store location: what will drive you to any sort of subnet designs, addressing or domain schemes, and how you’ll need different network hardware at each location.

 Intra-location network media: what factors must you consider?

 Topologies: logical and physical. What makes sense here? Why?

 Network administration and management: Clearly, you do not want to be sitting at the customer service / reference desk, using their computer, to maintain, test, and administer the network. But... what do you need, as builder / operator / manager, to help Ray and his staff keep this thing up and running? Should he consider a new full-time network administrator as an employee, or outsource this (to you? Do you want the job, or have the skills to do it?)

Be Vendor / Brand Name Independent in your analysis. We are NOT looking for make & model information at this point; we need to know what capabilities we need. So if, for example, you concluded that the Elgin office, hosting the various central servers, needs several subnets, and therefore needs some switches, routers, and hubs... your job right now is figuring out how many ports, what kind of connections, what sort of value-added services each “black box” can bring to the party. Do NOT even use a brand name or make and model as a “for example...” Other questions or ideas to consider may be developed by your instructor, and assigned to you to add to your case study analysis and reporting. OUTPUT PRODUCT: An Analysis Report and Draft Proposal memo to Ray Henry Organize your findings in the form of an analysis report, attached to a short memo, addressed to Ray Henry. The memo should briefly describe what you were asked to do by Ray, and summarize your approach, key findings and issues that need to be resolved or studied further. It should introduce your Preliminary report, which is attached to the memo, and invite / remind Ray to review it, and then sit and discuss it with you so that you can both decide what to do next.

MGMT 393 Activity 3.4 Case Study

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The attached Preliminary Report should spend about three to four pages, double spaced, to explore the following areas in further detail:

1. Business Needs: briefly state what the main business needs are that your ideas for the “HenryNet” are trying to respond to.

2. Key Performance Parameters: what measurable things would you see as the key drivers for network performance? Data volumes? Transaction rates? Web page reloads? File transfer rates on the internal networks? What other parameters would you point to, after the network is installed, to show that it’s working right – or that it is not?

3. Analysis: Briefly outline and discuss how you translate those business needs and key performance parameters into a conceptual network design. Diagrams will help you do this – they can be hand-drawn sketches, or you can use PowerPoint or any drawing tool to do them. Artistry or presentation quality is not the key issue here – what matters is being able to capture a sketch of your idea about what machines, being used by which people in Ray’s organization, are talking over what kind of network connections to what machines serving what other people where. (And don’t forget Ray’s customers in that!)

4. Unresolved / Open Issues: briefly highlight things you’ve discovered during this process that you simply have not been able to adequately research and analyze. Assess whether these put your overall conclusions at risk, or are merely “areas for further study and analysis”

5. Overall Assessment: Wrap up your report, and include an assessment of the degree of uncertainty in your findings and recommendations. Are these “very preliminary” results, or are they solid enough that you could move on to hardware / software / vendor selection and pricing without further analysis? Are there any “must-decide-first” issues, key decisions Ray Henry has to make, before you can proceed further?

Two suggestions: (1) DRAFT up that report first, using WORD’s OUTLINE VIEW or similar. Drive yourself to create at least three levels of Outline steps (Level 1, 2, 3) before starting to write body level data-rich, description-rich sentences. When you’ve got that outline level down pretty solidly, go in to Normal view, Select All, set font and size and color to Times New Roman 12 point black, and edit what you see into your final-for- grading Preliminary Report. (2) Get a good solid draft of your report together first. Then write the cover memo. Make sure that there are no “surprises” buried in the report, especially in sections (4) or (5), that your memo doesn’t call to Ray’s attention. Format Requirements: the Memo should be a professional-quality business letter, but with plain and simple layout. Do not bother with finding a Business Letter template with fancy letterhead and graphics. (If you want to give yourself a consulting business name, you certainly can.) The memo should be about a page, not much longer, single or 1.5 line spacing. The Report: although not a strict “APA-format” research paper, some of the key APA rules of research do apply: if you use any sources, cite them, and include a References section that provides your readers the full and appropriate information about your sources. Spelling is important, and yes, so is grammar! A Title Page for the report is not necessary. POST THAT PRODUCT for grading, via the link in the Activity.