North American Transport (NAT) is a fast growing long-haul trucking company that specializes in the delivery of fresh foods to many of the leading fresh-food retail chains across the United States. NAT is based out of Kansas City, Kansas and employees 75 drivers, loaders, mechanics, communications technicians, business developers and managers. NATs business plan includes 20% growth per year or 225 employees within 5 years. NAT is also planning on adding additional Fleet Resource Centers in California and Virginia. Fleet Resource Centers are NAT owned service facilities used to maintain the fleet of trucks, vans, trailers, refrigeration etc. Fleet Resource Centers also offer growth and will require resources.

Business Goals for the MIS Architecture:

• An architecture that is flexible and scalable; Company growth is projected to be 20% per year
• An architecture that can rapidly deploy/employ new systems and technology; Agile system development
• An architecture that meets the demands of evolving business processes; Information Technology cannot hold up any business process, IT must be adaptable
• An architecture that is easily understood and easy to manage; Minimize IT department footprint. Take advantage of cloud services
• An architecture that is secure; Deploy state-of-the-art security software/hardware

MIS Architecture

Current MIS Architecture Capabilities:

• One 12 port 10 Mb/s switch
• Laptop computers used to support administration with various operating systems
• 1 shared printer
• MS Office 2007
• Exchange Server 2007
• MS SQL on a stand-alone computer
• ADSL broadband Internet 8 Mb/s

Instructions

Create an MIS Architecture Plan

• You will use Microsoft Word to develop a MIS architecture plan that analyzes the current capabilities, lists available resources, aligns capabilities with business objectives in order to identify gaps and recommends IT solutions.
• Your plan must include a Table of Contents and Headers.
• Analyze and explain the current MIS architecture: Discuss bandwidth, speed of service, reliability, scalability, mobility and security.
• Create a list that identifies and outlines existing resources being utilized in the company.
• Discuss the operational objectives of the company using assumptions gained from the scenario.
• Develop a recommendation plan for an improved MIS architecture. Your plan should examine whether or not the current architecture meets the business needs and if not, identify those gaps. Be sure to consider the businesses goals and objectives.
• Using software of your choosing (Ex. Power Point or Visio), construct a revamped architecture diagram that meets the needs of the company. Attach your architecture diagram as an appendix.