You are the ClO of Special Salmon, one of the largest providers of fish to restaurant chains in North America. The headquarters and the information systems division are located in Miami.

Special Salmon has a fleet of more than 200 fishing boats that constantly fish the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States and Canada. Competition is keen, and it goes without saying that you have to know where the fish are located at any given time. But you also have to know which type of fish the restaurant chains are demanding and the quantity of each type of fish the chain is willing to buy. There are 52 major ports on the Atlantic seaboard and 29 on the Pacific seaboard where your boats come to unload their fish. Special Salmon has a small branch office at each of these ports. This is a true supply-and-demand business where the demand and supply levels change daily as fish are caught and sold. The product is perishable; it must be sold quickly.

Your headquarters computer center consists of a large IBM mainframe computer with more storage and processing power than you need for current operations. There are microcomputers on the desks of most of the 115 managers and staff at headquarters. Your systems track the current market prices for each type of fish being bought by each restaurant chain that your company supplies. Pounds of fish sold, from which port the fish are delivered, price per pound for the fish, and much other data is stored. Managers at headquarters use this information as they talk with the small branch offices during frequent phone calls each day.

Each small branch office in your organization has a microcomputer that is no more than three years old; your company policy is to upgrade at least every three years. The office manager and several staff at each branch office use the computer to monitor operations. The computers in each branch Office track the inventory of fish arriving and fish being sold. Type of fish, poundage, customer, time the fish were sold, and much more data is stored in the branchs computer.

As headquarters managers and branch office managers talk, they decide if the branch should immediately sell its fish or if market conditions dictate that the fish should be held for a short time in case the market price rises. Should the branch sell part of its inventory to one restaurant chain and the rest at another chain? All of these decisions are made with incomplete data because the computer systems at headquarters and the computer systems at the branches do not directly communicate, only the information relayed between a headquarters manager and a branch manager in their phone call is used in the decision.

Youve also been approached by several restaurant chains about establishing communications links between your headquarters and their headquarters.

Assignments:

1. What benefits can you see from networking your branch offices and headquarters together?

2. What benefits can you see from data communications linkages between headquarters and Special Salmon fishing boats?

3. Would cloud computing be of benefit to Special Salmon? If so how? Otherwise, Why not?