Assignment case study: HandMade Furniture Ltd.

This case study provides background information for both assignment 1 and assignment 2.

As a network consultant, your initial examination of the company has discovered the following facts:

1. It is a single site company with a factory and office on site.

a. There are 80 employees in total, 60 in the factory and 20 in the office.
b. Each office worker has their own PC. There is a mixture of Windows XP, Windows 7 and Windows 8 installed together with various versions of Microsoft Office.
c. There are 8 PCs in the factory, all running Windows 7 and Microsoft Office 2010.
d. There is no central subscription to anti-virus software. Staff are left to do this themselves.

2. The network is completely wired and they have not yet started to explore the use of Wi-Fi. If staff bring their own devices to work, they need to make their own provision for Internet access (3G etc.)

3. The network runs on a single Windows Server 2012 server. There is an additional NAS storage device that will store up 10TB of data. There is no formal backup plan; again staff (and individual teams) are expected to manage their own data. Some do this better than others. For example, the design team have their own NAS storage and additionally copy designs to backup DVD on a weekly basis.

4. Internet access is provided through an ADSL account with a local Internet rovider. This gives a maximum of 4.5 Mbit/s of bandwidth. They have found that this is not sufficient for their needs.

a. The company does not have a website.
b. There is a single email address for the company that the MD (Managing Director) and her PA (Personal Assistant) have access to.
c. Other staff have set up ‘unofficial' company emails for their requirements; for example, the finance team have a shared email address with a Gmail account that they use for ordering.

5. No single person has responsibility to managing the network. A previous office manager (who has now left) had some IT experience and supported the network as part of his job. There have been some serious incidents recently, most notably a serious virus infection that was dealt with by bringing in a local IT technician to clean a number of PCs

6. The arrangements for printing are very mixed: a. There is a single inkjet printer in the factory shared between the factory PCs. This printer is networked. b. In the office, there is a high volume laser printer connected directly to one of the admin support team’s PCs. This is connected via Windows printer sharing to the other PCs in the admin team but no-one else has access (in the past, if anyone else needed a large number of documents printing they had to email it to a member of the support team). c. The remainder of the office staff use 22 inkjet printers, from a variety of manufacturers. Some of these are connected to individual PCs and some are shared between workgroups. These have been bought over the past few years on an ad-hoc basis; responsibility for their upkeep is usually shared by the members of that workgroup.

Assignment 1:

You are a self-employed Network Consultant and you have been approached by a small furniture manufacturer (HandMade Furniture Ltd.) to examine their network.

Your initial findings have determined that the network is currently working within acceptable parameters but you can see that there will be problems in the future unless they implement some additional infrastructure and a management plan in the very near future.
The Managing Director has asked you to produce a briefing paper to be presented to the Board. This should be written as a fully referenced formal report.

Assignment 2:

This assignment requires you to create a network management plan and a security plan for HandMade Furniture Ltd. that will include both local and cloud-based services.

This is based on the same company case study that you used for assignment 1, but with the following additional information:

1. A decision has been made to upgrade the company Internet connection. Your advice will be appreciated on how this should be done.

2. The company have decided to upgrade all PCs to the latest versions of Microsoft Office and Windows.

3. Email addresses will be provided for all staff via Google Apps for Business

4. Wi-Fi will be added to the network and team leaders in the factory will be issued with

a Wi-Fi enabled laptop.

5. Staff will be able to bring their own devices to work and connect to the work Wi-Fi network. Advice on how to do this will be appreciated.

6. The company are considering moving away from individual printers to networked ‘pull' printing. They would appreciate your advice on the implications of this.

7. The company has decided to move their accounting and stock control systems to a cloud based service, managed and maintained by another company. The provider has a good international reputation, however the board would appreciate you advice on this.