Introduction to Telecommunications and Networks Assignment

Case Study: Youi's New Headquarters

Youi Australia (Youi Pty Ltd) is a registered general insurance company, which began as a small star-up at Sunshine Coast in March 2008. Its products include motor, home, and watercraft insurance. The company experienced a rapid growth since its foundation. It takes more than 3 per cent market share in car and house insurance across Australia and New Zealand. The number of staff has expanded from 30 to over 900.

To accommodate its continuing growth, Youi decided to build their new global headquarters next to University of the Sunshine Coast at Sippy Downs. The new headquarters will span across 4.8 hectares, including 1800 car parks. The new office will house up to 2,000 workers, and become the home to all corporate positions including IT, marketing, and HR.

Good network infrastructure at the new headquarters should be capable of connecting all devices, offices, and staff. Youi understands this is a vital factor to support and enable its future growth. Therefore, it hopes to obtain a dependable plan for its network infrastructure before the actual construction work starts.

Assignment Task

You are a member of the network planning team, and need to write a formal business management report to explain your solutions and recommendations about the future network infrastructure for Youi's new headquarters.

Your target audience is executive business people, who have extensive business experience but limited ICT knowledge. They would like to be informed as to how your solutions may be beneficial to their business. Therefore, the report needs to recommend the telecommunications and networking technologies to be used in terms of business benefit.

You may need to compare your recommendation with other available technologies.

Specifically, your report should discuss possible solutions for the following 3 topics in the main body.

A. Network Infrastructure

1) Network convergence and unified communications

2) LAN types and cabling plan

3) WAN connection with branches

4) Transmission media and connecting devices

5) IP and DNS management

B. Networked Services

Propose to deploy 4 types of network services. Candidates can be, but not limited to, VOIP, WWW, Intranet, Extranet, Email, and Web Services.

C. Data Processing Facilities

1) 3.1 Data storage solution. Candidates can be, but not limited to, data centre, SAN, Cloud, and distributed database.

2) 3.2 Data processing model. Candidates can be, but not limited to, C/S and P2P.

When you provide solutions to each topic, remember to explain their benefits to some of the following items:

• The operation of the headquarters
• The collaborations between the headquarters and global branch offices
• The operation of the business
• The satisfaction of customers

Report Format - Your report should be no less than 1,500 words and it would be best to be no longer than 3,000 words long.

The report MUST be formatted using the following guidelines:

• Paragraph text - 12 point Calibri single line spacing
• Headings - Arial in an appropriate type size
• Margins - 2.5cm on all margins
• Header - Report title
• Footer - page number (including the word "Page")
• Page numbering - roman numerals (i, ii, iii, iv) up to and including the Table of Contents, restart numbering using conventional numerals (1, 2, 3, 4) from the first page after the Table of Contents.
• Title Page - Must not contain headers or footers. Include your name as the report's author but DO NOT include any reference to your student ID, course code or course name.
• The report is to be created as a single Microsoft Word document (version 2007, 2010, 2013 or Office 365). No other format is acceptable and doing so will result in the deduction of marks.
• In Authorisation and Purpose Section, the report should be addressed to USC for the purpose of ICT 120 assessment.

The report is to be structured as a formal business report. Refer to the following references for details on report structures:

Summers, J. & Smith, B., 2014, Communication Skills Handbook, 4th Ed, Wiley, Australia.