Question: Please refer to the case overview in Units 1 & 2 for the business premise and situation. This week, you will continue to work on The Broadway Café as it struggles to compete in the 21st century.

PROJECT INSTRUCTIONS:

Each week you will submit your response to the business situation presented. Use an APA formatted paper with a Title page and a References page. Your paper should be double-spaced and written in Times New Roman size 12 font. The paper will be written in an essay format. Do not use a question and answer format.

Business Dilemma

Components of a solid enterprise architecture include everything from documentation to business concepts to software and hardware. Deciding which components to implement and how to implement them can be a challenge. New IT components are released daily, and business needs continually change. An enterprise architecture that meets the cafe's needs today may not meet those needs tomorrow. Building an enterprise architecture that is scalable, flexible, available, accessible, and reliable is key to the cafe's success.

The cafe has a limited budget for computer equipment. One of your most valued employees, Nick Zele, is highly technical and always insisting that the cafe is outdated and needs to upgrade its equipment. Nick's latest push is for dishwasher safe keyboards and mice for the cafe's kiosks. The spill proof equipment would last longer and could be washed daily to remove germs and bacteria. The cost of the new hardware is around $1,000 for a keyboard and a mouse.

PROJECT FOCUS:

You understand the need to bring the cafe into the 21st century. However, you have many equipment requirements and a limited budget.

If you could determine the return on investment (ROI) of the new computer equipment, it would be easy to make a decision. Unfortunately, this is a difficult task. For example, what is the ROI of a fire extinguisher? If you never use the fire extinguisher, your return on the investment is low. If the first extinguisher puts out a fire that could destroy the entire building, then its ROI is very high.

Making Business Decisions II

On your way to work this morning, you stopped for gas. When you were inside paying, someone broke into your car and stole your computer bag. You did not notice until you arrived at the cafe and began looking for your bag. As you begin to realize all of the data you just lost including customer lists, profit and loss analysis, tax returns, e-mail, sales information, payroll files, etc. you begin to wonder when you last backed up your hard drive.

Because of the importance of data backup, numerous companies produce specialized backup software. Backup utilities offer advanced features in the following areas to differentiate it from the Windows Backup utility and from software included with CD and DVD burners:

Support for all current media types, including all DVD formats, Zip disks, Pen storage, and so on.

Highly specific backup selections, combinations of files and folders in any location.

On-the-fly compression of files, to provide reduced file sizes in the backup.

Automatic comparisons of data after the backup, taking a number of forms.

Support for multi-CD or multi-DVD backups, with a single backup spanning as many discs as necessary.

Detailed backup schedulers.

Detailed methods of including or excluding file types.

Backup from remote computers.

In addition, some backup utilities now include the technology known as ghost imaging or just plain ghosting. A ghost image captures the entire hard drive, backing it up to the point where you can restore your entire system from it.

PROJECT FOCUS:

Assess you plans for your enterprise architecture. Also, now that you have been stung by a painful data loss experience you realize the importance of having a backup strategy.

1. Why is it so difficult to determine the ROI of the components in your enterprise architecture?

2. What can you do to determine the cost/benefit or ROI of the proposed dishwasher safe keyboard and mice?

3. Create a strategy to backup your personal computer. Be sure to search the Internet to find different third-party utilities that perform backup, restore, and ghosting.

4. List the features and prices of each.