Good Critical Thinking On Selection Of An Information Technology Platform

A number of committees were formed in IMT-USA in recent past that analyzed the present problems and proposed their solutions. However, even after implementing the solutions, another problem was faced by the company in its Information System (IS) area due to which the company was always in a fire fighting situation while dealing with unexpected problems.
Charles Browning O’Neil took charge of the company from Page during 2002 and started investigating the problem at strategic level. He wanted to have an adequate, economical and responsive network structure that would provide data processing support to all areas within the MIS group.
The first option is to leave support of engineering drafting and designing group. This would result in offloading some considerable work from the MIS group and the staff of engineering development group is in favor of this option due to the fact that two of them are good at computers and were capable of handling their group’s IS needs. This option requires no finance and could be implemented right away.
In the first option, there is no need of developing any special applications since the engineering development division had their own engineers to work with the system. No special tools are required in this option. Similarly, there is no need of any vendor. Zero cost will incur in this option. However, this option will not permanently resolve all IS problems at strategic level. There is no need of budget and capacity planning in this option. Since no new software is required; therefore, there is no need to acquire any software license in this option.
The second option that Browning had was to replace the existing slow network with high speed network. This option would require little training to the MIS staff and no training to the users of the computers connected with the high speed network. It was also proposed in this option that CAD seats would be moved to independent workstations from the mainframe in order to lessen the load of mainframe that would result in better performance of the mainframe for other systems connected to it.
In the second option, there is no need of developing any special applications since the applications for LAN and WAN are already available to the company. Special tools including infrastructure for WAN are required in this option. Similarly, there is a need of vendor who could supply equipment including routers etc. for WAN. Such vendors are easily available and there is little need of finance to support the project of installing WAN. This option would permanently resolve all IS problems at strategic level. However, there is a need of budget and capacity planning in this option. Since new software is required to operate WAN; therefore, there is a need to acquire software license in this option.
The third proposed option was replacement of Bill of Material (BOM) system. The existing BOM system was nearly 15 years old and was not good enough to meet latest requirements. The cost of new BOM system was zero and could be run on the existing IBM mainframe. The program was available at no cost due to being discarded by IMT-USA. Around September, 2002, the Fort Wayne staff got almost 90% trained on the new BOM system.
Contrary to the previous option, there is a need of special application for BOM system in the third option; however, luckily, the company can acquire it free of cost as mentioned earlier. No requirement of special tools is there in this option since BOM system is itself a complete package. There is no need of vendor for acquiring any sort of equipment since the proposed BOM system is capable of functioning on the existing mainframe. This option would permanently resolve all IS problems at strategic level. Moreover, there is no need of budget and capacity planning in this option. Since new software is required to function as BOM system, therefore, there is a need to acquire software license in this option.
In the last option, PCs were proposed to be connected through LAN whereas networks were proposed to be connected via WAN. Moving all the applications to UNIX based environment was also included in this option and required around 10 years. This option was expensive as compared to previous one and needed more time. Similar to the previous option, there is no need of developing any special applications since the applications for LAN and WAN are already available to the company. Special tools including infrastructure for WAN are required in this option.
In this option, there is no need to acquire infrastructure for LAN since it is already established at the company. There is a need of vendor who could supply equipment including routers etc. for WAN only. Such vendors are easily available and there is little need of finance to support the project of installing WAN. This option would permanently resolve all IS problems at strategic level. However, there is a need of budget and capacity planning in this option. Since new software is required to operate WAN; therefore, there is a need to acquire software license in this option.
In my point of view, the third option of acquiring new BOM system from IMT-USA is the most suitable option due to several reasons. First of all, the new BOM system is available to the company for free of cost. There is no issue pertaining to license acquisition since IMT-USA is discarding the system and it can be easily handed over to Fort Wayne.
Secondly, there is very little requirement of training the staff since the existing staff has already acquired 90% training on the new BOM system from IMT-USA. Thirdly, in case of any technical difficulty, the company may contact IMT-USA easily to get technical support. Lastly, the change can be implemented easily while utilizing the existing mainframe and infrastructure.
Software program of Fort Wayne is obsolete due to the fact that it was implemented around 15 years back when the software development field was not much advanced. There are a number of problems that the company faces due to the non-compatibility issues and unavailability of various tools in the existing BOM system. Implementation of new BOM would surely bring betterment to the company and especially it’s IS related functions.
The company has already good skill level of computer engineers and other administrative staff who is capable of handling the new BOM system provided their 10% remaining training is carried out on urgent basis. The company would be able to prevent a large number of software related issues in next at least 10 years after implementing new BOM system. The company would require least number of additional sources including finance in this option; therefore, third option is considered to be the best in dealing with the problems faced by the company.