Riordan Manufacturing Upgrade

Riordan Manufacturing is a privately held company with plant operations in Albany, Georgia; Pontiac, Michigan; Hangzhou, China. The Corporate Headquarters are located in San Jose, California. Riordan Manufacturing is a subsidiary of Riordan Industries. The Chief Operating Officer (COO) is Hugh McCauley and the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is Dale Edgel. The Company employs a work force of 550 people throughout the four locations.

Corporate Headquarters in San Jose, California has recognized a growing need to upgrade the network operating system. Riordan's current operating system is Windows NT 4.0. The Chief Information Officer (CIO) Maria Trinh has asked the Manager of IT Services, Patricia Miller to assemble a team of IT Professionals to evaluate both Windows 2000 and 2003 as well as the LYNUX Operating System. Based on this study she is to make her recommendations as to what operating systems will serve Riordan Manufacturing best.

Purpose of Project

Riordan Manufacturing is currently utilizing the Windows NT 4.0 operating system. Our team is evaluating the different Windows Servers to determine which system is best suited for the company. Currently, the team favors the Windows Server 2003. This server provides many services and features that make a valid case to management for recommendation to upgrade. Our team will have to submit a proposal once we have solidified our decision. The Windows 2003 Server has shown to be the fastest, reliable and secure Windows Server. Windows Servers 2003 integrates many powerful applications that are important to businesses that can improve efficiency (Microsoft, 2002, p.1).

Areas of Business to be improved

§ Sharing Resources

1. Shared folders

2. Mapped drive is shared on the network by a file server or workstation

3. Print server

4. Software applications stored on server

§ Managing resources

1. Managing access to network resources

§ Internet

§ Printers

§ Files

§ Software

§ Security

1. File and folder protection

2. Account and network access passwords

3. File, folder and account auditing

4. Server access protection on a network

§ Scalability and compatibility

1. Ability for computer operating system to function on a range of computers from small to large.

2. Can start as small group and can be scaled to larger group

§ Reliability

1. Multitasking, the ability to run two or more programs at the same time

2. Multithreading, is the capability of programs written in 32-bit code to run several programs code blocks at the same time.

§ Disreputability

§ Fault Tolerance

1. Recovery from hard disk failures

2. Recovery from lost data in a file

3. Recovery from system configuration errors

4. Advanced warning about system and hardware problems

§ Internet integration and electronic commerce

1. Internet Information Services (IIS)

§ Intranet

§ Internet

Doing an upgrade of Windows NT 4.0 to Windows 2003 will bring many improvements to our business. These improvements will be seen in the areas of sharing resources, managing resources, security, and scalability. While taking advantage of these improvements we will also be able to implement an Active Directory and Internet Information services.

Sharing resources such as implementing a Print Server would improve the cost of printing information. The cost improvement would come from the fact that we would no longer need printers directly connected to each user's computer.

Managing access to network resources would also impact the cost of business. The company would be able to implement network printers centrally located through out this location. The printers could be shared by several departments, while restricting access to these printers to others. Having a color printer for use in presentation to potential new clients can be restricted from use by any unauthorized users. We would also have the ability to restrict access to folders and files by department, groups or workers. The human resources department would be able to keep all files on the server with the reasonable expectation that no one with in the company with out authorization will be able to access personnel files. The company would also have the ability to grant access to the Internet to users that need this resource while keeping others off the web.

While most of the information that has been reviewed so far has some impact from a security point of view their still is the ability to grow the system. Windows 2003 is a network operating system that can grow with the company. Since the request to upgrade only the San Jose, CA location this will not limit the company to this location. Over time the company has the ability to integrate or update other locations to Windows 2003. This meaning that network administration can be centrally located to one or two locations, the first location would be used for the administration and the second location for back up and recovery.

Consideration of other Operating System

We decided to look at another Operation System (OS) besides Windows 2003. The Linux OS is an open sourced system and can be adapted to work with-in a multi-platform environment. First we looked at the fact that company wide we would have UNIX, Microsoft, and Linux if we went in this direction.

Linux and UNIX work well together since Linux is based on Unix. They will be able to communicate with minimal intervention. Then the fact that the