Wireless Lan Proposal

WIRELESS LAN PROPOSAL

A RESEARCH PROPOSAL PRESENTED TO THE

Faculty of the College

In partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

By

April 26, 2005

Table of Contents

Section

I. Statement of Purpose

II. Statement of Problem

III. Participants

IV. Objectives:

A. Development Objectives

B. Evaluative Objectives

V. Data Collection

VI. Data Analysis

VII. Definition of Terms

VIII. Budget

IX. Timeline

X. Bibliography

XI. Exhibits

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

WIRELESS LAN PROPOSAL

By

April 26, 2005

The purpose of this proposal is to determine if implementing a Wireless LAN in the Bank's T-4 conference center will not only improve LAN services for employees, tenants, and visitors, but also determine if this can be a self funding and secure initiative. In order to make this determination, we desire to perform a small research experiment that we believe will clearly illustrate the need for pursuing the full implementation of a Wireless LAN. We also believe that this experiment will provide the justification to obtain full management support to pursue this initiative.

The research experiment that we propose to initiate consists of two surveys, contacting other companies in the area that host conference centers, and implementing a small Wireless LAN as a pilot. The two surveys will be issued to Bank employees who have reserved a room in the conference center in the past, and to Bank tenants and visitors, who have also reserved the conference center in the past. These surveys will ask the respondents demographic questions, such as the department or industry they work in, preference questions such as if they have been satisfied with the current LAN services in the conference center, and finally if they are familiar with Wireless technology, and if they would be willing to pay a small fee to have access to Wireless technology in our conference center. We will also be contacting other companies, in the area of the Bank, who rent conference center space to the public. We wish to determine what LAN services they offer, and what their price structures are. Finally we will be conducting a pilot by implementing a small Wireless LAN in one room of the Bank's conference center. This pilot will enable us to determine information such as, how much interest the conference center customers will have in Wireless technology, what the reduction of support will be in the management of Wireless technology compared to the current Wired technology, and after a security review, is the Wireless technology as secure as the Wired technology. In addition to the above examples of information we will obtain, we will also perform data analysis on the above information collected, and will determine what relationships exist. For example, is there a relationship between the number of people attending a conference center event and the interest in Wireless technology? This information will assist us in determining which conference rooms to implement the Wireless LAN access. If only groups of 20 people or more are interested in having Wireless LAN access, then it is not reasonable for us to implement this kind of access in all the smaller rooms of the conference center.

We believe that this Wireless LAN initiative will have a positive business impact on the bank. First, it is our intention to elevate conference center user satisfaction by providing this addition LAN functionality. Second, we anticipate this to be a cost savings initiative. Through our research experiment we will show a significant reduction in support costs for the technical management of a Wireless LAN. This will also allow us to reduce our current two day lead-time for conference center LAN requests to two hours, and this reduction will also improve our overall user satisfaction. Third, our pilot LAN will give us the opportunity to perform an exhaustive security review of this Wireless technology. We understand that the increased user satisfaction and cost reductions can only be a benefit to the Bank, if this proposed initiative is fully secure and does not introduce any risk to our current LAN. Finally, this research experiment will determine if this initiative can be self funding. In addition to reducing support costs, we will determine if there is an opportunity to charge a small service fee for providing Wireless LAN access.

We propose to begin this experiment on May 1st, 2005 by developing our data gathering instruments and emailing them to our potential respondents. We will also be contacting other companies, and planning the implementation of the pilot. On June 1st we will begin data analysis on completed survey responses, and by Aug 1st we will begin analyzing the data collected from the pilot. On September 1st, 2005 we will submit a final report to management in anticipation of full support to pursue this initiative. The costs for performing this research proposal are minimal. In addition to $390 for equipment, we anticipate 80 hours of support time split between two Bank employees, a researcher and a network engineer.

In closing, we believe this is not only an initiative that will bring positive benefits to the Bank, in the forms of increased customer satisfaction and the reduction of LAN support costs. We also believe this will be an exciting venture that will keep the Bank involved in the latest technology, as well as keeping the skills of our Information Technology technicians current.