COTS Selection and Implementation Within Company X Projects Introduction Company X projects and customer are based in the Defence and Government markets, these customers are escalating their demand for commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) and other pre-existing components in business system solutions. Attempts to exploit these components through use of traditional engineering approaches that involve defining requirements, producing architectures; then searching for components that meet the specified requirements within the defined architecture have been disappointing. The first major impact of this was seen on Project X as Company X first steps into the LSI (Large System Integration) arena, this trend has continued with all projects now having significant COTS components within their design. In this document we will look at the problems faced by Company X in the continuing use of COTS components in LSI projects and their impact on business and engineering processes, this will be specifically focused on the use of COTS IT components, though the same issues face us in the use of COTS networking equipment as well. I have used my knowledge of IT projects and to lesser extents investigation work package as the basis of this paper. From my research in to the field of COTS-based Systems (CBS) engineering I have found that the effective use of COTS components demands new ways of doing business, new skills, knowledge, and abilities; changed roles and responsibilities; and different processes. For us to achieve the benefits of the commercial components while managing the drawbacks, we must drive the definition and understanding of the requirements, the end-user business processes, the architecture, and the cost, schedule, risk and vendor relationships. Given that we intend to increase our use on architectural frameworks and RUP it follows that any process selected should work with these ideas, for this proposal I will document how Evolutionary Process for Integrating COTS-Based Systems (EPIC) and the use of Earned Value in the context of CBS solutions can be implemented into Company X GATE process and project lifecycle; also of importance is the discussion on the criteria we use to select components. “The poor general lives to fight battles. The wise general lives to win the war.”[2] The use of commercial products can have profound and lasting impact on the spiralling cost and effort of building Defence systems, particularly information systems. It is important, however, to remember that simply “using COTS” is not the end in itself, but only the means. Challenges using COTS faced by Company X COTS
Commencing penetration tests within the infrastructure of Alexander Rocco Corporation may be a strenuous, yet beneficial process. However, before commencing penetration tests, much planning, strategizing, and research is necessary in order to ensure successful, seamless, and legal operations. Based on information provided by the SANS Institute, an initial meeting should be coordinated between those responsible for conducting the tests, along with the appropriate leadership personnel of the company (source). Within the meeting, the scope of the project should be established, classifying company data appropriately, and determining which components of the company’s infrastructure require penetration testing, which may include Alexander Rocco Corporation’s
...System (SMS). Knowing that the Harley-Davidson’s employees were not very susceptible to quick changes, SiL’k team made sure to employ company’s model to highlight People, Processes and Technology for any change initiatives. Additionally, company’s Technology decisions were differed to company’s Architecture Integration group to ensure all technical solutions will be compatible with existing Information Systems architecture. Last but not least, the team took an open communication approach and throughout the process, each party involved, shared their monthly updates as well as project newsletter that communicated objectives, activities and progress to the community. This was clearly an ultimate teams collaborative effort, which brought them all toward shared vision of the new process and activities, resulted in shareholder’s decision in favor of the new supplier.
The current architecture of the Riordan Manufacturing Company Inc. Wide Area Network (WAN) and network security in place requires updated documentation. The purpose of this paper is to consolidate the existing information into a single format and evaluate the WAN and security documentation for an executive overview. Riordan Manufacturing, Inc. is an industry leader in the field of plastic injection molding. With state-of-the art design capabilities, they create innovative plastic designs that have earned international acclaim. Attention to detail, extreme precision and enthusiastic quality controls are the hallmarks of Riordan Manufacturing. With facilities in San Jose, California, Albany, Georgia, Pontiac, Michigan and Hangzhou, China, the company is heavily dependent upon their communication networks. The documentation produced by this analysis will give the management at Riordan Manufacturing an understanding of their current network topology and a baseline to evaluate security of the network.
Hewlett-Packard is one of the most innovating companies in today's modern world. They specialize in building and producing computer software, hardware, and networking devices, but their main manufactures in their production lines are personal computers and a vast amount of printers. In addition to manufacturing computer technology, they're also involved in various military contracts that help the United States in their defense systems and infrastructure. As a result, how are these contracts helping our country's military progression and why have we developed a partnership with this private company to build numerous long-term contracts? In this paper, I plan to inform you on the company of Hewlett-Packard and how their help to the military has progressed the United States and their war efforts in fighting around the globe.
Physical and environmental security programs are generally considered to be a collection of mechanisms and controls put into place that help ensure the availability of information technology capabilities. These programs protect an organization from fire, flood, theft, power failure, intentional, and even unintentional damage through negligence. Implementation of these programs at the organizational level can take place in a number of ways but most organizations choose to follow the application of a body of standards, usually set forth by an organization such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Once such body of standards put forth by ISO/IEC is 27002, Information technology – Security techniques – Code of practice for information secur...
Controlled Requirement Expression (CORE) was developed for the British Aerospace programs while the UK Ministry of Defence was carrying out a requirement analysis (Hull et al., 2010). The fundamental component of the CORE methodology is viewpoints as different users see systems in different ways. There are many different stakeholders involved in a system; using CORE methodology involves finding all the different viewpoints of those stakeholders that have an interest in the system whether it’s a person, role or organisation ext.… (Sommerville and Sawyer, 2000). By organising viewpoints hierarchy it assists experts to read the scope and supports the analysis process. CORE Methodology is extensively used for real time system requirements specification.
The Hefty Hardware case study presents multiple critical issues that will impact both short-term and long-term growth and development of the company. The first issue is the communication gap and lack of integration between stakeholders in business and the Information Technology division. The second critical issue is the lack of shared knowledge and each department working on projects in essentially silos. The third critical issue is internal company politics driving the executive-level decision making process. Solutions to the above issues will need to be addressed with utmost urgency to ensure Hefty Hardware’s foothold in the marketplace.
CHMIS was a new concept, and faced many challenges that ultimately failed as a whole, but provided many learning lesson opportunities. The system was quite unaffordable, it lacked sufficient technological support, and the premise of the system caused security concerns. Lessons learned, and...
For an in-depth defence approach, case study provides a series of things that describe about what is working nowadays for a secure data.
This project must meet the requirements of DoD security policies and standards for delivery of the technology services. The first requirement we are to discuss is Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) which is a United States legislation that defines a comprehensive framework to protect government information, operations and assets against natural or man-made threats. FISMA assigned the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the responsibility of defining standards and security procedures to be followed and must be complied. There are nine processes NIST outlines to be in compliance with FISMA:
Williams, (1997) identified four steps to system planning. Earl (1989) proposed five alternate strategy frameworks which project managers should consider when deciding how the system will enhance the business function. Standard business strategy methods are used to identify such opportunities by using: value chains, application searching and information analysis (Earl 1989).
As part of developing the need in the initial investigation step in the systems development life cycles (SDLC) process, a constructive method is use case. Use case is a technique for capturing requirements with written scenarios in non-technical terminology that describe how a system interacts with a user or another system (University of Phoenix, Course Syllabus, 2006). There are two fundamental pieces, along with how they relate, to bear in mind: the actors and the goals. The actors are everyone and everything that will use (or be used) by the project progress reports, and the goals, which are what the actors want to achieve. The use case will describe the goals achieved by the actors who perform tasks (Carr & Meehan, 2005).
Effectively integrating information technology (IT) into an organization’s business processes is critical if the organization wants to increase productivity and remain profitable. IT includes items such as the systems software, application software, computer hardware, and the networks and databases that help manage the organization’s information. When implementing quality standards and processes that are forever changing in the IT world, organizations must balance these changes while continuing to rapidly implement new systems technologies in order to stay competitive.
This system connects, accumulates, processesas well as provides imperative information to all parties thus enhancing continuity in the procurement process. However, if valid output is to be expected, features as well as requirements of the procurement process must be compatible to current system technologies (Giner, et al, 2011). The harmonization of suppliers as enhanced through the adoption of electronic sourcing enables firms to readily identify new potential suppliers for specific needs when old suppliers` capabilities are in question. The adoption of E-tendering that supports sending requests of pricesand information to suppliers as well as receiving suppliers responses improves on procurement efficiencies as it leads to significant cost reductions thus leading to better procurement performance through cost savings.For this system to achieve desired results however,all users must beready and willing to adopt the new systemsso enable seamless adoption and consequently ensure optimal
A good, reliable e-business architecture can serve as your platform for future e-business applications. In creating an e-business architecture, you will want to ensure that you are developing and leveraging core components across multiple applications.