CASE STUDY:

Consider you are managing a techgiant company that is located in Sydney, Australia. This company has local branch offices in Melbourne, Brisbane, and Adelaide as well. Due to the advent of COVID19, this company is mainly working online these days. In addition, due to online business and cyber security attempts, the hardware and software technical requirements along with the security of the computer systems (and network) are increasing day-by-day at the main office and branch offices. With this immense requirement, consider your job is to manage this organisations computer system and you are allocated a budget to upgrade it. You might have several choices including:

more memory

a faster CPU

additional processors

more disk drives

a RAID system

a new file management software

a new computer system

Write a Report:

Based on your understanding of the case study, write a 1000-words report. In this assessment, your group need to demonstrate your understanding of computer hardware and software and its features/management, memory management, and hardware/software interaction with respect to the business requirements and updating the system requirements with the changes to keep organisation performance and production competitive and secure.

Your report should answer the following questions:

1) Hardware/Software component selection: Considering the trade-offs among all these computer hardware/software components choices (given in the analyse case study section), assuming you have sufficient funds to upgrade only one component of the system (i.e., only make one choice):

a) Explain which single hardware/software component you would choose to upgrade and improve overall system performance and why? (Note: Please explain me this specific question. This one is the most highlighted one. Explain me into 250 words. )

b) In case you are required to buy a new computer system (or laptop), what characteristics or features would you look for that would make it more efficient than the existing computer (or laptop)?

Note: There is no right or wrong answer. The only objective of this question is to check how you will wisely utilise the allocated budget and what is the rationale behind it. For system upgradation in part (a) and computer system features in part (b) you can face a challenge of the hardware/software benchmark as you are not working in the industry in real terms. Therefore, you can make the benchmark of the existing computer system by considering the best computer (or laptop) among your group members.

2) System Performance Issues Diagnosis: Imagine that techgiant organisation anticipate that they need a computer with massive computing power in future. Your team has been asked to do a survey and prepare report on it. You as a team member is given a task of preparing that report that describes a new types of future computer systems with artificial intelligence ability like IBM Artificial Intelligence Unit (AIU). Do a literature survey and write a report on prospect future computers.

(Note: Search for IBM AIU model as reference for this question).

3) Operating System and Computer System Management: Imagine your company would like to upgrade the systems due to security threats. You need to prepare a proposal draft where your task is to identify at least three major types of threats to systems running Windows and the policies that system administrators must take to protect the system from unauthorised access. Compare the practical problems when balancing the need for accessibility with the need to restrict access and suggest the first action you would take to secure a Windows computer or network if you managed one.