You have just accepted the position as CIO for Holiday Inn (Figure 3.7). As your first official act, the CEO has asked you to assess the corporation's computer operations and report back to her with your recommendation on whether to remain with the status quo (i.e., a centralized IS architecture similar to that depicted in Figure 3.1), migrate to a distributed architecture, or create a hybrid solution using aspects from both general architectures and possibly includes ASPs and cloud-computing services. Prepare a compelling 8-12 slide case in PowerPoint for presentation at the next staff meeting.

Figure 3.7

Holiday Inn Information Systems Architecture

Workstations Workstations Server Local area Leased line Satellite network link Local area network Servers U.S. Hotel Corporute headquarters Mainframes Local area network Satellite Workstations link t0 Europe Corporate data center