You are currently the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for an innovative Internet-based company with gross revenues of more than $35 million dollars per year. During an executive leadership meeting, you were told that your company will be merging with a multinational company of equal size and you will be responsible for developing a project plan to strategically integrate all systems, including databases and infrastructure. The Chief Executive Officer has given you 60 days to deliver an information technology project plan in anticipation of the company merger. Your company will be expanding from one floor to three floors within six months.
Since this merger will be bringing two fairly equal-sized companies together under one roof, the infrastructure must be redesigned to accommodate the increased needs. Your company currently uses operational systems and relational databases but desires to expand into data warehousing. All information technology (hardware and software) must be redesigned to meet organizational needs. The solution should be implemented in either a hosted solution, on-site solution, or a hybrid model. The CEO is expecting you to integrate different technologies from different solution providers and incorporate industry best practices in connection with the development of technological systems. In addition, the CEO is extremely interested in cloud technologies and virtualization but is leery of security issues; however, the CEO is sure that you will implement proper security protocols. The company currently consists of twenty-five employees but is expected to increase to 65 employees when the merger is complete.
Write a 5 page executive summary in which you provide a high-level technical overview of your project where you address the following:
Describe the scope of the project and control measures.
Describe the goals and objectives of the project.
Give a detailed, realistically estimated cost analysis of the entire project, including technical resources (human capital) that may be needed to complete the project.
Relate the value of the project plan solution to the competitive advantage that information technology will afford the organization.
Provide all aspects of the information technology implementation into the project plan.
Recommend solution providers who can assist with development and implementation. Include a cost analysis of at least three providers
