Barcroft
Media
Acknowledgement
Content
Barcroft Media ........................................................................................................................ 1
Acknowledgement ................................................................................................................... 2
Content .................................................................................................................................... 3
Section 01 ................................................................................................................................ 4
1.1 Barcroft Media............................................................................................................... 4
1.2 Current situation of the IT and need of the IT enablement ........................................... 4
1.3 IT Enablement ............................................................................................................... 4
Section 02 ................................................................................................................................ 5
2.1 Safety and Security ........................................................................................................ 5
2.2 Establishing/Maintaining a Domain. ............................................................................. 5
2.3 A Proxy.......................................................................................................................... 5
2.4 Communication with clients .......................................................................................... 5
2.5 Disaster Recovering....................................................................................................... 6
Section 03 ................................................................................................................................ 6
3.1 Establishing a strong IT department .............................................................................. 6
3.2 Identifying workflows/business processes. ................................................................... 7
3.3 Developing software modules and apply new technologies .......................................... 8
3.4 Improvements to be done in the Infrastructure............................................................ 10
3.5 advancing the communication ..................................................................................... 11
3.6 Changing file formats to minimize the file size for transferring. ................................ 11
3.7 Effort of IT department on trouble shooting ............................................................... 11
Reference ............................................................................................................................... 12
Section 4 - Appendix ............................................................................................................. 13
4.1 Designing and Implementing a Disaster Recovery system. ........................................ 13
Section 01
1.1 Barcroft Media
Barcroft Media is a United Kingdom based company which sells Digital assets mainly for
the purpose of news reporting. The organization has been running for 6 years alone with
two branch offices located in Delhi and New York. The company works all over 24 hours a
day and seven days a week with the help of around 40 staff members. The mission of the
company is unique from other similar organizations by following the angle they take on a
story that is important and that sells. The company has been holding clients globally while
having most sales to the Sun Telegraph and Mirror newspapers in UK. The success of the
company can be seen by the turnover, which goes up to £5 to 10 Millions per annum over
the last few years. The competition for the market also high due to same kind of service
providers exists.
1.2 Current situation of the IT and need of the IT enablement
Even though the company sells Digital media, usage of the IT is not in a satisfactory level.
It does not have even any permanent IT person or does not maintain an IT department, but
the satisfactory is having an IT literate staff that can be used to get the true benefits of
emerging technologies if applied. It is essential to make company IT enabled with the help
of new and emerging technologies to improve the business which could finally increase the
turnover while making the high satisfactory of the staff and being a remarkable competitor.
It’s also crucial that the new technologies should be applied to cover all business processes
and areas to advance the benefits got currently, by usage of the correct/ most suitable
methodologies which should also help reduce the costs.
1.3 IT Enablement
01. Making the company IT enabled, most important challenges involved redesigning of the
business processes or workflows to engage with new technologies. But the ultimate
result should not disturb or jumble the business requirements. It should help reduce the
man hours consumed while improving the staff satisfactory and reduce the expenditure
on services get from outside.
02. Then development of software modules taken place for redesigned workflows as
applicable. A component based endeavor is most suitable to for redesigning of business
processes but all should be integrated so correct usage of network architecture is
remarkable.
03. The establishment of domains is required with the help of existing LANs. New
additional devices like servers should be used. The storage media should have to be
upgraded with new technologies.
04. Another attempt involved the establishing a strong IT department who can maintain the
new technologies applied and also are able to involve the redesigning of workflows and
making IT enabled, selecting the members to IT department from among existing IT
literate staff is suitable. At the beginning a few consultants could be used further to
transfer technical knowledge to established IT department. For the successful
achievement regular knowledge transferring/Training programs to staff are key
requirements
05. To improve the communication of among the staff members and even with clients and
hired consultants advantages of the TCP/IP protocol can be used by designing
appropriate chatting software. Also establishing/hosting a separate email server is
suitable since the security is achievable and is also cost effective.
06. More importantly some of the formats followed to save/transfer digital media (files) as
of now should have to be changed appropriately for the purpose of reducing the traffic
in the transferring channels, which could direct to reduce bandwidth required.
07. Use the strengths of the IT department for repairs, services of servers when required.
Section 02
2.1 Safety and Security
Since the company’s business is mainly involved with digital media and also communicates
globally with a number of outside people, security is a crucial point to be considered. Safety
should also be considered in a highly acceptable level. Both the security and safety can be
archived and improved by the help of emerging technologies while existing infrastructure
also used.
2.2 Establishing/Maintaining a Domain.
Making the server password protected will not solve all the security issues. A domain
should be established for each and every office branch separately which will lead for
centralized solutions for many instances like file sharing, communication, authorizations
and authentications. In each office, a domain server (domain controller) should first be
installed with a suitable Server Operating system like Linux and an already existing PC can
be used as the domain server which will not lead for any additional cost. Then an Active
Directory and DNS (Domain Name Service) should be configured for maintaining domain
users and connecting terminal to the domain. All staff member should be given
authentication IDs in the domain and authorizations would be given appropriately with
knowledge of higher management. All the files related to the business should be allowed to
access based on the authorization level configured in the domain.
2.3 A Proxy
Existing usage of the Firewall will also not be enough to secure assets. Establishment of a
proxy server for communication with outside the LAN is highly necessary. An existing PC
can easily be upgraded as a proxy server which will lead for a zero additional cost. The
access of the internet and communication with outside would be then controlled and
monitored with the help of it, where all the user machines are connected with proxy. Proxy
should be configured to allow communicating only with identified outside sites by IT
department, based on domain authentications appropriately.
2.4 Communication with clients
All necessary areas in web site should be password protected. Passwords and related crucial
data should be kept/transfer by encrypting. Full content of the stories should not be given to
the people until they pay in fully.
2.5 Disaster Recovering
It’s mandatory that implementing a Disaster Recovery system/mechanism (Please refer
Appendix)
Section 03
3.1 Establishing a strong IT department
The most important and first task to be followed in the IT enablement of the company is to
establish a talented IT department who would then lead to cover the remaining task of the
IT enablement. Since, currently there is no even a permanent IT person, at the beginning
two consultants should be contracted for the purpose of establishment, and further one
person among them has to be recruited permanently as the Head of the IT department. The
main responsibilities of the consultants would be to select the suitable staff for the IT
department among existing IT literate staff and train them as needed. Three Systems
Administrators and two software developers should be nominated as the members.
Systems administrators should work simultaneously as IT members while they work for
their current responsibilities.
For the satisfactory of nominated IT members, they should be paid a monthly allowance in
addition to their current salary (1/10 of their salary), this would profitable than recruiting
new persons and pay them a monthly salary.
Suppose, the current salary of a selected IT literate staff member
And salary for an IT member if recruited from outside
=£X 1
=£X 2
If three IT members recruited from outside,
2  Total additional pay for five members
= £ 5X  A
= 5 * £X
Since the IT members nominated among existing IT staff,
1  The allowance for one person
= £ X * 1/10 = £ X/10
Total additional pay for three members
= 5 * £ X/10 = £ 5X/10 B
Therefore, nominating IT members from among existing staff means,
A savings (Benefit) to the company for a month = A - B
= £ (5X – 5X/10)
= £ 4.5X
Illustration 1 – cost benefit analysis on selecting members for IT department among IT
literate staff
Beginning, Systems Administrators should help the task of redesigning business processes.
Then they could take the responsibilities of systems administrative included training to
staff, maintaining network, configuration activities in the domain, installations, repairing
hardware, monitoring digital media access, troubleshooting infrastructure, monitoring
backup and restore data etc.
Two Software Developers first should concentrate of the task of identifying business
processes and redesigning the workflows that direct for a component based solution, finally
developing of software for business processes. The major effort for software development
would be given only at the initial stage, then the two software developers would have to
work for it occasionally, thus they can work as IT department members simultaneously
while they do their traditional works.
3.2 Identifying workflows/business processes.
The most affordable task involved is identifying business processes in a modular based
approach which would help design/develop software modules as required to engage with
new technologies. The main stakeholders should be the members in the IT department.
Importantly this could not be achievable without help of the all staff members. The
production based business processes like captioning of images and editing etc should be
identified and separated into a module. Selling based processes next to be identified.
Account related transactions like costing, paying etc should and isolated from active
business transactions. Human resource transactions like payroll, shift based working
monitoring, attendance should also be modularized. Other transactions like purchasing,
inventory management are the next transaction group to be identified. Finally it should also
be identified that where the integration between identified modules and among business
transactions involved. For an example if an asset is sold a Pay In Voucher should be
generated automatically in the Accounts software going to be developed at the point of
raising a receipt.
Above process would be helpful to design and developing the required software to help
performing business transactions with the help of new technologies. This task also helps
improving the staff satisfactory. The transparency is increased; cost for a transaction will be
reduced by reduction of time consumed per transaction.
Redesign of account processes is crucial since this is currently costly. Major reason for the
high cost for accounting would be at the end of performing any other transaction related
accounts should be updated or a related accounting transaction would be performed by
manually. Such situations to be identified and then we should use and applied as the
integrations with other modules.
Integration among modules
Production
Processes
Transactions:
Photography
Review pictures
Captioning
Stories
Featuring
Selling processes
Purchasing and
Inventory
Processes
Transactions:
Publish in the web site
Selling of assets
Transactions:
Purchase cameras
Broadband
Accounting
Processes
Figure 1 – main business process categories
Human Resource
Management
3.3 Developing software modules and apply new technologies
After redesigning of workflows, designing of software components for each category should
be initiated. This would be the pinnacle of applying new technologies. Software developers
and Head of IT are the major responsible persons. A common database should be used for
keeping the data in all modules, since integration between modules involved. MySQL is
referable as DBMS and Java should be used as the programming language since both are
open source and are free. Using of Java, MySQL and developing the software by own IT
department lead for a high saving. Estimated time for software development is four months.
Basically five software modules should be developed as for handling production processes,
handling Inventory and purchasing processes, handling selling processes, accounting and
Human resource management.
Cost benefit analysis on developing five software modules in four months rather than
purchasing from outside.
If five software modules purchased,
Software cost per each module
= £ 50,000
= £ 250,000  C
Total software cost for five modules
When software modules are developed by own IT department,
Cost for programming for four months
= (monthly allowance for each developer * 2 + Monthly pay for consultant) * 4
From illustration 1,
Monthly allowance for a developer £ X
= £ X/10
Assuming monthly salary for a staff member is £ 50,000,
Monthly allowance for a developer
= £ 5,000
Assuming monthly pay for a consultant (IT head) is £ 10,000,
Total cost for programming for four months
= £ (5,000 * 2 + 10,000) * 4 = £ 80,000 1
Cost for programming language (Java)
Cost for DBMS
£ 0 2
=
=
£ 0 3
Total cost the development of five software modules in four months
= 1 +2 + 3
= £ (80,000 + 0 + 0)
= £ 80,000  D
Therefore, developing five software modules by own department,
A savings (Benefit) to the company
= C - D
= £ 250,000 - £ 80,000
= £ 170,000
Illustration 2 – cost benefit analysis on developing Software in IT department
Domain server could used to host the database too by installing MySQL server edition; this
will further lead for a cost deduction. This will allow for a client-server architecture design
on the software.
Minimum cost for an additional server to install database, if purchased
= £ 25,000
Since database is kept in the same domain controller server cost to spend =
£0
So the saving (benefit) for the company
= £ 25,000
Illustration 3 – cost benefit analysis on using the domain controller server as a database
server too.
Development of Production Module.
Considerably a high priority should be given for production module since it is the heart of
the core business.
One of the major transactions that would be redesigned is the captioning. When sending the
pictures to India, there is a need to compress them so that bandwidth needed could be
reduced. The required automated functionality of compression should be programmed in.
Using this mechanism costing for the captioning can be reduced.
Typical workflow for captioning
Capture
pictures
Send for
review
Send for
Captioning
Captioning
Review
(File size is large)
High bandwidth
needed
Proposed workflow for captioning
Capture
pictures
Send for
review
Send for
Captioning
Review
Compression
Captioning
(File size is small)
Lower bandwidth
needed
Figure 2 – comparison between traditional workflow for captioning and proposed solution
An automated functionality should be implemented for checking the material for
appropriate formats, which performed when pictures are sent by photographers; best way to
achieve is providing an interface for uploading pictures via FTP and keeps the function
alone with that interface. A suitable functionality should be implemented for handling
media monitoring transactions, thus checking to see that images have not been used without
payment will be cost effective.
Providing interfaces for all the transactions involved by staff is more important, but
functional requirements such as usability, portability, error freeness, user friendliness etc
should be achievable in high passion sine users are the own staff and they should never be
irritated with the solutions developed.
A centralized profile based authentication and authorization mechanism should be
developed. This would also lead for a satisfactory of staff, since they could show that where
the transactions they have involved.
Who could work in solution
It’s a great advantage that most staff members are mid to 20s, as they are used to work in
software environments. First all staff should be informed that all of them use the developed
software modules for transactions done by manually before. The transaction should be done
online. IT members should make staff that the provided solution is helpful and effective
rather than work manually. IT department should train them to use the solution and should
also provide help when required.
Integration in a centralized environment
As any other transaction is finally related with finance it might be not effectively done
manually and costly since duplication of work involved. With the solution provided, for an
example there is no need of sending back order lists for billing, which will be automatically
done by module integration.
3.4 Improvements to be done in the Infrastructure
Since the software modules are developed for client-server architecture the database server
should be plugged in a suitable node where all client PCs can access it. It’s important to
install MySQL server client edition in client PCs to allow crossing points to communicate
with centralized server.
In the database server a considerable amount of storage should be allocated for storing data
of transactions. Generally 100 GB of space for text type data is required for a year, and this
would not be costly since as of now cost per storage unit has greatly reduced in the heard
discs. Database server should have 4GB of RAM.
The main issue faced in video clips production is time consumed for recording. Rather than
purchasing new equipments like high technical video cameras, it is suitable to purchase
good video editing software applications like Adobe Premiere help provide various tools for
editing videos and improving the quality.
The existing policy for use network should further be maintained to keep the staff
satisfactory well, but greater functionality of domain controller should be used for the
purpose of security (refer section 2). Profile based developed software should be able
tracking the job details performed by staff.
Improvement on storage
Since digital media are the main assets it’s not suitable to change the asset because high
quality should further be maintained. Purchasing of high capacity hard discs would not be
costly when compared to the past. The existing tape backup of 1.5TB should be upgraded at
least to 2 numbers of tape backups since the average usage of storage is 3TB for a year.
Keeping additional hard disc of totally (2TB each) 4TB for backing up is also preferable
since the cost is comparably low.
It is important to implement a suitable backup method for the data base in centralized
software developed. Automated daily backup, weekly backup and monthly backup
procedures should be implemented. Two hard discs in existing two separated PCs with
allocated 500GB each will be enough to hold the backup of database of centralized
software.
Gigabyte Ethernet
It’s a good solution to upgrade the LANs to work in Gigabyte Ethernet for improving the
easy access of assets. Relevant network switch and network interfaces of the PCs should be
upgraded to Gigabyte Interfaces if they do not already have.
3.5 advancing the communication
When the current mechanisms used for communication is deeply considered with cost,
security and staff satisfaction, there become a need of a standardized solution for it. TCP/IP
protocol is suitable for communication and widely used, but the way of using it would be
tailored.
For using iChatting using Skype thru mobile phones, an additional cost by each user for
GPRS/3G. This is not a 100% secured mechanism; hacking mechanisms have been widely
spread for mobile media. The best solution is to develop an own chatting application in an
authentication environment using Java on TCP/IP protocol and facilitate staff to use it, then
no addition payment required for data transfers in LAN. Chatting software should be further
extended to facilitate chatting between geographically different three offices. In this case
only the difference rises is data passing is performed using broadband thru TCP/IP, but no
need to pay additionally since company already pays for broadband and only a few data is
transferred when chatting. It’s a secured solution since TCP/IP protocol is originally
secured. This could be further used for communication with clients and field staff by
developing an appropriate web based interface.
An email service should be designed for sending and receiving emails for every staff
member, this could lead for a standard, professional and secured mechanism for
communicating. The standpoint is Email server should be configured under the same
domain of web site or which emphasize the company name. All staff member should be
given an email id for their own; it allows improving the staff satisfaction too. Another
attempt is to provide a web based interface for email service so that field staff can easily
use.
3.6 Changing file formats to minimize the file size for transferring.
Images should be kept with a high resolution. Using of a suitable format is taken place with
considering both quality attributes and efficiency. They should allow keeps the required
quality like high resolution, but with a minimum file size is required. JPEG file format is
suitable for images while AVI standard is better for Videos.
3.7 Effort of IT department on trouble shooting
If the servers, PCs or any device is given to a different party to repair, the cost is high. But
if the own IT department is able to provide such works cost become reduced. So it’s
required to train IT members to make troubleshooting in Computers, and members should
attend trouble shooting.
Reference

Barcroft Media, 2011, Viewed 02 Feb 2011,
http://www.barcroftmedia.com/index.pgi

DisasterRecovery.org, 2011, DisasterRecovery.org, Viewed 01 Feb 2011,
www.disasterrecovery.org/plan_steps.html

Diana Roberts, 2011, Creating and Maintaining a Business Website, Viewed 01 Feb
2011,
http://ezinearticles.com/?Creating-and-Maintaining-a-BusinessWebsite&id=1546902

R. Kayne, 2011, what is a Proxy Server, Viewed 01 Feb 2011,
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-proxy-server.htm

Data Capture Solution, 2011, Workflow and Business Process Management, Viewed
01 Feb 2011,
www.dcs.co.uk/business.../business-process-management.html

JNS InfoTech Pvt. Ltd, 2011, Web Development application, Complex Website
Development, Viewed 03 Feb 2011,
http://www.jnsinfotech.com/
Section 4 - Appendix
4.1 Designing and Implementing a Disaster Recovery system.
It’s mandatory that implementing a Disaster Recovery system/mechanism for the servers
which hold company data and assets even though currently having separated the main
server from web server and maintain a duplication of assets. The server used to keep
backups should further be configured as a Disaster Recovery Server and highly
recommended to keep the backup server geographically separated and but always connected
to the Network.
Designing Disaster Recovery System for the Developed centralized software solution
Since the centralized solution is structured on client-sever architecture there will only be a
single database and all client PCs are connected to that using MySQL on the help of TCP/IP
protocol. Since the application is developed as windows based, each and every PC would
have the executable piece of application. All client PCs store/edit/delete or perform any
kind of data transferring only to the Database server, thus continues connectivity with it is
mandatory. But the problem rose in a situation of disaster to the original database
especially. To face such a situation, disaster recovery server (improved Database backup
sever) should be kept in a geographically separated (but connected to the original database
and client PCs) and a copy of same data base used to store data of centralized software
solution should be installed in that. A mechanism should be implemented to always
synchronize data in original database to the duplicate database installed in disaster recovery
server. This could be achieved using inbuilt facilities of MySQL for synchronization. Data
source of the application in all client PCs should be the original database sever. But a piece
of functions should be written in the application to check continues connectivity with the
original database server, and to automatically redirect the database connectivity to Disaster
recovery server in the case of an unavailability of original database.