1. The Problem
You have been selected to provide Information Technology consulting services to a
newly formed fictitious company.
Your team is to select one the following:

A semi-custom designer jewelry company
This medium-sized company was formed by combining several smaller companies
within the same industry into a single entity. Each of the smaller companies had their
own IT system, and some were not so good, usually because the systems were
cobbled together from different sources over the years. The new organization intends
to avoid that undesirable outcome.
This organization intends to bring all of the disparate systems together into one
comprehensive system. The plan is for another team to implement an ERP
system such as SAP or PeopleSoft as the core application for managerial
control. That part of the transition will be outsourced to another team and is
NOT part of your group's charter.
Your mission is to develop an overall systems architecture plan from top to bottom for
the new organization. This will involve several different platforms from the data center
to the smartphone level including some levels in between. You may or may not be
concerned with the specific source or brand name for a platform or subsystem as
your team sees fit.
The team needs to consider all the possible roles that need to be supported in this
organization that includes light manufacturing, procurement, sales, distribution, and
customer support. A good portion of the sales staff will operate from mobile platforms
while traveling to customer sites. The primary business channel is wholesale to other
businesses but the organization intends to provide some in-house retail operations
through brick & mortar facilities as well as online operations.
The overall assignment is to develop a comprehensive plan for the systems
architecture for this fictitious organization in a form that would be appropriate as a
PowerPoint slideshow for management. You may consider this as the means of
presenting your conceptual plan.
Include NOTE section