Project Plan

Many companies and organizations rely heavily on information systems to run their business processes, forecast trends in their business industry and to remain competitive among a sea of similar businesses. The only problem with that is that sometimes companies grow and expand a lot quicker than upper management and IT staff can plan for, acquire, and develop the proper business systems that will satisfy all of their needs. Consequently, many companies face the ongoing struggle of constantly trying to bridge the gap between the business that they generate and the business systems that they use effectively to manage business. This paper will discuss the current business systems that Riordan Manufacturing, Inc. has in place and upgrades that they can possibly make.

Riordan Manufacturing is an organization that has three companies that branch of from the main plant, which is located in San Jose. These companies are located in Georgia, Michigan, and California, plus a joint venture, which is located in the people's republic of China (Apollo Group, 2012). Each of these companies has their own operating systems for finance and accounting and they provide information that is consolidated at the corporate office in San Jose, (Apollo Group, 2012). Within these three companies, there are different systems. The company in Michigan is a vendor developed software and the attendant source code for their FD and A process application (Apollo Group, 2012) this vendor is now no longer in business. The system runs on a pair of DEC Alpha's, which is using the VMS operating system, VAX4000 work station and programmed in C (Apollo Group, 2012).

The Georgia Company has vendor-developed software installed, which is different from Michigan's (Apollo Group, 2012). The system that is installed in the Michigan company is a pair of AS400's, which is using UNIX operating system as workstations and programmed in RPG400 (Apollo Group, 2012). The San Jose Company has fully integrated Windows based ERP manufacturing and financial management software installed, but the license does not include application source code (Apollo Group, 2012). The problem with these systems is, that the F & A department is unable to provide to corporate data files, some of the data is provided to the main office through hard copy reports which then needs to be reentered, some information is provided through data files and must be converted to the proper account codes (Apollo Group, 2012).

Through direct means of server capability and secure remote access, all entities of Riordan Manufacturing can and should produce complete system backups of all records through data file image to be kept at subsequent locations to include the host entity to prevent/avert data lost in unforeseen events. This will also assist in acquiring lost or deleted file at one location by simply accessing it at another. Security measure to consider during file transfer/storage should