Britt’s AC Web-centered Intranet Linda S. Cook 9/10/01 Barry University, Merritt Island, FL Program: MSIT Instructor: Dr. Pamela Luckett IT699 Integrated Graduate Capstone Project

Britt’s Air Conditioning and Fire Sprinklers Small to mid-sized air conditioning contracting company. Five identifiable departments. –Office/Human Resources, Project Management, Commercial/Industrial Service and Installation, Residential Service and Installation, Fire Sprinkler Design, Installation and Service, and Sheet Metal Shop.

Network 14 connections into the 16 port, 10 base T hub. Five are printers One fax and one modem connection from the Unix server. nine connections are workstations or laptops.

Mission Create a front-end Intranet/Web site using Internet technology. –Provide information concerning human resources, job postings, forms, service descriptions, and contact information. –Provide a demonstration of capabilities. –Provide a starting point.

Business Case Most common platform for corporate internal management. Access is private and restricted. Combat the waste of time, effort and materials. Inexpensive implementation, ease of use, savings of time and money, current information faster, open standards, flexibility, scalability, cross platform integration, and user control of data.

Improved decision making, empowered employees, sharing and collaboration, facilitation of organizational learning, less bureaucracy, improved quality of work life and improved productivity. Intranets can be extended connecting multiple intranets to create an extranet.

Intranet Guidelines Business case. Who can publish? What types of content? Will content be reviewed? How will content be produced? Structure, legal issues, ownership. Security concerns.

Will content be open to outside? Testing and loading? What technologies are allowed? Types of content and publishing tools? Licensing concerns. Will multimedia be used? Bandwidth impact. Network and server impact monitoring. Backups of intranet data. Standards and guidelines. How will you measure the success?

Infrastructure Which browser to use? Necessary components: –Web server, browser, Web publishing tools, backend databases, TCP/IP networks and firewalls. –Three Web servers predominate: Apache server, Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (IIS), and Netscape’s Enterprise Server.

Security Data must be secure. Companies are afraid to open their networks and servers to the outside world. Password protection is susceptible to compromise. Firewalls make sure intruder access is restricted. –Isolates a private network from a public network. –Most companies rely on commercial firewall systems.

ROI Internet has transformed the way construction professionals interact. IT raises productivity in general administration, design and project management. Increased quality of documents, an increase in the speed of work, better financial control, better communications, and simpler, faster access to common data. Paperless bidding

Project management. –Intranet is a repository for corporate activity and knowledge. –Hub of information development, exchange, and manipulation. –Enables controlled manipulation of project information irrespective of time and place. –Enables new forms of business interaction and organization.

Tangible benefits –Reduction of: Paper Printer cartridges Pre-printed forms Envelopes Postage fees Storage space

Project Overview Survey says… –Department managers are the major users. ConstructionPlus by Citron Associates –Management system –Needs custom API to access. DSL router has firewall capability.

Conclusions and Recommendations Each department have one person responsible for the maintenance and backup of the department’s page. A Web-administrator should be chosen to control content and technology of the Intranet. The easy solution is to purchase an Intranet suite.

Microsoft’s SharePoint Team Services. SharePoint Team Services and FrontPage 2002 are included in Microsoft Office XP Professional Special Edition ($479). SharePoint Team Services is included with FrontPage 2002, ($159.95). Compaq Proliant ML350 server with Windows 2000 server pre-installed for $2199. Basic accessories: Compaq Computer 19” S910 Monitor ($349.95), Compaq keyboard ($49.95), Microsoft Mouse ($13.95, PC Connections).