Services provided by Datacom Group Limited

The Datacom Group Limited is an information technology organization that provides IS services to its customers and staffs which includes the database, webpage and email services. Currently this organization provides various types of services to its customers which includes consulting and management services, ITO services, cloud services, data centre services, payroll services and software development services. This organization was firstly started in New Zealand but later it was expanded to Australia, Vietnam, Malaysia and in many other countries also. Various department of the Datacom uses the information technologies in some different way. Considering the data centre services, here the information technology is used as composed networked computer and storage (Putnam et al. 2014). The Datacom group also uses the information technology for the security purposes. In this security related department information technology is used for implementing measures and for designing the system that will safeguard important information regarding the organization. Also, in the cloud service department the information technology is used for transferring the data from one location to another location.

In this report various types of data that has been used by the organization will be discussed briefly. The Datacom Group executes various type of activities day by day and for that it requires many network devices. This network devices will be identified and discussed in this case. Also, seven layers of the OSI model will be explained in this report regarding opening the website of the organization.

Mainly in the organizations like Datacom Group digital data are used and exchanged.  Thus the main data which is used by Datacom Group are in the digital forms and these types of data are the multimedia data including graphics, audio, images and videos. Also, there are other organization specific data are available within the organization that are used by the exclusive software which runs within the organization. Apart from that, some uncommon data which is used by the organization is the encrypted type of file including zip and rar files. 

All the data stored within the organization can be accessed by the staff members of it. In this organization all the data stored in a centralised type of database and this data can be accessed by the staffs of the organizations using their individual computer system. For accessing the data from the central server all the computers are connected to the central server through different type of access network including Ethernet, FTTH, DSL and Wireless LANs (Sikdar 2013). This access networks connects end system with the immediate routers.

Usage of Information Technology in each department

2.2 IT infrastructure solutions for storing and accessing data:

There are various types of IT infrastructure are available for storing and accessing the data at the database using the concept of networking. The main two IT infrastructure for storing and accessing the data are the remote server IT infrastructure and the cloud computing IT infrastructure. The remote server IT infrastructure is also known as the traditional type of IT infrastructure (Masa’deh 2013).

In the remote server infrastructure model there are various types of hardware, software and network equipment are used and all of this equipment are connected through the remote server (Beverly and Berger 2015). This type of remote servers are mainly located in the office premises which provides data access to all the employees of the organization regarding business data and applications. Employees and the staffs are also able to store data within this server by having proper access to the server.

Cloud computing IT infrastructure for accessing and storing data are quite different compared with the remote server infrastructure. Cloud computer infrastructure are far more abstract as a hosting solution. In this infrastructure it is not accessible via some physical hardware, instead of it all the servers, networks and the data are hosted within the cloud environment (Sahu, Pateriya and Gupta 2013). In this case just by normally using internet connection data can be stored and accessed from the cloud environment, but proper user credentials are required for accessing some individual data until those data are available for public. The cloud IT infrastructure can minimise the maintenance of traditional type of database servers which is having a huge cost.

Currently the Data Group requires a wide range of network devices for performing its day by day activities. These network devices are the workstations, network interface cards, servers, hubs, switches, bridges and router. 

3.1 Functions of the Identified devices:

• Workstations: The workstations are used in the client-server network architecture and basically considered as the client computers (Karakolis and Callaghan 2014). By using this devices e-mails can be send or can be received and other day to day tasks can be performed which includes database recording, word processing, creating PowerPoint Presentation, spreadsheet creation and for accessing resources from the main server of the organization.
• Network Interface Cards:The network interface card is an essential component for networking as it connects a workstation or a server directly to a network for communication purposes (Flajslik and Rosenblum 2013).
• Servers:Servers is one of the most essential part in a completed network connection. Servers can be also considered as computers in the network which basically hosts various of data and application for the network users so that they can access it whenever they want (Perez-Botero, Szefer and Lee 2013). The size of the servers can vary depending upon its capacity. This type of computers are different from workstations as this uses server OS which are more robust compared to the workstation OS.
• Hubs:In a networking environment the hubs holds a real importance as it acts as a central connecting device within the network. The hubs crates the star configuration and can connect many machines together simultaneously and here the hub remains at the centre. Hubs can broadcast all the data packets that are received in the network.
• Switches: Switches are also important network component devices. Switches are quite similar with the hubs but instead of network the switches connects two networking devices together (Drutskoy, Keller and Rexford 2013). Currently the modern network environment are dominated by the switches which operates in the data link layer of the OSI model.
• Bridges:Bridges are also important among the network devices. Like the switches, the bridges also operates in the data link layer of the OSI model. The bridges are mainly used for checking an incoming traffic within the network. After examining the data bridges decides whether to pass this traffic or to discard this traffic to the internal network.
• Router:Router in the networking environment are responsible for connecting two or more computer network together and exchange data packets among them. Each of this data packets holds some specific type of address information which a router can use to determine the source and the destination of the data packets (Takahashi, Tashiro and Hikihara 2015). Routers are designed to work in the network layer of the OSI model. Mainly it has two or more network interfaces by which network traffics can be blocked or forwarded. Also, the routers are very much important for blocking the spoofed data packets.

For All the departments in the organisation the main application software which are required for data communication between servers and clients are the web browsers, database software and instant messaging software.

4.1 Justification of the answer:

In a client server architecture for the data communication first of all it is very much important to access the data (Oluwatosin 2014). In this case for accessing the data a secure communication channel need to be built between server and client. This secure communication channel can be achieved by using a secure web browser. Thus web browsers are essential in the process of data communication among client and server all the department of organisation. Also the data can be downloaded or new data can be uploaded to the main server using the web browser which are very much essential for data communication purposes.

Types of data used by the organization and its access

After the web browsers, database management software are also important for the data communication purposes (DeBrabant et al. 2013). In the client server architecture many times is it is important to update the database manually as per the request of clients or there can be some internal requirement for updating the database. For this type of manual changes Database Management software are crucial.

Instant messaging software are also very much important for a proper data communication in the client server architecture. In many cases client may want to pass an information directly to the server and in this type of situation instant messaging software applications become very much useful (Hong, Lee and Suh 2013). Information can be passed easily using these messaging software and this is one of the most important part of data communication in every department of the organisation. 

When an employee tries to open the homepage of organisation data movements are done in seven layers of OSI model. These 7 layers are the application layer, presentation layer, session layer, transport layer, network layer, data link layer and physical layer (Bora et al. 2014). In the scenario of web page opening a web browser is used for accessing the homepage. Here the web browser is an application and it works in the application layer of OSI model. The requested data by the web browser is process in the presentation layer by converting the files stored in the web server in some understandable format. The next layer is the session layer and this layer is used for establishing a TCP connection with the web server. This TCP connection is created when a web browser requests some data from the web server which can be the homepage of the organisation (Bonaventure and Seo 2016). After the webpage is delivered to the web browser the TCP connection is closed and the use of session layer ends here. Data goes through transport layer when the TCP connection is established among the web server and web browser. 

The TCP connection parts the homepage of the organisation in manageable chunks so that it can be reassembled later. Unique addresses are required for connecting to every web server from different web browsers and for that internet protocols are used which is the network layer protocol (Deering and Hinden 2017). When the request is made by the web browser for the access of homepage it must be sent to the network card. Network card convert this into a message and send this through a default gateway. This requests are made in the data link layer of the OSI model. Lastly in the physical layer big streams are transmitted as one and zero and bit synchronisation ensured by physical layer. The bit synchronisation is used for ensuring end user data is assembled in a correct order and sent to the destination.

IT Infrastructures for storing and accessing data

 

(Figure 1: Data flow through OSI model)

6. Conclusion:

From the above discussion it can be concluded that information technology and the information system is very much important for many organisation to perform their daily operations. In this paper Datacom Group Corporation has been selected for evaluating the role of information system in IT related organisations. In this report first of all the services used by this organisation is elaborated briefly and how every department of the organisation is using the information technology discussed properly. This selected organisation uses various types of data in their daily activities. Thus how this data can be accessed by the staff members of the organisation is illustrated in this report. Also, two very important IT infrastructure solution is discussed here which is used for storing and accessing data at the database through networking environment. As this organisation is currently using a large IT infrastructure solution important network devices are required to run this infrastructure. Thus different types of network devices has been identified in this case function of each devices is explained. Data communication between the server and client is also an important concept of this organisation. Thus the application software which are required for the data communication has been discussed. Lastly, the seven layers of OSI model has been used in this case for explaining the data movement when an employee tries to open the homepage of the organisation website. 

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