Reference no: EM132229086

Scenario

Acme Health, Inc. is a mid-sized regional health insurance company that currently offers group and individual policies in five states in the Northeast area of the United States. Acme's customers are small to medium sized businesses purchasing coverage for employees, and self-employed individuals buying coverage for themselves. Acme's senior management team is planning to expand aggressively into additional states in the next six months. Members of Acme's senior management team have recently read some articles in general business publications about new IT technologies: distributed databases, Internet-connected databases, and cloud computing. The management team has asked IT to provide a recommendation as to which, if any, of these technologies Acme Health should adopt to assist with the expansion plan. Senior IT staff members are meeting with an outside consultant to develop a set of recommendations.

Your Role
You joined Acme two months ago and are currently going through the company's management training program, which involves rotating through a series of short-term assignments in various departments to get an overview of all parts of the organization. You are currently working in the IT department as an assistant to the IT Director. Because you did a good job in helping with planning of the new BI system last month, the Director has asked you to assist in developing the technology recommendations.

Key Players

Rebecca Dalton-IT Project Manager
All right, here we are again with another rush project from the suits in the corner offices. As if we didn't have enough to do already! It sounds like they read some buzzword-heavy article in one of those in-flight magazines, and now they want to know if we're missing out on any hot new technologies that could help with their expansion plans. Specifically, they asked about distributed databases, Internet-connected databases, and cloud computing. How do we handle this?

Gavin Jones-Data Architect
Actually, distributed databases have been around for awhile, and most companies now have their website tied into a database. There might be something to this. We are going to be opening up several new offices during the expansion, and it may not make sense to keep all the data stored here at headquarters. And I'm sure our website could use a makeover, although I'm not exactly clear on how a database might fit in with that. Hmmm . . . have to think about that one.

Sharon Bolt-Consultant
The one that I'm excited about is cloud computing. You know that your transaction volume on the claims processing system goes up and down throughout the month, and there are times when your capacity is really strained. That will only get worse with the expansion. It would be great if you could just contract with Amazon or SAP or somebody to give you just as much computing power as we need, when we need it. Wait a minute, though . . . you are handling sensitive health care data, and there are some federal privacy regulations about that. Is cloud computing secure enough to deal with that kind of data?

Sam Thurston-IT Director
Well, it actually sounds like there may be something we can use in this bag of buzzwords after all, if we sort through all the marketing hype. But we do have to be careful and not make any big mistakes with our data. I think our favorite management trainee could help us out again here. Why don't you research this stuff and draft a recommendation memo for the group about which of these technologies, if any, Acme could use to help out with the expansion plan. We'll meet again in a week to review what you've found.

You Decide Assignment or Activity

Using the textbook and other resources you can find in the DeVry library and on the Web, learn about distributed databases, Internet-connected databases, and cloud computing. Then, write a memo to the executive committee of Acme Health Inc. that does the following.

1. Describes the major benefits and risks of each of these technologies for Acme

2. Recommends whether or not Acme should adopt each of these technologies to assist with its expansion plans

3. Justifies your recommendations

Your memo should be 2-3 pages, double spaced, in 12-point font, professionally written, and formatted. Use at least two sources: the textbook and one other source. Your information sources, including the textbook, should be cited using APA format. Be sure to relate the general information you find about distributed databases, Internet-connected databases, and cloud computing to the specifics of Acme's expansion plans as described in this You Decide activity.