Scenario

 

To clarify the presentation of our approach and for demonstrating the potential complexity and investments of today's services a scenario is developed (see figure ). The scenario originates from experiences in several projects with industrial partners. It shows the complexity and high investments a custom-designed IT service can require today.

[Scenario]Scenario   [r][width=10cm]bilder/scenario

A company selling its high priced customizable products over an international network of dealers wants to connect those with its own central IT infrastructure. This permits the dealers to customize and order the products online. Additionally, multimedia information material is available online for product presentation. Furthermore, up to date information on the stocking, production date, date of delivery, etc., is available for sales conversation of the dealers with their customers. Each product is individually traceable during the production and delivery processes. Similar facilities are available for after-sales contacts. The applications supporting this functionality are hosted by the company itself.

The company has a SLA with a service provider for the functionality and necessary management described next. The dealers can also use as additional features Internet connectivity with special support for email, world wide web and file transfer. These services can be used for the communication of dealers with each other, too.

All communication between dealers and the company is encrypted for security reasons. A firewall secures the Internet gateway. The infrastructure is IP based which requires the operation of all supporting services like management of domain names and IP addresses including the necessary infrastructure. The dealer's connectivity to the provider's backbone is realized by leased lines or ISDN switched lines using components at dealers locations owned by the service provider. Finally the usually quite unexperienced IT users at the dealer location need a help desk supporting them for day to day connectivity problems. The service provider insists on a long-term SLA of several years because the provider wants to amortize the investments in design, hardware, software and staff.