Budget Travel provides business travel arrangements through 12 metropolitan offi

Question

Budget Travel provides business travel arrangements through 12 metropolitan offices. A key selling point is the firm’s client management database, which includes preferences such as airline seating choices, favorite rental cars, and hotel options. Budget Travel purchased the client management software as an offthe­ shelf vendor package and modified the program to meet the company’s needs. The package has been operational for one year and has performed well. Budget Travel now wants to expand its operation by adding six more locations. Management has asked you to help the company plan what will be needed in IT support for the business expansion.

Tasks 1. What capacity planning issues should the company consider?

2. What performance and workload measurement issues should the company consider at this time?

3. Should the company establish a system baseline before the integration of the six new sites? Explain your answer.

4. As an IT consultant, you should learn as much as you can about the client’s business, including the impact of the Internet on the travel agency business. Research this issue online, and decide what strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats exist for Budget Travel.

Explanation / Answer

ANSWER 1 : Capacity planning issues should the company consider Using the performance and workload measurement data as input, such as

1. What will be the systems present workload & performance specifications?
2. Does the organization have an exact estimate of future business activities? In particular, what are the request projections and user requirements for the following one to the three-year time period?
3. What impact will the new movement i.e. activity level have on system performance ?
4. Will the system have the capacity to maintain the satisfactory performance and meet requirements If not, what options ought to be considered ?

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Answer 2 :The company ought to measure reaction/response time, turnaround time , throughput, and bandwidth . Reaction estimation will decide the general time between a request i.e. demand for system activity and the delivery of the reaction to the client. Bandwidth will depict the measure of data that the system can deal within a fixed period of time i.e.day and age and throughput will express a data exchange rate that measures real system performance. Unless Economy Travel has concentrated batch handling operations, it won't be important to measure turnaround time.

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Answer 3: A baseline is a formal reference point that measures system characteristics at a particular time. Budget Travel use a product baseline as a yardstick to explain the client management system prior to implementing the expansion plan. It will be important to decide whether adding the additional locations has an adverse impact on system performance. However, the firm should try to simulate the increased system activity and load it's in a test environment, but it might impossible to duplicate actual online conditions. To reduce the risk, Budget Travel might want to bring the new locations on one at a time, as opposed to at the same time.

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Answer 4: To get students started, you might ask them to sample some airline and
third-party for example, www.travelocity.com ,Web-based marketing and choose whether this trend will have a negative affect on the traditional personal travel agent business. Many spectators feel that travel agents should add value in order to
esteem their share of the business. This could take the form of personal attention, detailed
planning for business and individual travel, and access to special rates or travel opportunities that would not be apparent to the casual bargain hunter. Students also should recognize that travel agents will have to undertake the accompanying Internet-related challenges in order to be
competitive:
* Build and maintain a simple but effective attractive Web page.
* Determine why some of the customers prefer to use the Internet and why not use it to arrange travel.
* Identify value-added features that travel agents are in the best position to offer in the industry to the customer.

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