IT Challenge Round 2

Case Study Requirements and Instructions

Instructions
In Round 2 you are required to read a case study and then write a recommendation proposal document
that describes the Microsoft technologies the organization should implement to meet the requirements of
the case study. You are effectively acting as a consultant helping the organizations Information
Technology (IT) Director pick the right technologies to implement. Address your proposal to the IT
Director of the organization in clear language that explains your recommendations. Your proposal should
also provide guidance for how the organization could implement the technologies on a virtualized
environment with the fewest number of virtual guest images as possible.
Instructions for Submission
When you have completed your recommendation proposal and are ready to submit your materials to the
Imagine Cup Judges:
1. Go to http://imaginecup.com/Competition/mycompetitionportal.aspx?competitionId=41 to upload
the entry.
2. Submit your Round 2 entry materials in a Word document (.doc or .docx extension), PDF, or a Zip
file (.zip extension) in the Entry Panel on the top-right of the page. The Web site will only accept
one (1) file for your Round 2 entry. If you need to submit more than one file, then zip the files
together and submit the zip file. The maximum size of the submission is 10 MB.
3. Click Submit Entry to get to the Update Entry page, where youll either be able to upload a new
entry or modify an existing one.
If you need to change your entry before the deadline, you can submit a new entry file which will replace
the existing file. Again, only one (1) file will be accepted. The entry that appears on the My Entry page is
the Proposal Document the judges will have access to. If you overwrite that file with a new file, the old file
will not be available to the judges. If your proposal contains more than one file please archive all files
using Zip feature from Windows.
Requirements for Proposal Document
The deliverable for the proposal document should include four major sections:
Introduction Section - This should be 1 to 3 paragraphs long and describe at a high level the
general approach you are recommending in utilizing Microsoft technologies to meet the needs of
the organization.
Product Recommendation Section - This section should outline each of the Microsoft
technologies (i.e.: Exchange 2010, SharePoint Server 2007, Hyper-V virtualization, etc) that you
would recommend the organization use to meet their needs. In addition to stating the name of the
Microsoft technology you recommend, describe specific features the organization should use (i.e.:
"Outlook Web Access, "SharePoint Document Libraries, "SQL Reporting Services, etc) and "why
those features will meet their needs. You may choose to break this section into two separate parts:
one part addressing the home office, and the other part addressing the remote site environment
Configuration Recommendation Section - In this section you should describe which server
products and features would be installed on EACH physical virtual host server and EACH virtual
guest session. Your recommendation should state (at a minimum) which version of Windows should
be the base operating system (i.e.: Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise 64-bit Edition, Windows 2008 R2
Web Edition 32-bit, etc). Take into account the organization only has 2 physical host servers
available and wants to have the fewest number of virtual guest sessions possible, but placing ALL
of the Microsoft technologies on a single guest image will likely cause a problem with application
conflicts between the various products, so a balance between fewest number of guest sessions that
will work. You may choose to break this section into two separate parts: one part addressing the
home office, and the other part addressing the remote site environment
Architectural Diagram - Include in your proposal document or as a separate attachment a
diagram that shows a graphical representation of your recommended design that properly labels
the physical and virtual servers you are recommending, the LAN and WAN connectivity between
the servers, and which Microsoft technologies are installed on each virtual guest session. Note:
Written annotations, tables, or other "words on the architectural diagram will NOT count against
the 5,000 word limit, however any written text on the architectural diagram should be descriptive
and provide clarity to the diagram and not be a lengthy extension of the written case study
document.
Additional requirements are:
Your submission must be 5,000 words or LESS! Proposals longer than 5,000 words will be
disqualified.
Your submission must be in English. However there will be no points added or deducted for spelling
or grammar. This is not a test of your command of the English language, but rather an assessment
whether you understand the case study, and can provide a recommendation that makes sense to
the judges.
Your submission MUST be received no later than 11:59 PM GMT on April 5, 2010
Round 2 Judging Criteria and Scoring
The Round 2 submission will be scored as follows:
Meets the proposal requirements: 30%
Clarity of the recommendations in the proposal: 30%
Technical feasibility and accuracy of the proposal: 30%
Quality and neatness of the proposal: 10%
Questions or Clarifications
If you have a question or need a clarification of the materials in the Proposal Document, post your
questions on the Imagine Cup IT Challenge Forum. All questions will be answered in the forum so that all
Round 2 competitors will have the benefit of the same information, answers, and points of clarification.
Common Points of Clarification
The following information will help you better understand the rules and expectations of the judges:
Plagiarism will not be tolerated. Do not cut and paste information off of a Web site, copyrighted
document, or previously published document unless you were the author of the content. Materials
submitted that are the works of others in part or in whole will cause the competitor to be
immediately disqualified.
This competition is an individual competition. Each competitor must work alone. Any collaboration
with others, sharing of information with others, or accepting help from others will be grounds for
immediate disqualification. The intent of this competition is to know what you know, not what
somebody else knows and provides to you for your submission
You may use any reference resources (the Internet, books, Microsoft TechNet, whitepapers, blogs)
to look up information, and you can setup a lab and actually build a network to test your
understanding and assumptions as part of your research. However you should not post
information, ask questions, blog information, or request information that would specifically invoke a
response to your questions about this case study. You can effectively read information, but you
would not write information that will invoke a direct response to a question. Violation of this
research resource point will cause immediate disqualification from the competition
Do NOT post this case study or any portion of this case study (or even something similar to the
case study). This case study should remain in your sole possession for the sole purpose of your
reading and responding to the materials of the case study.
When in doubt, post your questions on the Imagine Cup IT Challenge forum.
Imagine Cup 2010 IT Challenge
Round 2 Case Study
Background
Trey Research (treyresearch.com) is a non-profit research organization working on the United Nations
Millennium Development Goals. The Millennium Development Goals were agreed upon by 189 nations
around the world more than eight years ago. They encompass universally accepted human rights such as
freedom from hunger, the right to basic education, the right to health, and a responsibility to future
generations. The goals are:
Eradicate extreme hunger and poverty
Achieve universal primary education
Promote gender equality and empower women
Reduce child mortality
Improve maternal health
Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Ensure environmental sustainability
Develop a global partnership for development
Trey Research customers are governments and companies that are evaluating the results of development
initiatives. The company is gathering data on how countries are progressing towards meeting the goals
using a large number of metrics. Trey Research will provide its customers with real-time data on the
impacts of technologies and policies on the progress towards meeting the goals. This will allow its
customers to make informed decisions and know that the decisions have a real and direct impact on the
progress of the countries.
All participating governments, companies, and individuals have confidential email accounts that allow the
users to receive status messages, reports on their progress data, and to upload information. There is also
a web site that allows participants to sign up for alerts to receive on their individual metrics. The data will
also be made available to universities and research institutions.
Trey Research will also offer a wide array of learning materials that will be available via the internet.
These include streaming videos on environmental topics, web sites, and portal to allow researchers to
search through the vast library of materials. The company will also conduct frequent web conferences to
discuss research results and findings both internally and with customers.
Scenario
The CIO has hired you as a consultant to develop a proposal for the IT infrastructure at Trey Research.
The CEO of Trey Research wants to leverage Microsoft technologies and has mandated that the solution be
based on the latest Microsoft products. The company is just opening and has no existing IT infrastructure,
so everything will need to be specified. You will be giving the proposed architecture to the CIO for
approval.
Trey Research will be working with 100 countries initially, with a central office in Warsaw, Poland. The
company will have offices in the capital city of each country. Due to in-country concerns about comingling
of data, Trey Research will have a completely independent office and infrastructure in each of the target
countries. The Trey Research CTO wants to leverage virtualization technologies at each office. For
simplicity, each office will have a single large server. This server is to provide all services for the
independent office. The architecture of the virtual platform and the virtual machines needs to be
developed in the proposal. As the consultant, you need to recommend the appropriate server size
(processors, drive subsystem, memory, network, and backup) needed to host the virtual architecture.
The researchers will travel throughout the country and gather data. Each researcher will have a laptop and
a mobile device. They will need to connect to the office and upload their data over the Internet. They will
also need access to email while in the field, both by synchronizing their devices and over the web from
Internet cafes. The laptops need to be tightly controlled and locked down, as well as managed remotely.
The staff needs to have fully integrated telephony that ensures that their phone calls and voicemails are
seamlessly routed to their laptops. Each faculty member will also be assigned a Windows Mobile PDA to
ensure that they are available via email and IM at all times.
Given the travel requirements and the distance between offices, the Trey Research wants to leverage
conferencing and collaboration technologies as much as possible. The company plans to hold frequent
internal web conferences and have teams communicate with team portals. The proposal should include the
infrastructure to deliver these services.
Database and analysis services will be critical to the success of Trey Research. Each customer will have
their own portal site from which to access key data and analysis tailored to their specific requirements.
The portal will include data views and content based on their profile, as well as allow collaboration with
Trey Research staff.
Database and analysis services will be critical to the success of Trey Research. Database fault tolerance
and backup is critical, as the data needs to be available 24x7 due to the global nature of Trey Research
customers. The appropriate storage and architecture for the database will be an important part of the
proposal. Each customer will have their own portal site from which to access key data and analysis
tailored to their specific requirements. The portal will include data views and content based on their
profile, as well as allow collaboration with Trey Research staff.
Security is critical for Trey Research, as it expects to be the target of many hackers. The infrastructure
needs to be very secure, be up to date on patches, and deployed with security best practices. Antivirus,
antispam, and antimalware are critical services that the infrastructure must provide to ensure that
operations are smooth. The infrastructure should use application level firewalls to ensure that application
traffic is controlled. The security officer is concerned that staff laptops could be stolen and the data
compromised, so all staff laptops must have the confidentiality protected and must use twofactor
authentication.
The IT department for the company will maintain the infrastructures at each office remotely from the
Warsaw, Poland office. To manage the infrastructures in the various offices, the IT staff will need systems
management to provide automated deployment, inventory, and patch management. The IT staff will also
need operations management to provide proactive monitoring and alerting of any potential problems.
Proposal Requirements
The proposal will present the solution developed by the contestant, detail the technical specifications of
the solution, and explain how the solution meets the requirements of the case study scenario.
All services need to be specified as part of the solution architecture. There are no existing services,
components, hardware, or software other than the network services (LAN, WAN and Internet). The new
services include:
Application Services
Backup Services
Conferencing Services
Database and Analysis Services
Desktop Services
Directory Services
File Services
Infrastructure Services
Messaging Services
Mobility Services
Perimeter Services
Portal Services
Print Services
Security Services
Systems and Operations Management Services
Virtualization Services
Video Streaming Services
The proposal must include an architectural design of what products and servers should be installed and
how they should be configured at a high level. The proposal must include a justification of how the
products and technologies meet the requirements. And the proposal should also include a diagram of the
proposed architecture and a list of all the products in the design.
Deliverables
The deliverables for the proposal include:
1. Proposal Document (5,000 words or less)
2. Architectural Diagram(s) of the Solution
3. List of Microsoft Software in the Solution