Huffman Trucking Operating Systems

Running head: Huffman Trucking Operating Systems

Huffman Trucking Operating Systems

University of Phoenix

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Huffman Trucking Operating Systems

Huffman Trucking is a national trucking firm with offices in California, Missouri, New Jersey and Ohio. Most of the systems at all the offices are Windows based, utilizing Windows NT, Windows XP, Windows 2000 servers, Microsoft Exchange and IIS. The Missouri office utilizes a mixed windows and Macintosh environment. The mixed environment also uses a Lotus Notes rather than Microsoft exchange for email. The New Jersey office uses a thin client environment. Bar code scanners are available in the plants in California and Ohio. (University of Phoenix, 2005)

A mixed environment like that utilized by Huffman Trucking usually evolves over time. The evolution takes place as a company expands and adds needed systems due to increased demand for products or new business requirements. The overall topology is created due to necessity by not necessarily according to any plan. The results of a mixed environment are that standardization across the organization in not achieved. This can be costly since each environment requires maintenance, training, and expansion. Any new programs must be tested across all the environments. Sometimes data must be "translated" in order to be viewed by a different system in another office.

The bar code scanners are needed to scan outgoing and incoming merchandise. This system in critical to the company in keeping track of what is trucked by each client. A shared database that can be used across the different offices would be more efficient. The New Jersey office using a thin client could easily convert