Scenario
Please read this scenario prior to answering the question
ArchiSurance has entered into a legal agreement to acquire ArchiSpecialty, a specialty insurer that has several lines of business, including insuring organizations that conduct high-stakes contests. Prior to entering into this agreement, ArchiSurance staff carefully examined the ArchiSpecialty Enterprise Architecture to develop an integration plan with four successive phases. Each phase of the plan provides a stable foundation for ArchiSurance to conduct its newly expanded business while making significant progress toward the targeted integration of ArchiSpecialty operations. The first phase of the plan, Common Ownership, will begin on the acquisition date specified in the legal agreement. The second through fourth phases will begin after their predecessors are complete.
During the Common Ownership phase, the two companies' websites will be linked to each other and their interactive voice response (IVR) system menus will be integrated. During the second phase, known as Integrated Organizations, the corresponding ArchiSurance and ArchiSpecialty departments will be combined and all financial processing will be migrated to the original ArchiSurance systems. In the third Phase, known as Integrated Customer Operations, ArchiSpecialty customer relationship management (CRM) data will be migrated to the corresponding ArchiSurance applications. In the fourth and final phase, known as Integrated Operations, the ArchiSpecialty claims data will be migrated to the corresponding ArchiSurance applications. However, the ArchiSpecialty underwriting solution for high-stakes contests will be retained due to its unique capabilities.
The underwriting solution for high-stakes contests assists underwriters in creating a policy to insure against the possibility of a contestant winning an improbable but expensive award, such as $1 million US for hitting a hole-in-one on a golf course, or a luxury world cruise for a winning spin of a roulette wheel. In return for a single premium payment, the insurer agrees to pay the award if a contestant earns it fairly. When an underwriter receives a request for an insurance quote, either from a promotions company that is planning the contest or from a company with its own promotions department, he uses the Contest Modeler application to precisely describe the planned contest and the coverage requested, and to store the contest model in a machine-readable format. Then, the underwriter uses the Contest Query application, which reads the contest model and queries a collection of audited contest results to find records of similar contests. Then, the underwriter uses the Contest Estimator application to estimate the premium for the coverage request, and also to produce a report with a recommended set of conditions to provide with the quote. After consulting the report, the underwriter uses the Quoting Tool application to prepare a quote for the customer. Then, the underwriter sends the quote to the customer via secure email. If the customer accepts the quote, the underwriter uses the Contract Generator to prepare a contract for the customer, which he also sends via secure email. In the contract, the customer agrees to employ a contest auditor who will report the audited results of the contest regardless of whether prizes are awarded. The underwriter uses the Contest Tracker application to add these reports to the collection of audited contest results. Note that all reports are delivered in a standard markup language that can be read by other software programs and either processed in the background or rendered visually.
Refer to the Scenario
The executive in charge of the ArchiSpecialty acquisition has asked you to illustrate the integration roadmap. You must show that each phase of the acquisition realizes a separate plateau. For each plateau, you must identify the deliverables described in the scenario.
Which answer provides the best illustration?
Scenario
Please read this scenario prior to answering the question
The ArchiSurance IT Operations (IT Ops) department has five core responsibilities, and continuously executes a core business process for each responsibility. (1) The Batch Ops process makes sure that batch jobs execute completely, successfully, and on time, consistent with their service level agreements (SLAs). (2) The Online Ops process makes sure that all web applications and content delivery services are available and performing according to their SLAs. (3) The Security Ops process protects ArchiSurance IT operations from being damaged by malicious or careless incidents. (4)The User Support process assists users of ArchiSurance systems with problems or requests. (5) The Continuous Improvement process monitors and measures the performance of each of the other processes and works to solve problems and optimize use of ArchiSurance resources. In order to enable monitoring, each of the other processes generates monitoring data that is read by the Continuous Improvement process.
The processes in the System Ops category, which are Batch Ops, Online Ops and Security Qds, each have a separate sub-process for incident management. These sub-processes are triggered, respectively, by Batch, Online and Security Incidents. One of the first steps in each incident management sub-process, is to pass an Incident Alert to each of the other System Ops processes. This is accomplished by posting the alert to the Alert Buffer.
The Batch Ops process uses a schedule that lists all batch jobs and their dependencies. The schedule is used by two Batch Ops sub-processes. The Batch Planning sub-process updates this schedule for use by the Execution Management sub-process.
The Batch Ops process uses a number of applications that interact with each other. The Batch Scheduler application enables users to manage a database of jobs, job schedules and dependencies, and launches batch jobs according to the database. The Batch Monitor application uses the job schedules as a reference to monitor job execution, and reports all exceptional conditions to the both the Batch Scheduler and the Incident Handler applications via the Alert Buffer described earlier in the scenario. The Incident Handlerrefers to a set of business rules to determine the systems and individuals that must be notified of each incident. Based on these determinations, the Incident Handler produces appropriate notifications.
Due to their criticality, the Batch Scheduler, Batch Monitor and Incident Handler applications are hosted redundantly in multiple geographically distributed data centers. In each data center, the three applications are hosted on a fully redundant virtual server cluster. Each cluster is connected to two site local area networks, each of which connects to a separate physical storage array.
Refer to the scenario
As part of an IT service management initiative, you have been asked to model the operations management business processes and sub-processes, including their relationships, the events that trigger them and the information they exchange.
Which answer provides the most complete and accurate model?
Scenario
Please read this scenario prior to answering the question
ArchiSurance has entered into a legal agreement to acquire ArchiSpecialty, a specialty insurer that has several lines of business, including insuring organizations that conduct high-stakes contests. Prior to entering into this agreement ArchiSurance staff carefully examined the ArchiSpecialty Enterprise Architecture to develop an integration plan with four successive phases. Each phase of the plan provides a stable foundation for ArchiSurance to conduct its newly expanded business while making significant progress toward the targeted integration of ArchiSpecialty operations. The first phase of the plan, Common Ownership, will begin on the acquisition date specified in the legal agreement. The second through fourth phases will begin after their predecessors are complete.
During the Common Ownership phase, the two companies' websites will be linked to each other and their Interactive voice response(IVR) system menus will be integrated. During the second phase, known as Integrated Organizations, the corresponding ArchiSurance and ArchiSpecialty departments will be combined and all financial processing will be migrated to the original ArchiSurance systems. In the third Phase, known as Integrated Customer Operations, ArchiSpecialty customer relationship management (CRM) data will be migrated to the corresponding ArchiSurance applications. In the fourth and final phase, known as Integrated Operations, the ArchiSpecialty claims data will be migrated to the corresponding ArchiSurance applications. However, the ArchiSpecialty underwriting solution for high-stakes contests will be retained due to its unique capabilities.
The underwriting solution for high-stakes contests assists underwriters in creating a policy to insure against the possibility of a contestant winning an improbable but expensive award, such as $1 million US for hitting a hole-in-one on a golf course, or a luxury world cruise for a winning spin of a roulette wheel. In return for a single premium payment, the insurer agrees to pay the award if a contestant earns it fairly. When an underwriter receives a request for an insurance quote, either from a promotions company that isplanning the contest or from a company with its own promotions department, he uses the Contest Modeler application to precisely describe the planned contest and the coverage requested, and to store the contest model in a machine-readable format. Then, the underwriter uses the Contest Query application, which reads the contest model and queries a collection of audited contest results to find records of similar contests. Then, the underwriter uses the Contest Estimator application to estimate the premium for the coverage request, and also to produce a report with a recommended set of conditions to provide with the quote. After consulting the report, the underwriter uses the Quoting Tool application to prepare a quote for the customer. Then, the underwriter sends the quote to the customer via secure email. If the customer accepts the quote, the underwriter uses the Contract Generator to prepare t contract for the customer, which he also sends via secure email. In the contract, the customer agrees to employ a contest auditorwho will report the audited results of the contest regardless of whether prizes are awarded. The underwriter uses the Contest Tracker application to add these reports to the collection of audited contest results. Note that all reports are delivered in a standard markup language that can be read by other software programs and either processed in the background or rendered visually.
Refer to the Scenario
The ArchiSurance chief information officer has asked you to explain the unique suite of applications that ArchiSpecialty uses to underwrite high-stakes contest insurance. You must model these applications, the services they provide and the data they access.
Which answer provides the best explanation?
Scenario
Please read this scenario prior to answering the question
Independent insurance brokers that work with ArchiSurance have complained of difficulty in communicating with salespeople and other personnel at ArchiSurance. They have said that email is too clumsy and slow for working on urgent deals, people do not always answer their mobile phones, and it is difficult to tell whether an individual is available. They have also complained that it is too time-consuming for them to manage their commission payments using an older web application that requires them to print out and mail forms for making some routine changes, and also does not work on many mobile devices. Some brokers have said that it is easier to do business with ArchiSurancecompetitors that provide easy-to-use mobile applications for both general communication and commission management. In fact, the ArchiSurance Vice President of Sales and Chief Marketing Officer have both expressed concern about reports from the ArchiSurance market research department that the company is gradually losing market share with some of the same brokers that have been complaining. These executives are also concerned that ArchiSurance may not meet the targets for revenue growth.
Upon hearing about these issues, the ArchiSurance Chief Information Officer (CIO) hired a consultant to design a new mobile infrastructure for broker interaction. This infrastructure is required to enable easier communication with ArchiSurance brokers in order to help the company increase its market share with each of them and consequently attain its targets for revenue growth. In order to ensure that the new infrastructure would meet these goals, the CIO told the consultant that the new infrastructure must make it easy for ArchiSurance to develop and deploy applications and content for its brokers. It must provide federated authentication and an encrypted communication channel as well as instant messaging and presence services.
The new mobile broker interaction infrastructure architecture includes a number of system software components. A secure reverse proxy authenticates users and provides an encrypted channel to communicate with them. The proxy uses a service provided by directory server software to authenticate users. The directory server communicates with the ArchiSurance federation server, which in turn communicates with peer federation servers hosted by trusted brokerage organizations. Once the user is authenticated, the ArchiSurance broker portal uses the ArchiSurance web content management system to assemble authorized and relevant content for each broker. In order to provide presence services, a unified communications (UC) server exchanges information with the directory server and an instant messaging server.
All of these components are hosted on a single physical hardware platform hosting a virtualized server infrastructure. The server infrastructure is connected to a converged local area network (LAN), which is also connected to a commercial wide area network (WAN) over which ArchiSurance communicates with its brokers.
Refer to the Scenario
The head of IT infrastructure engineering has asked you to model the ArchiSurance infrastructure for broker interaction. You must show the system software, network and server components and the flows between them. You must also show the services that the system software components provide. It is not necessary to model the wide area network (WAN) or the components hosted by ArchiSurance brokers.
Which answer provides the most complete and accurate model?