Computer Network and Intense Financial Pressure

accounting entry C beGroup was established in 1996 from a three-way merger of some(prenominal) hospitals in the eastern Massachusetts area. The merger was driven by the intense financial pressure and competitiveness in the healthcare community. CareGroup was the second largest hospital sort in the area, and was a force to be reckoned with in the war of medical costs that included healthcare providers and employers. Problem On Nov 13, 2002, a researcher executed an application without terminating it, which caused huge data communication traffics and led to a network fragmentise.The network crash could not be fixed internally and the CIO at CareGroup had to call experts from cisco for help the next day. While Cisco engineers were fixing the problem, CareGroup employees resorted back to paper based forms as a expensive and unorganized replacement to their networked computers. The network was restored five days after the crash and post-crash repairing commenced to help rec overy a nd further potential crashes. Problem Analysis The parentage of the collapse was an out of spec network. CareGroup integrated its multiple operating systems into a put in-of-the-art IT system.However, not well managed were the incremental changes to the network. This lack of control compromised the paths over which data functioned. That, combined with an experimental application that had been left unmonitored in a production environment, were the underlying causes for the network failure. CareGroup lacked a standardized operational flow to streamline, control, monitor, and document activities of users and researchers. There was little control and IT governance on park users to access or make changes to the network configuration.Right after the outage, several changes were made by various users without synchronization and documenting, which worsened the outage situation. Solutions The following are the proposed options to help solve the aforementioned problem 1. CareGroup can imp lement a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) and Contingency Plan (CP). The DRP describes the road occasion through which CareGroup must deal with unpredictable, unpreventable, or potential catastrophic events. the incident plan acts as backbone for disaster recovery and allows for a finish recovery cycle.CP would require careful preparation and planning in secernate to allow CareGroup the ability to get back to a working state of affairs. 2. CareGroup should redesign the company network infrastructure to employ Virtual cloak-and-dagger Networks (VPNs). A multi- VPN approach would enable CareGroup to maintain independency (separate virtual LANs) for their channel partners. 3. Combine both options 1 and 2. 4. Outsourcing the network services. Recommendation I inspire that CareGroup implement a disaster recovery plan, as well as adopt formal oversight of network changes and a prohibition against developers interrogatory in a production environment.