Costco Solution Design

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer defines the databases, programming and networks selection necessary to fulfill the design requirements as defined in the Costco Business Requirements Analysis document. Having defined the rationale and use cases for catalog management and e-commerce systems including integration to enterprise resouce planning (ERP) projects, the writer then defines the solution plans for each of these initiatives. For both of these projects the hardware, software, systems analysis, stakeholder, and financial plans are defined.

Outline:
Introduction
Costco Solution Plans
Databases
Programming
Networks
Internal and External Stakeholders
Business and Security Risks
Financial Planning
Measures of Performance
References

From the Paper:

"This is a critical issue for Costco from the compliance perspective as well, as they are publicly held and must report their earnings through the Sarbanes-Oxley registration process. Born out of the massive amounts of fraud and earnings misstatements of Tyco, Enron, and others, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed into law in 2002, and has since revolutionized the approach to reporting, compliance and the use of databases for selling, reporting on, and servicing products. The need for the database selection and design to support compliance and high levels of data reliability (ACID levels of support) is critical.
Next, in terms of the costing of this solution Costco needs to consider open source and the many directions this market is going in. The fact this area is well proven in several competitors yet not exactly proven as an enterprise-wide solution in a mass merchandiser as Costco is cause for concern however."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Service Availability Forum (2005) - Proceedings from the Service Availability Forum, 2005, specifically by the HP Consulting Team. Retreived from the Internet on May 25, 2006 from: http://www.saforum.org/home
• Asera Corporation (2005) - Internet Applications: Case Studies. Presented at the Oracle User's Group Meeting in Redwood City, CA. May 2005 by Anil Nori, Chief Technology Officer of Asera Corporation.
• AMR Research (2003) - Configuration is the Heart of Customer Fulfillment for Complex Product Manufacturers. AMR Research Report. Monday March 31, 2003. Retreived from the Internet on May 24, 2006 from: http://lwcresearch.com/filesfordownloads/ConfigurationIstheHeartofCustomerFulfillmentforComplexProductManufacturers.pdf
• Columbus (2003) - Squeeze the revenue out of your Special Pricing Requests. AMR Research Alert. Tuesday November 11, 2003. Retrieved from the Internet on May 25, 2006: http://lwcresearch.com/filesfordownloads/SqueezetheRevenueOutofSPRs.pdf

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