Suppose you are working in an IT department of a toy-making company (30 million revenue per year) recently experiencing rapidly business expansion. The toy company was originated from a family business with separately evolved information systems distributed in manufacturing (MRP II), accounting (Peachtree), business development (MS Office), human resource (MS Office), and warehouse inventory management (inventory management system by Gigatrak). IT department mainly provide system maintenance for different departments. With the recent business expansion, the cost of IT increased dramatically but the overall efficiency decreased because of large volume order poured in. The management has difficulty to track the overall performance of the supply chain because there is no integrated view of the whole supply chain.
Now the executive board is charging the IT department to work out a solution to integrate the overall IT systems in the company. The board is also interested in getting more inputs from customers of their toy. Your manager wants you to have a preliminary exploration of possible integration solutions, including the choice of integration architecture, platform, software, and security/privacy/policy concerns. You should explain why you choose this solution and why pick each specific technology in the solution.