CHAPTER ONE
        GENERAL INTRODUCTION
1.1    INTRODUCTION
    The need to be close to customers, manufacturing facilities and specialized labor have required organizations to extend the traditional concept of “headquarters” to offices and factories hundreds or even thousands of miles away. However, along with the opportunities that come with workforce globalization; come the realities of dealing with data that sprawls across the organization. Whether the data is at the Munich branch or at HQ in New York, it is equally susceptible to loss, requiring that data recovery and security plans apply to all parts of the organization, regardless of location.
To protect company data and ensure its availability to users, IT organizations have been conflicted between two backupapproaches. The first approach, local tape backup, requires that tape libraries be present wherever there are servers in racks.
Local area network (LAN) access to the servers gives administrators fast data backup and recovery. The newer approach, centralized backup, puts high-density tape libraries in one location to which data from servers around the world is backed up.
While centralized backup requires less hardware, reduces administration time, and solves the security problem associated with loose tape media, it can introduce greater bandwidth consumption and longer backup/restore windows. Because of these issues, centralized backup has been a leap some managers have not been willing to make. With the right wide-area data services (WDS) technology, a more scalable and secure data protection model can be implemented without the expense of an expanded wide area network (WAN). WDS is a superset of several network acceleration categories, including data reduction and compression as well as protocol and application optimization. WDS can eliminate the bandwidth and time constraints that stall many centralized backup deployments and are the primary enabler of many technology consolidation projects.
1.2    STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
    The existing system that was in place was operating on individual database system (i.e. each system has its own database) which made it vulnerable to corrupt practices and have a lot of setbacks among which:
i.    Getting required data and information needed takes time,
ii.    In an organization, it is not easy to get an information about something unless you go to the system it is stored no matter how much urgent it is,
iii.    It is cost ineffective in the sense that, substantial large amount of money will be needed to set up such system, since each system has to be catered for etc.
1.3    AIM AND OBJECTIVES
The aim of this system is to produce a system that will serve as repository for all other systems connected to it, whereby they will be able to add, edit and query the database whenever the need arise.
Objectives of this system are:
i.    To develop a central server that maintains, manages and controls the activities of all other systems.
ii.     To develop a system that will reassure data security, integrity and reliability.
iii.    To develop a system that will be cost effective compared to individual database system.
iv.    To enable easy access to any required data and information within a little period of time.
1.4    SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS
    This system covers a wide range in term of producing a centralized database for computational data and information; it operates on a local area network whereby data centralization will only be available for systems that are connected to the network. It is currently used for systems that are connected together using local area network.
The limitation of this system is only based on the fact that it requires technical skills like basic knowledge of networking, computer awareness etc. It would pose a great headache for a person trying to use the system and unable to use it because of lack of communication between the systems due to incorrect configurations and or technical issue or fault on the hardware component of the system.
1.5    SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
    This project helps in creating a central system where all data will be stored and accessed when needed by making use of local area network connection. Example, in an organization where there are several client computers and one server, this system will provide a means of storing all their data and transaction works on the server alone to enable security and ease of access.