OG0-023 Questions and Answers

The Document Archiving application relies on an archiving service, which it accesses through a reliable queuing interface.

Which relationship would most accurately describe this situation?

The Legally Yours division of ArchiSurance has introduced a new product described in the following diagram:

Based on the diagram, what can we tell about the Legally Yours Premium Legal Services Insurance product?

Scenario

Please read this scenario prior to answering the question

ArchiSurance has a partnership with ArchiBank in which the two companies market each other's consumer offerings to their own customers. Each quarter, the chief marketing officers (CMOs) of the two companies work together to plan the next quarter's promotions. First, they review each other's business objectives related to the partnership. Then, they formulate the co-operative marketing plan. The CMOs determine which offerings they will promote, the characteristics of the target customers, and the timing of each promotion. They assemble their findings into a co-operative marketing plan that Is reviewed separately by the chief financial officer (CFO) of each organization. If either of the CFOs finds a problem, the CMOs must quickly work together to formulate another version of the plan. The review and reformulation process continues until both CFOs have approved a version of the plan. Then,the CMOs share the plans with their respective operations teams. Each organization's operations team configures the bank's systems toexecute the joint promotions.

The cooperative marketing process is enabled by CRM software delivered as a service (SaaS). The two organizations each use separate logical instances of a multi-tenant customer relationship management (CRM) application hosted by a service provider. Each company's CRM instance is a dedicated function of the same CRM application component. The dedicated functions also share the same multi-tenant database. The component's data access layer is designed with safeguards to keep each company's data separate unless it is intentionally shared.

Each CRM instance has targeting, exchange and outreach sub-functions. The targeting sub-functions select customers based on criteria developed by the CMOs and configured by the operations teams. The exchange sub-functions share the selected customer profiles with each other, and the outreach sub-functions generate promotional email. In this way, each company's CRM system generates a list of target customers that the other company's CRM system uses to send promotional email.

The multi-tenant CRM application component is hosted on a large virtual server complex that is connected via a site network to a physical storage array and a commercial wide-area network (WAN) used by both companies. Both companies access their CRM systems via PCs connected to Local Area Networks (LANs) that are in turn connected to the shared commercial WAN.

Refer to the Scenario

The new head of IT has asked you to describe how the CRM application supports the partnership, including the CRM application itself, the various application functions and the data flows between them, and the hosting and networking that supports the CRM application.

Which answer provides the best description?

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

The daily mutual fund trading cycle consists of four key processes: Transaction capture, pricing, trading and reconciliation. Transaction capture consists of two sub-processes: manual exchange and loans and distributions (LSD). For transaction capture, retirement plan participants use an online account management application to enter manual fund exchange transactions. For L&D, plan participants use a separate application to enter requests. The L&D application determines whether the request can be fulfilled based on the mutual fund balances held in each plan balances and a set of business rules. Each day's captured manual exchange transactions accumulate in a transaction database.

ArchiSurance contracts with a third-party information service to receive a file of mutual fund prices at the close of each trading day. The pricing application uses this file to convert captured transaction into trades, and then validates each trade against the mutual fund balances held In each plan. The pricing generates a trade file with the minimum number of trades necessary. The trading application sends this file to an external trading service. When the trading application receives a confirmation file back from the trading service, it passes it to the reconciliation application, which updates the plan recordkeeping database.

The account management and LSD applications are hosted on separate application server clusters. Each cluster is a physically separate host that runs application server software on a set of virtualized hosts. All of these applications use a database server infrastructure that is hosted on another separate cluster of virtualized servers also on a dedicated physical host. The pricing, consolidation, trading and reconciliation applications, however, are batch applications that run on the ArchiSurance mainframe computer. All application hosts are connected via a converged data center network (DCN), which also connects them to a storage area network (SAN) as well as a wide area network (WAN) that is used to communicate with the external trading service. The SANincludes two physically separate storage arrays, one of which holds data for all databases, and another that holds data for all files.

Refer to the Scenario

A newly-formed team of systems analysts would like to better understand the business processes and applications for daily fund trading. Describe the business processes and sub-processes, the applications that they use, the data objects accessed by those applications, and the external application services that access some of those data objects.

Which is the best answer?

Scenario

Please read this scenario prior to answering the question

ArchiSurance senior management; board members, customers and major stockholders have long been concerned about disaster resiliency in light of the company's heavy reliance on a single data center. The data center is located in an area that is prone to flooding and earthquakes, according to expert assessments done by consultants retained for this purpose. In addition, the data center is located under a busy cafeteria, and water occasionally leaks through its ceiling.

To address these problems, ArchiSurance has developed a plan to move from its current data center to a pair of ready-to-use data centers in separate cities. The data center move is designed to reduce the risk of business interruption, reduce both planned and unplanned downtime for critical applications, and reassure ArchiSurance stakeholders. However, a number of limitations make the planned transition to the new data centers particularly challenging. A number of critical ArchiSurance applications cannot be offline for more than an hour, and any downtime for these application must only occur in certain four-hour windows each weekend. Also, the move cannot occur during quarterly or year-end closing periods in order to avoid interrupting critical processing. Fulfillment of these specific type of requirements will reduce the risk of business interruption from the data center move activities themselves.

ArchiSurance management has therefore planned a multi-phase data center transformation program. All of the activities in each phase are necessary to ensure a progression of stable and fully functional data center configurations. The first phase consists of detailed scheduling and planning to produce a comprehensive transformation plan that meets ArchiSurance timing and scheduling requirements. During the second phase, ArchiSurance is to contract for the hardware and software required for the new datacenters, as well for refunds for the hardware and software to be returned from the current data center once it is shut down. During the third phase, the new data centers are to be set up, and the new hardware and software are to be tested in parallel with what is already in production. The actual transition between the old and new data centers occurs in the fourth phase, and the fifth phase involves shutting down and dismantling the old data center, and returning its hardware and software for contracted refunds. Phases two through five are each to be initiated when specific conditions are met in the previous phase.

Refer to the Scenario

The head of IT has asked you to help her explain why ArchiSurance decided to transform its data center infrastructure. You must model the stakeholders, the motivations, and the influencing relationships between these motivations. You must also model the specific goals realized by the data center transformation program and the limitations within which this program must operate.

Which answer provides the best explanation?

Scenario

Please read this scenario prior to answering the question

The ArchiSurance enterprise document management infrastructure provides critical support for myriad types of documents and document-based transactions, many of which are executed in high volume each day. At the core of the infrastructure is the document management systems software, which has three major modules: a document engine that stores, retrieves and performs a variety of operations on documents, a workflow engine that hosts document management applications, and an application engine, which hosts the most sophisticated applications. The application engine invokes the document and workflow engines as necessary when hosting application components that require their services.

The claim management application component is critical to ArchiSurance business operations. It is hosted by the application engine, and launches whenever an individual files a new claim. The claim management component requires different documents to demonstrate proof of loss depending on the type of claim filed, the type of insurance that is in force, and various other circumstances. When the correct documents are filed and verified by an intake operator, proof of loss is complete, and the claim management component assigns the claim to a claim analyst by reading and updating analyst status data and applying business rules stored as data.

Due to its business-critical nature, the document management solution is hosted redundantly at two geographically separate data center sites known as Site A and Site B. Both sites provide identical infrastructure. Each site contains a highly available data center network (DCN) that is connected to the highly available ArchiSurance wide area network (WAN). Each claim management server is connected to its site DCN, and each DCN is a converged network that connects both servers and storage arrays, including a physical storage array dedicated to the claim management application. Each site contains four high-powered separate physical servers dedicated to the claim management application. At any one time, one server is on standby while the other three servers are, respectively, hosting the document, workflow and application engines. Each active server provides a monitoring service that is In constant two-way communication with the monitoring service on the standby server. If a server fails, the surviving monitoring services perform a failover sequence to assume failed server's workload if it was active. The surviving monitoring services also alert the operation team on duty.

Refer to the Scenario

A new IT manager has asked you to model the applications and system software elements involved in document management, including the services they provide, the data objects they handle, and how they work together.

Which answer best models this information?

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 ArchiSurance competitors 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 withsome 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 solution delivery team for broker interaction would like to get a clearer idea of the motivations behind this solution as they plan a second release. You must model the stakeholders, drivers, assessments and goals that shape this strategic initiative. You must also show the relationships between these motivational elements.

Which answer provides the most complete and accurate model?

Scenario

Please read this scenario prior to answering the question

ArchiSurance senior management, board members, customers and major stockholders have long been concerned about disaster resiliency in light of the company's heavy reliance on a single data center. The data center is located in an area that is prone to flooding and earthquakes, according to expert assessments done by consultants retained for this purpose. In addition, the data center is located under a busy cafeteria, and water occasionally leaks through its ceiling.

To adoress these problems, ArchiSurance has developed a plan to move from its current data center to a pair of ready-to-use data centers in separate cities. The data center move is designed to reduce the risk of business interruption, reduce both planned and unplanned downtime for critical applications, and reassure ArchiSurance stakeholders. However, a number of limitations make theplanned transition to the new data centers particularly challenging. A number of critical ArchiSurance applications cannot be offline for more than an hour, and any downtime for these application must only occur in certain four-hour windows each weekend. Also, the move cannot occur during quarterly or year-end closing periods in order to avoid interrupting critical processing. Fulfillment of these specific type of requirements will reduce the risk of business interruption from the data center move activities themselves.

ArchiSurance management has therefore planned a multi-phase data center transformation program. All of the activities in each phase are necessary to ensure a progression of stable and fully functional data center configurations. The first phase consists of detailed scheduling and planning to produce a comprehensive transformation plan that meets ArchiSurance timing and scheduling requirements During the second phase, ArchiSurance is to contract for the hardware and software required for the new datacenters,as well for refunds for the hardware and software to be returned from the current data center once it is shut down. During the third phase, the new data centers are to be set up, and the new hardware and software are to be tested in parallel with what is already in production. The actual transition between the old and new data centers occurs in the fourth phase, and the fifth phase involves shutting down and dismantling the old data center, and returning its hardware and software for contracted refunds. Phases two through five are each to be initiated when specific conditions are met in the previous phase.

Refer to the Scenario

The newly hired program manager for data center transformation has asked you to describe the program implementation plan. You must express each of the plan phases as a separate work package with specific deliverables. You must also show the relationships between phases along with how each phase contributes to a particular stable data center state.

Which answer provides the best description?

Scenario

Please read this scenario prior to answering the question

The ArchiSuranceTo Go mobile consumer solution is increasingly important to ArchiSurance, which uses it to sell and renew insurance products, provide customer service, enable accurate and convenient home recordkeeping, and capture and process claims. The solution consists of three components. The Consultant lets customers review their existing coverage, and update it based on common life events, such as getting a new car, moving into a new home, or having a family member move in or out. If necessary, they can speak or chat with a customer service representative. The Home Manager helps customers photograph and catalogue their valuable possessions in order to support the filing of accurate claims in case of loss or damage. The Claim Manager enables customers to quickly file a claim for loss or damage to an insured auto, home or possession. It enables customers to describe the incident by referencing information captured with the Consultant and the Home Manager applications. In addition, it allows the customer to add photographs, audio, video and text to support a claim, submit the claim, and monitor its progress.

The ArchiSurancetoGo components rely on a number of application services hosted by ArchiSurance. The first is an Auto Identification and Description (AID) service that the Consultant uses to validate and complete auto information entered by customers. The second service, Home Identification and Description (HID) performs the same function for home information, and is used by the Home Manager. The Consultant also uses the Virtual Agent service to guide customers as they select coverage options, the Payment Processor service to arrange premium payments, and the Coverage Activator service to generate policies and put them in force.

ArchiSurance to Go also relies on a number of infrastructure services. The Home Manager uses a Multimedia Repository service to store and retrieve information about insured homes. The Claim Manager also uses this service for claim information entered by customers. All three components of ArchiSuranceTo Go use a Personal Security service to register and authenticate customers, and to manage their profiles.

Each application service is realized by an application component with the same name. Also, each infrastructure service is realized by a system software environment with the same name. ArchiSurance hosts both the application components and system software environments in a virtual ized server pool within its data center. Each service has its own virtual server. Each server is connected to a data center network (DCN) which in turn connects to a commercial wide area network (WAN).

Refer to the Scenario

The new head of IT infrastructure would like a better understanding of the applications used by ArchiSurance to Go mobile solution and the hosting infrastructure that supports these applications.

Which answer provides the best description of the applications and their underlying infrastructure? (Please note that it is not necessary to model the networks).