This document proposes a client-server architecture for a payroll program for a large organization with offices in different regions of the United States. The architecture would involve a centralized data center located at the company's headquarters to store payroll data. Employees at other offices would connect to the server via a VPN to access and process payroll information from their remote locations. The client-server model is appropriate because it allows for centralized management of important payroll data while enabling remote employee access. Regular data backups and access restrictions would help address potential ethical issues around data corruption or unauthorized access.

1. CASE STUDY 2: APPLICATION ARCHITECTURE 1
Case Study 2: Application Architecture
Makia Lucas
CIS 210
Prof. Suryakant Patel

2. CASE STUDY 2: APPLICATION ARCHITECTURE 2
Abstract
When businesses hire more employees, they begin to expand their office space to different
locations around the area, but when the business become more profitable, they begin to expand
their operations to different regions. This paper will explain how to help large businesses after
expand their office space throughout the United States of America, building a payroll program
that has one larger data center the each office connects to via. WAN (Wide Area Network).

3. CASE STUDY 2: APPLICATION ARCHITECTURE 3
Most of the time when business have expanding, they already have certain things in place
to keep their business productive after relocated but sometimes the legacy system that was
productive in the old location, may not work well in the new location. When this occur, it is time
to research for a new system to accommodate the business portion as well as the employees.
Payroll is one of the most important aspect of running a business. Payroll consist of sum of
all financial records of salaries for an employee, wages, bonuses and deductions. The primary
mission of the payroll department is to ensure that all employees are paid accurately and timely
with the correct withholdings and deductions, and to ensure the withholdings and deductions are
remitted in a timely manner. This includes salary payments, tax withholdings, and deductions
from a paycheck. Even though you are working at a different location for the company, all
employees receives their paycheck form one location. We are tasked to build a payroll program
so all offices located in different locations can have access for production and data purposes.
Before we begin, we first start with choosing the best system architecture to accommodate this
task. Payroll services can work best if we choose a client/server architecture at the headquarters
of the business (Figure 1). Client/Server architecture generally refers the clients handling the data
entry, data query, and screen presentation logic, then the server stores the data and provides data
access/management functions. Client/Server architecture is the best choice for the new payroll
program because I am strong believer of having your most important data or production
centralized where the “heart” of the business is location, in which is the company’s headquarters.
Large companies always have IT Department in house so when it time for updates and upgrades,
the IT Department is there is perform these task quickly and accurately. Now we have
established the architecture, now we must explain how employees that process or perform

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payroll services are going to access the server from different locations using the Client/Server
Architecture.
Because this is large organization, all computer will have registered to the company’s
server by adding all computers the domain (Domain Controller). Once the computers are on the
domain, then you can mapped computers to server and the payroll application can read and
write files from the shared storage area. Employees may wonder how can connect to the
company’s network since the new location is not near the headquarters? Since the company has
offices in different locations, there is a way that employees can gain access to the network and
the server. One way to configure a VPN connection to allow employees to securely access their
company's intranet while traveling outside the office. VPNs can be either remote-access
(connecting a computer to a network) or site-to-site (connecting two networks). VPNs securely
connect geographically separated offices of an organization, creating one cohesive network
(Figure 2). When using the client/server architecture, there are potential ethical issues that could
arise that needs to be addressed. For example, data on the server can become corrupt or erased by
mistake due to human error, what is the next step? First of all, because this company has
important data all stored on a centralized data center, it need to backed up daily so when
incidents like this does arrive, data can be retrieve from a backup. Another example can be what
if employee who is connected to the server has access to certain data that there are not supposed
to have access to? Resolving this issue is very simple. You must restrict access to that specific
folder to that employee, (you can perform this task by going to the properties of the folder).
In conclusion, one way in building a payroll program for a large organization is using the
client-server architecture. Client-server architecture can be very efficient and effective because

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of using the VPN technologies. Since this organization has expanded their offices in different
regions of the United States, I feel this is the best way to keep the company productive.

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Figure 1:

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Figure 2:

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References:
Shelly, Rosenblatt. (2012). Systems Analysis and Design (9th Ed.). Boston: Thomson
Course Technology.
Erisman, A. (2006, October). Ethical Issues With a New Payroll System?
Retrieved from http://ethix.org/2006/10/01/ethical-issues-with-a-new-payroll-system
Small, N., Meneghello, J., Lee, K., Sabooniha, N. & Schippers, R. A Discussion on the
Ethical Issues in Peer-to-Peer Networking Monitoring
Retrieved from http://www.kevin-lee.co.uk/work/research/small_PEECS2012.pdf