Dirt Bikes would like to implement new production planning, quality control, and scheduling software for use by 25 members of its manufacturing staff. Management needs to decide whether to purchase the software, hardware required to run the software and storage to maintain the data collected. They would also need to have staff to maintain both hardware and software. Alternatively they can use a hosted software solution from a software service provider and outsource all maintenance and data storage. Dirt Bikes management has asked for a briefing on what is involved in making this decision. They need to understand several things: What is needed to implement such a system as an infrastructure investment, and how do they determine the total cost of ownership if Dirt Bikes wants to do everything itself? What are the advantages and disadvantages of owning versus outsourcing for each of these components (staff, computer servers, software licensing, and data storage)? What are the trade-offs? For example: cost versus reliability; ease of use versus control. Of the 4 key system components — staff, servers, software and data storage — are there other combinations of outsourcing (for instance, can they own the server but outsource data storage to a cloud company?) What other future infrastructure needs might be relevant in this decision, for example will Dirt Bikes be needing other software applications and databases? Will they need internet servers to host the company’s web site and e-commerce services?