Upton, Martin, Ulysses, & Clapper (UMUC) is a medium-sized financial analysis firm specializing in conducting independent economic and market assessments for banks, insurance companies, mortgage lenders, and government regulatory agencies. UMUC also provides independent verification and validation (IV&V) services for assessments and reports that were developed internally by these entities. The firm is highly respected for its unbiased, politics neutral, objective, accurate financial and economic products and services. You are a Senior IT Specialist & Systems Analyst at UMUC. One of your responsibilities is to identify and recommend computer equipment for technology refreshes and new initiatives. The Senior Manager, Revolving Debt Analysis (RDA) has come to you because it is time for a technology refresh and there is a new initiative to conduct more complex, national-level analysis of credit card fraud, default, and write-off data. Specifically, banks, credit card companies, and some law enforcement entities want to see if this analysis will assist in targeting identity thieves. The Senior Manager explains that RDA will need to refresh 35 desktop personal computers (PC). The new PCs will need to run complex calculations based on statistical models that use large amounts of data. Due to the unique nature of the datasets, data models, queries, formulas and equations and the individuality of the financial analysts and economists (many hold a PhD), the actual compute power needs to be in the desktop machine. Your task is to assess and identify the hardware needed that will allow the financial analysts and economists (collectively the users) to complete their work. The Senior
