Hi there, I have to do this assignment. Basically ive been asked to suggest suitable technologies for building a intranet for a small size business (40 employees) with connection to Internet.

The business is an internet travel agency - selling holiday packages. So far I have established...that The company will require a Ethernet using either a Star-bus topology, routers,a high speed internet connection, and could either host its webpage using a web host service, or purchase a webserver to host it in-house. The latter one is the dearer option, requiring expertise etc..but I have not been given any budget so I just might suggest it.

MY QUESTION - for the booking the packages..i guess I need a secure payment solutionthat customers can make their payment through. If I buy such a solution externally, how would the storage and transfer of customer details/booking work? And where would you suggest storing it - have a in-house database?

SOrry for the Long explanatioN!!

You could use a online payment method such as paypal to accept the payments. It is quite cheap to use and you pay fees on the amounts you recieve.

To store the users details you would need a DBMS such as MYSQL or MS Access. You would also need a scripting language to work with the DBMS such as PHP or ASP.

These could both be implemented with the use of paypal.

If you get an external solution, then you need a SSL certificate which is used to encypt the customer/transcation information over the net. So the information will not be compromised. For the storage, I would suggest using a mySQL database.