Practice Areas
Architectural Assessment
The engagement’s mission is to categorize the users and the demands they place on the existing "Assets", that is, the hardware (servers, storage and networks) and software (operating systems, files systems and applications) within their infrastructure to determine whether to continue to commit resources to the current architecture(s), invest in performance analysis and optimization services or migrate to a new architecture(s).
Features
We will base the assessment of the Assets on a qualitative multi-criteria evaluation approach. We will evaluate these Assets (and possibly a set of design alternatives) against criteria that are key business drivers, goals and requirements from four points of view: business, functional, technical and implementation.
The following primary criteria are considered:
- Evaluate the degree to which the computational, storage and operational strategies align with current business goals and service level agreements.
- Examine the current Assets within the infrastructure. This analysis is required to identify risks or constraints with regard to accessibility, performance, maintenance, scalability, data distribution, disaster recovery and sizing of the current and future Assets.
- Examine the organizational structure with respect to roles and responsibilities as well as policies and procedures. IT and the business community have distinct roles and responsibilities for technical support, business support, configuration management, continuing requirement definition and growth and innovation.
- Assess the ongoing need for the Assets to evolve and how to achieve that evolution. This review measures the degree to which the current and future Assets must progress as a continuing series of enhancement projects, rather than as a maintenance problem or acquisition cycle.
Benefits
- Awareness of business risks due to inadequate computational, storage and operational strategies
- Insight into the cost of ownership in the existing investments in hardware, software and manpower
- Strategy for a target computational and storage environment required for a successful future
- High-level plan of steps to be taken towards achieving this vision
- Identify opportunities for improvement with rapid returns
Deliverables
- Definition of the overall approach for Asset utilization and deployment across the infrastructure based upon the identified assessment criterion
- Definition of the vision of the target Assets
- Recommendation of short-term and long-term roadmaps for Asset consolidation and redeployment
- Recommendation of short-term and long-term roadmaps for Asset acquisition and deployment
- Recommendation of immediate steps for quick returns on performance, reliability, resiliency and cost avoidance