Assessment and Planning Services

A comprehensive IT assessment will help you better understand your current state of technology and prepare your organization for future needs and growth. Our engineers and consultants can help you achieve these objectives through a comprehensive analysis of the state of your organization from a technology perspective. Once we understand your current and future business needs and goals, we can develop a technology plan that aligns with these and your budget.

A well-designed technology plan can help your organization achieve its mission. Our effective, systematic approach to helping you envision your technology goals, determine your current technology reality, create your technology plan, and prioritize and implement change will help reduce your organization’s technology costs while improving efficiency.

• Envision your Organization’s Technology Goals. Because your technology plan will become a detailed, written document that connects your organization’s use of technology (current and future) to achieving your organization’s mission, it is critical to begin any planning activity with your Mission Statement and Services. This Statement will be included in your Technology Plan and will act as your compass when moving forward with Technology.
• Assess your Current Technology. We will develop a complete picture of the technology needs required to meet your organization’s technology goals through completion of your technology inventory, including all hardware and software currently in use throughout your organization.
• Assess Internal Practices. We will help you assess your organization’s current internal policies and procedures in the areas of technology training, security and disaster recovery.
• Survey Staff Skills. This process will Identify which of your staff members may need training, and discover who can act as resources within your organization.
• Create your Technology Plan. We will utilize the information gathered during the envisioning and assessment process to design a technology plan that will take your organization from its current operating reality to your technology goals. Your technology plan will address the following areas:
• Identify Immediate (Critical) Needs. Your immediate technology needs will be addressed by priority. Critical needs are classified as situations that severely hamper or prevent the execution of activities key to your organization.
• Review Hardware Fault-Tolerance Strategy (Servers and Mission-Critical Workstations and Devices). By insuring that all servers and other mission-critical appliances are hardware fault-tolerant, we can significantly minimize downtime and remediation costs when a failure occurs. For example, when properly implemented, server hard disk fault-tolerance can allow the resumption of normal server operation within a matter of minutes, should a hard disk fail.
• Review Data Fault-Tolerance Strategy (Backup, Anti-Virus/Anti-Spam, Anti-Spyware, Critical Updates, Power Conditioning). Numerous factors have the ability to corrupt your critical Data. Viruses, spyware, and other unforeseen causes such as unstable or “dirty” power conditions have all been shown to corrupt systems and critical data. We will review your current strategies and make recommendations to insure the integrity of your data, as well as the ability to restore data in the event of corruption or disaster.
• Recommend Efficiency Improvements/Cost-Reducing Strategies. As we work to develop your technology plan, we will be able to suggest cost-saving strategies and recommend changes to your current infrastructure that will also result in improved efficiency.
• Prepare End-Of-Life Equipment Upgrade/Replacement Plan. In many cases, replacing aging equipment actually helps reduce your costs. It is more economical to replace aging workstations than to continue to upgrade or maintain them, when actual physical labor costs are recognized, along with the cost of replacement parts.
• Implement a Scheduled Maintenance Program. Scheduled maintenance should be a part of any organization’s technology plan. At a minimum, regular maintenance, when performed properly, will maintain service pack levels and critical updates on all equipment, and insure that hardware and data fault-tolerance procedures are being properly maintained. A good maintenance program will also include remote network monitoring, providing economical 24x7x365 real-time analysis of all of your critical devices and services.
• Develop a Disaster Recovery Plan. It’s never too early to address disaster recovery. We will help you develop a comprehensive disaster recovery plan that you can implement immediately, to get your organization up and running as quickly as possible, in the event of disaster, service interruption or catastrophic failure to your environment.
• Prioritize Technology Improvements in Phases. We will schedule implementation of your technology plan into phases tailored to meet your organization’s forecasting and budgetary requirements, starting with your highest priorities first.
• Implement Change. We will successfully implement each phase of your technology plan in order for you to achieve your technology goals.
• Evaluate and Revise. Your technology plan will be evaluated and revised throughout each phase of implementation, in order to insure the successful achievement of your technology goals.