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Assessment services are critical to the success of any project.
How can you know where you are going if you don't know where you
are? How do you prioritize your IT investments? Assessment services
take a step back from the frenzy of technology and progress to ask
the serious question: "How does technology apply to this business?"
A Preferred Technology assessment is a deliverable document with
value, not just a sales assessment. The process of assessing includes
meeting with key personnel to determine both the alignment of current
technology investments and how desired future functionality parallels
business direction.
Another benefit of the assessment process is our project pricing
structure: Because we have assessed your environment, we are able
to provide fixed prices for most project work. Imagine knowing that
will not be invoiced for the project labor until you are satisfied
with the work and furthermore that you will know exactly how much
that work will cost before it starts!
Infrastructure/Network Assessment
Hundreds of components come together to make your network deliver
the services your company depends on. The quality and performance
of these services is only as good as the weakest link – do
you know where your weakest link is? Services availability, security,
performance, utilization, and business alignment are assessed individually
and as a whole from a high level perspective to help you make your
infrastructure work at its most efficient. The following is a partial
list of components that an assessment can encompass:
- Application Servers
- E-mail and Collaboration Servers
- Database Servers
- File and Print Servers
- Thin Client Solutions
- Remote Access Services
- Local Area Network Design, Topology, and Utilization
- Wide Area Networks
- Desktop Operating Systems and Applications
- Security
- Support Assessment
Your infrastructure depends entirely on the support structure in
place to keep it running at peak performance and to repair it quickly
when problems occur. Constant review of your in-sourced or outsourced
solution is required to keep your support structure in line with
the technology in place and the goals of the business. Are you sure
you have the right resources supporting the right tasks? Are there
tools available to make these resources more efficient? Support
services are very expensive if done wrong, but very profitable when
done right.
Your help desk is a critical piece of your IT organization. It
is the most visible connection between your customers or employees
and your IT department. Do you know if your help desk is providing
answers? How many calls are they resolving and how many are they
escalating? Should you be outsourcing your desk? These are all questions
which are difficult to answer and need to be assessed by an independent
organization.
Workstation support is a science which has rapidly evolved to a
highly efficient automated process. Again, how efficient is your
support organization? Are they using hard disk loading or are they
configuring workstations for individuals? How does your workstation
team respond to problems? Do they have to fix individual workstations
or are they able to provide a hot spare replacement on a real-time
basis? This is another service to which outsourcing is often an
efficient answer. However, as with many other services, the answer
is not a black and white.
Server support is an area where many organizations fall short.
Often, budgets will be setup around a quantity of resources. For
example, a company with 5 servers determines that they can pay a
total cost of $70,000 annually for server support. However, they
have a database server, a file server, a collaboration server, a
web server, and an application server. It is simply impossible to
find all of these expertise's in one person. The answer for this
organization is to outsource their support so that when they need
a database expert, they get a database expert – and when that
expert has completed the task at hand they go home and quit billing
for support.
Vendor Assessment
Choosing vendors is one of the most important and difficult tasks
facing a project manager. While the net result of choosing a vendor
is to purchase a product or service, the process of making this
decision can be distracting, time consuming, and often overwhelming.
A complete vendor assessment looks at more than just the product
or service. Assessing vendors helps to manage expectations of vendor
involvement in project completion, balances the preparedness of
internal processes with vendor abilities, and takes into consideration
the long term ramifications of product support, upgrade availability,
and vendor stability.
Many niche markets have specialty vendors with excellent products
aimed at specific product groups. Some examples include glass, tempering,
marketing, CNC milling, and retail. These vendors have expertise
in product areas that makes their software or hardware uniquely
suited to fill a need. However, these vendors are often smaller
and have certain strengths and weaknesses. Preparing a project to
deal with these strengths and weaknesses so expectations of results
are correct is another function of the vendor assessment.
Asset Management
Asset management is more than simply counting workstations and
tracking software licenses. It is the process of reconciling corporate
resources and ensuring that your company takes advantage of their
investment. Furthermore, asset management helps you keep track of
software license compliance, manage support contracts, and track
important milestone information such as contract numbers and expiration
dates, compliance checkpoints, and discount levels. Asset management
is not a one-time project, but an ongoing process. Ensure that your
resources are working for the company, that your company is in compliance
with contracts and the law, and that your equipment is properly
utilized.
Once an initial asset management project has been completed, it
must be followed up with proactive management to ensure resource
allocation is optimized for your organization. The cost of hardware
has spiraled downward so quickly that ongoing asset management often
becomes the process of sorting the good from the bad – removing
obsolete machines from production while ensuring that good hardware
is matched with the employees who will properly utilize it. Asset
management does not stand on its own – it is closely tied
with the help desk to identify trouble, with PC support to maintain
accuracy, and with accounting to ensure you are not paying for hardware
you are not utilizing or no longer own.
NetSupport DNA
NetSupport DNA (Dynamic Network Administration) facilitates central
management of your enterprise PCs in a secure, coordinated and efficient
manner. Combining powerful Hardware and Software Inventory with
Software Distribution, Application and Internet Metering, Web based
Helpdesk, PC Remote Control and more, NetSupport DNA ensures compliance
with corporate configuration standards whilst simultaneously reducing
the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
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