technology consulting assessment examination evaluation recommendation

A Consulting Assessment: Examination, Evaluation and Recommendation Introduction Whether implementing new technologies, upgrading existing infrastructures or evaluating current needs, the use of time determining business and technical requirements. Project specific requirements and constraints will dictate the business and technical requirements that should be gathered and analyzed. consultants for a Technology Assessment offers an objective evaluation of what your business needs to effectively In the optimal Assessment project, project requirements are known, the business stakeholders can articulate their needs, all technical execute your business strategy. A Consultant Assessment is the first step to assuring a successful implementation and requirements are documented, the future state is understood, team members are available and there is adequate time to complete the this paper will help explain what to expect. project. In reality, often times the infrastructure may not be documented, the way the project’s requirements are provided may constrain business requirements gathering, the future or comparison What is an Assessment? An Assessment is a comparison between a current state and some other or future state. This other state could be a new high level state may not be fully defined, and there are typically time and resource restrictions. In this case, the Assessment Sponsor should infrastructure design that takes into consideration business and technical requirements unique to your business and requirements. seek assistance and guidance from the Assessment Consultant to determine the boundaries of the project. The Assessment Consultant Or, it could be an Assessment against best practices for a particular technical area, like network infrastructure or security. This effort would can help the Assessment Sponsor to document the needs, make suggestions that may help resolve ambiguities and propose steps to be analogous to benchmarking. Sometimes Assessments are used to compare a company’s current state to an “industry leading” competitor. meet the project’s goals. Consulting uses an Engagement Definition Agreement (EDA) to document this information. The EDA is There may be a need to know how your company compares to others with respect to networking infrastructures or security policies, for an agreement between the Assessment Sponsor and the Consultant for details that were not addressed in the Statement of example, or against others in the same vertical market, say retail or utilities. A critical element within the Assessment process is to assure Work (SOW). The consultant you have chosen should provide this type of document to the sponsor and request formal concurrence. This that you have identified an Assessment Sponsor who has 1.) financial and/or functional responsibility, 2.) can act as the key point of may be repeated if during the engagement new requirements or business challenges are discovered. accountability during the Assessment and 3.) will be able toassure that the output from the Assessment will be acted-on by the Business requirements generally take on three forms: revenue generating, business supporting and infrastructure supporting. Revenue generating organization. An Assessment is generally composed of three actions: examination, evaluation and recommendation. requirements could include secure business-to-business communications or wireless hot spot implementation. Business supporting requirements Examination The Assessment Sponsor identifies the project specific requirements and the initial business and technical requirements. It is important to could include new building wireless network design, application acceleration and secure remote access. Infrastructure supporting requirements may include a new out-of-band management network or rogue wireless access point detection. understand the project’s requirements prior to spending too much Technical requirements take on four basic forms: match the current installation, meet a new standard, address a stakeholder’s desire or Consulting’s delivery methodology consists of a hierarchical framework that defines the Sponsors’ desired may be a direct outcome of a previously stated business requirement. In general, technical requirements are easier to determine and tasks or steps. The three top categories of the framework are: Plan, Design and Implement. Plan includes: Gathering document than business requirements. An example of a current installation requirement may be using only presently installed vendors. Requirements, Conducting the Assessment and Defining the Solution (or creating recommendations). The Design Examples of new standards may be merger-related IP address standards or product end of life. Often business and sponsor process consists of: Detailed Design, Component Acquisition, Implement Test Environment, Test and Train. The Implement preferences can define a technical requirement. Lastly, a business requirement can indirectly create a technical requirement, such as a process consists of: Develop Implementation Plan, Execute Implementation, Document Results and Conduct Review. contractual agreement between businesses that dictates specific technologies or carriers. Evaluation The primary activity of the assessment phase is the identification and documentation of the gap between the current environment be common for companies in a particular industry to establish intra-company SLA agreements; it is generally common across many enterprises in other industries. Therefore, in this example, the company could be said to not meet best practice and still be and the future state, as defined by the project, business and technical requirements. The consultant will determine the current state via in line with the rest of their peers within the industry. stakeholder interviews, documentation analysis and from data collected through automated tools. The future, or other state, is Another example would be an enterprise that is planning to replace equipment well before the equipment’s economic life. In this situation determined via the SOW received from the consultant and during the requirements gathering phase. This should be defined in a document, the industry in general meets this best practice 75% of the time. This company’s performance could be placed in the top quartile. such as the previously mentioned Consulting EDA. Technical requirements can and should, be gathered simultaneously with the current state information during the stakeholder interviews. Recommendation There are two types of recommendations that can come out of a Consulting Assessment: a new design or architecture for the “target” This reduces the number of interviews and allows for a quicker project completion. state and/or a list of actions that close identified gaps. At this point the current state is known, the future state has been defined and the gap has been determined. For those projects with When a Consulting Assessment is associated with a new architecture, the recommendation would typically include a roadmap to implement a future state, it’s time to move to the recommendations section. Those clients that wish to benchmark themselves against others the design. A Consulting Assessment comparing the current state against best practices or other previously identified state would must determine the “targets” for comparison – either against best practices or industry peers. Either way, a comparison is made to typically provide a prioritized list of actions with cost, time and resource estimates. assure that the project has relevance and will help to make appropriate impact on the organization. Businesses considering a Technology Assessment should ensure that the recommendations meet the business and technical expectations, One example would be establishing Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for network uptime between the networking support organization and as documented in the Statement of Work (SOW) and/or a document such as the Engagement Definition Agreement (EDA). A thorough business units. The objective is to formalize SLAs within the enterprise and then provide monitoring and periodic reporting. While it may not Assessment will list and prioritize recommendations for the business toimplement. For more information contact an Representative or visit
In cities, towns and remote locations, mini satellite dishes point attentively to the Southern sky. Emblazoned with names like DirecTv, ExpressVu, DirecWay, Web Conferencing, iNetVu, Linkstar, XM Satellite Radio, Sirius Satellite Radio iDirect their numbers are growing at an amazing rate. Iridium Satellite Phone is the only provider of truly global satellite voice and data solutions with complete coverage of the earth (including oceans, airways and Polar Regions). Get the latest buzz on Free satellite tv systems - including the features and benefits that make them today's ultimate television viewing experience.(Get Dish) Ever wonder why these satellite dish systems are in such great demand? Does high speed internet service or digital television programming via satellite intrigue you?
If you've never heard of Cheap VoIP, get ready to change the way you think about long-distance phone calls. VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, is a method for taking analog audio signals and turning them into digital data (IP packets) that can be transmitted over the Internet.