IT Assessments

Strategic thinking begins with the designDATA IT Assessment.

A typical new customer engagement begins with a thorough systems assessment. The systems assessment is a critical first-step in providing the best services to you at the onset of our engagement. The intent of the IT Assessment is the following:

• Leverage a round-table discussion with the client to determine how technology supports the business goals of the organization.
• Completely document the existing system setup and configuration.
• Document all IT assets.
• Identify deficiencies in the existing setup, and offer options for corrective action.
• Develop an IT strategy in support of organizational business goals.
• Rapidly acclimate our engineering team to your environment (systems and culture), instead of learning on the job over time.

The assessment outlines forward looking improvements and recommendations that are then translated into an IT Strategic Plan for the organization. Our engineers comprehensively analyze and document all aspects of your network environment, forming the basis of a “Configuration Management” Database. It also dramatically shortens the time for our engineering team to become granularly familiar with your network and end users, which is particularly helpful for new managed services clients.

designDATA leverages a “team approach” to introduce multiple technical subject-matter experts and specialists in your environment. This creates redundancy within designDATA staff to provide you with engineering depth. Our technical writer manages the process and shortens the deliverable date to a reasonable six to eight week period of time.

Documentation Details of Assessment

The IT Assessment is a detailed inventory of the systems, network infrastructure (hardware and software) and applications in place at the client at the time of the review. The IT Assessment is designed as a reference tool with detail on each critical component of a network infrastructure. The assessment provides detail on the following areas:

• A description of each back office system (server) and its purpose.
• A detailed description of the network protocols or communication infrastructure (network addresses, web domains, etc.).
• A technical overview of each server, its configuration, operating system and functionality.
• Overview of the current security systems and malicious code (antivirus) protection and software configurations.
• Details on current server software inventories.
• Description of current level of fault tolerance – the redundancy of all server or network hardware in case of component or general failure.
• Overview of the current system backup and disaster recovery configuration.
• Detailed recommendations to improve the current network configuration. Summary of the end-user questionnaire; designed to detect problems or trends at the user level.
• Supplemental documentation – detailed network drawings, photos of all critical hardware, floor plan maps, etc.
• A sample inventory of the “typical” office workstations including software applications and operating systems currently in place. (Full workstation documentation available after inventorying software systems deployed as part of contract)

Contact designDATA to begin your initial IT Assessment process today!