Data#3

How do you solve some of the most common upgrade problems?

We are all familiar with the pace of technology change and the cascade of upgrade choices, but what can you do to justify the new server, storage and network costs?  When you consider these costs more closely you will be looking at the problem of server migration which raises questions like:

• Are the current versions of my applications supported on the new hardware?
• What license upgrades do I need?
• Do I need to extend my software and hardware maintenance agreements to cover the upgrade period?
• Do I have the skills in house to upgrade?
• Can I manage the upgrades while adding new applications at the same time – what are the risks?
• Do I have the time?
• How much will it cost me to safely dispose the old equipment?

Next, factor in increased operating costs like staff training, power and cooling and try to digest the hardware roadmaps for each product you have, then this starts to move into migraine territory.

That was just the back end – what about desktop deployment? If you break this down again, you have a wide choice of desktop solutions to choose from and you still have to justify the cost of deploying current technology desktops being notebook, workstation, desktop, tablet, virtual desktop and thin client as well as mobile handheld solutions.

Your cost justification now needs to include the management tools and skills.  Previously, you could get away with plugging it into power and network, loading an operating system and installing applications.

Now that IT has made it into the board room in your business, there are most likely KPI’s associated with application service delivery and disaster recovery.  If you are going to measure these, then you need event data.  So how do you sell the value of management tools and skills back into the business?  I guess you could start with a cost per seat per user role and contrast that with the cost of downtime per application.

If you implement a hardware and application health monitoring, management and reporting regime, then you are in the position to collect event data to analyse and roll up into your cost per seat and cost of downtime justification models.

Some of the best solutions turn out to be those that are maintained by the hardware and software vendors such as HP Systems Insight Manager, IBM Tivoli Monitoring and Microsoft Systems Center Operations Manager.  This is because as each vendor is committed to upgrading their own technology, they tend to upgrade the functions in their management tools in step.  If you elect to be platform agnostic, then be certain of your software and hardware vendor roadmap alignment strategy.  Investing in management tools and skills will make it much easier to justify your next upgrade project.

If you are interested in learning more about how Data^#3 can assist your organisation to smoothly transition IT upgrades, Enquire Online.