TECHNICAL ENVIRONMENT

MGT OF ISD (IMS452)

HANDLE THE TECHNICAL ENVIRONMENT • What do we have here?

– Find out complete inventory of different projects• Valuable for budget or upgrading a system or hardware • Existing infrastructure documentation may out of date

• Define your scope– Start with highest level to the details that you need– Make sure your staff doing the details (eg serial #)– Think about scenario -> how to bring the entire IT

infrastructure back up after a major failure (eg fire, flood)

– Create a schematic diagram to picture up the environment for getting an understanding of how the environment operates

Cont.. HANDLE THE TECHNICAL ENVIRONMENT • Key elements to include

– Wide are network environment (WAN)• Site location (remote offices and disaster recovery

facilities)• Types of connections (VPN, leased-line, frame relay,

internet)• Backup communication facilities, carriers, bandwidth,

firewall etc• Servers – types, numbers, users, IP Address, key

contracts• Service providers/partners – connections, responsible

person • WAN schematics should up date regularly and

distributed to IT members

Cont.. HANDLE THE TECHNICAL ENVIRONMENT • Cont.. Key elements to include

– Local area network environment (LAN)• LAN schematic details of a particular site• Include topology, location, and connectivity of switches, routers,

hubs• Identify different types of cable (copper, fiber• Room locations for various network equipment, model numbers

for key components, IP address, wireless capabilities• LAN schematics should up date regularly and distributed to IT

members

– Carrier connections• Items including circuit numbers, circuit endpoints (building and

room), carriers, type/speed of line (analog, ISDN) and phone numbers for reporting problems

Cont.. HANDLE THE TECHNICAL ENVIRONMENT • Cont.. Key elements to include

– Server and storage environment• The documentation give insight into how the applications work• Need a diagram to indicate the basics and others to talk about

how key architecture are set up

– Workstation• A lot of activity – refresh, upgrade and physical movement• Enable to track, maintain and update properly• Keeping track of summary information

– Total number of workstation

– Workstation broken down by OS platform and version

– Average age

– Current standard configuration (year made, model, disk, memory etc)

– Type and duration of warranty/support

– Include remote workstation

Cont.. HANDLE THE TECHNICAL ENVIRONMENT • Cont.. Key elements to include

– Application and software inventory• By Creating a diagram, including all the tools:

– application development tools, – desktop tools (eg word processing, browsers etc)– Infrastructure tools (eg. Backup and monitoring utilities)

• Application inventory can include items:– Application name, brief description, user community, current

version number, vendor– Database environment, OS environment, interface– Support / maintenance arrangement (and expiration)– Critical application? Current version copy– Server, responsible IT team– Installation instructions– Special consideration or special backup requirements– Peak periods of use or executive usage– Who needs to be notified when scheduling downtime, or when

there is an unexpected outage

Cont.. HANDLE THE TECHNICAL ENVIRONMENT • Cont.. Key elements to include

– Vendors• Need vendors inventory to keep track of who you’re deal and special

arrangements• Information including

– phone numbers, account number, levels of coverage, support contract expires etc

• Information must be current and available

• Tools for tracking the technical environment– Which can track the inventory, do management and alerting and will

do configuration management– Management tools that available such as

• Cisco, Hewlett Packard, Dell, IBM, Microsoft. LANDesk, NetSupport, Sunflower systems, Novell etc

– You may develop your own, to keeping track using spreadsheet or database

Cont.. HANDLE THE TECHNICAL ENVIRONMENT • The value of good infrastructure

documentation– Documentation must easily readable format– Use diagrams, charts, schematics etc– Infrastructure documentation should be updated

and available ( in IT intranet or shared directory)– Process of having staff to collect the information

and create the documentation can be a great value

– Hard copies must be kept at other places for disaster recovery, and shall be posted in computer room, or at staff working places

Cont.. HANDLE THE TECHNICAL ENVIRONMENT

• What you may find on the inventory ?• can uncover under or over utilized resources,

potential problem and risk areas and resources and facilities assumed to be work but may not be

• May uncover technology that’s outdated and no longer needed or that needs to be upgraded

• May uncover resources providing similar or identical functionality that can be combined

• Can help IT Manager to feel comfortable that the staff has a good perspective on their environment

UNDERSTANDING THE USER ENVIRONMENT • Find out who your users/customers, how they use your

services, what additional services they may be able to use

• Establish and maintain a good relationship with your users

• They should see you as available, reliable, dedicated to service, and having their best interest at heart

• Determine who your users are

– Find out who your department thinks its users are• Who are the people your department is trying to serve?• If customers/business partners – find out who they are, where they

are, how they functions within their company, what their relationship with your department and what they want out of the relationship

• Ensure your entire department has the same view as to who the users are

UNDERSTANDING THE USER ENVIRONMENT

• Cont.. Determine who your users are– Find out who your boss thinks your users are

• Important to give some insight into how your boss views the organization’s world

• Second, it alert you on the challenges – political minefields, the critical of IT’s services

• If the views not same with you, then learn why the difference exists and which one is right

UNDERSTANDING THE USER ENVIRONMENT

• Cont.. Determine who your users are– Meet the users

• Need to meet with them, establish a relationship, ask them some questions about their needs

• Help questions:– What services do you currently get from IT dept?– How well IT satisfy your needs?– Which services to you need ? or currently not getting– How do you view the use of IT in your dept?– Who else would be worth speaking to?– What are your short and long term goals and needs

• Alert them with the working projects or other department are exploring

• Tell them time to prepare annual budgets and give some cost estimates for common items

• Share some trade journal articles that might be interested

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

• Define TCO– TCO is a term used for the sum of all the costs

associated with a computer, in addition of hardware and software costs

• Cost of support (staff, consultants, vendors)• Network facilities (servers, applications, cabling, routers,

hubs)• Training• Administrative (purchasing, inventory, auditing)• Money costs (capital, depreciation)• Consumables (diskettes, toner, paper)• Wasted user time (playing game, changing settings of fonts,

color futzing)• Downtime from problems like virus, crashes• Co-workers’ time

Cont.. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

• Calculating the TCO– Calculate the current TCO– Evaluate which one can be reduces, how

much effort is required and how much it costs to reduce those costs

• Eg reduce help desk cost by training, but how much the additional training cost?

– Identify the steps then implement it– re-measure the TCO using the same sets of

measurement

Asset Management

• Define Asset Management– Refers to what you do to keep those costs down– The most expensive factor related to the labor – the

support team cost or the user’s cost when the system problems prevent them from working

– Most popular asset management techniques include:• Maintaining hardware and software standards

– Fewer # technology products, easier to support, maintain and administer

• Outsourcing functions• Using tools to automate repetitive procedures• Investing in software distribution tool• Employing disk cloning technology

Cont .. Asset Management – cont ..Most popular asset management techniques

including:• Proactively checking for problems• Having hardware reseller preload your standard disk image in

the workstation when they ship• Using inventory tracking software• Implementing restrictions to that users can’t change system

configuration• Proactively deciding on upgrades and replacements• Defining and setting appropriate hardware and software

defaults• Providing support personnel with resources• Tracking software usage• Performing upgrades only when necessary

STANDARDS• Standards for users

– Benefits:• Have to know fewer products• Don’t have to keep spares of many

products type• Simplified inventory of consumables• Easy for procurement team and shortens

vendors list• Shorter delivery time and better volume

discounts– Technology changed so quickly and become

commoditized-> users now much less specific about what they ask for

Cont …STANDARDS• Standards for users

– Issues that users care about -> related to how the product impacts on their daily life and the performance, such as:• Cordless mice and keyboards• Coolest looking cell phone/ handheld

device• Flat panel monitors• Lightest and smallest laptop• Tower / desktop unit• Privacy and anti=glare screen• Leather laptop carrying case vs canvas• Certain colors device

Cont..STANDARDS– Issues that IT cares about

• Hardware configuration- choose configuration should last the life of the machine

• OS and application software(vendor and version) – more consistency more compatibility of files among users

• Software configuration (option, settings, directory and menu location)

– Standardize so that software operates identically for all users

– Non standard requests• Depending on the scope request and the business

need, IT may have to adjust its model to include these non-standard item

TECHNOLOGY REFRESHING

• Some organization may set defined refresh cycles, while others may choose to use things until they simply won’t operate any more

• It depends on a few factors:– The cost of vendor warranties after a certain

point– How easy it is to replace a device that fails– How accounting depreciates IT assets– How your company views IT spending

Cont .. TECHNOLOGY REFRESHING

• The most important consideration -> when it can no longer bear the cost of it:– Vendor support is unavailable or cost

prohibitive– The technology is no longer meeting your

needs– The technology presents risks to the

environment – The technology is holding up other IT projects

(eg. The latest software from your database vendor won’t run on your aged server)

STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS PLANNING (SISP)

• SISP is the planning of information systems for an organisation.

• We must decide:– What information system do we need ?– When do we need them?– How will they be implemented?– Why we want IS?

• SISP involves understanding what the business goals are and identifying how IS can support those goals by delivering benefits to the organisation

Cont.. STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS PLANNING (SISP)

• SISP involves understanding what the business goals are and identifying how IS can support those goals by delivering benefits to the organisation

• We must understand:– What is the business about?

• What is its strategy and purpose?

– What IS do we have?• Is it effective?• Is it meeting business needs?

– What Technological opportunities exist?• How could new IT support the business?