IT Infrastructure Assessment

The Infrastructure Assessment is a great Idea, but I agree that most companies, ie, IBM will be biased and setup the assesment to sell you equipment and services along prescribed lines. One good thing about this, is that they tend to support the assesment with more vigor than if they knew you would purchase your own gear using their assessment and methodology.

I would propose to you that you locate your local Graduate Telecom Program, and see if they would be interested in doing the assessment for you. One you get a quality assessment of Advanced degree people, who are usually in the know. Two you help the students by getting real life applications to the things they learn. Three you are relieved of vendor bias, as most of these, towhich I have participated are not vendor specific, but tend to be about the technology not the vendors.

If you need a lead to have this done, look me up in the directory.

Hope this helps.

Bill Brightwell

I have been asked a similar question-- to conduct a Technology Assessment across our company as our core systems are internally developed and 20+ years old. At that time it was "cutting edge". New needs were met with a scattering of independant solutions. Now we need to integrate and update the technology and the tools. As a nonprofit we don't have unlimited resources. I've read about IT Architecture and wonder how this applies to a mid-sized organization. We certainly need to define and agree on standards, but we also probably won't continue to develop applications, but will purchase packaged solutions.

Any tips and advise on how to provide a narrow scope consulting to assess our current envioronment and to help us to create a blueprint and framework for integrating and implementing solutions using current and upcoming technologies would be _greatly_ appeciated!

Vendor Appraisals

Most organizations re-evaluate their current technologies on a regular basis. The analysis may focus on a specific project, or it may cover the enterprise as whole.

In our case, we have the resources necessary to conduct internal assessments. We then provided the results to our vendor(s) of choice for a quote. However, if we did not have an internal assessment department, and we were short on time, we would invite three vendors with clear leadership in the field to assess our technology - three vendors, three solutions, we know they're biased, we choose the best.

Additionally, I like Bill Brightwell's solution, particularly for those areas rich in graduate talent; I will look into this solution and report backfinding to this group. Perhaps we can extend these resources, to those areas with less.

Best regards,

Jose B. Carranza

I wholeheartedly agree with Bill Brightwell's suggestion to use local grad school talent. Of course, I am slightly biased because I'll be receiving my MS shortly. You cannot ignore the rewards of using bright local talent, and you definitely cannot beat the price.

A local County Govt. has been planning a large IT investment for a while, and has begun recruiting grad students to perform IT infrastructure assessments with the hopes of acquiring innovative ideas and identifying sharpshooters for future employment.

The benefits are numerous when using local student talent. A good university develops innovative thinkers. Students are encouraged, if not required, to stay abreast of the latest technology trends. You can use this opportunityto identify the sharpest talent for addition to your staff. And the price is right.

I graduated from a respected technical college two years ago and would not have trusted myself or any of my mates to do a proper assessment of any businesses infrastructure. I've always believed that technical knowledge and the implementation of that knowledge are two entirely different animals and a reason that Sales Reps don't get enough credit. It is also the reason for the recently introduced and much sought after Technical Sales Rep Positions.
I have worked for about 8 years in IT and I would suggest that you choose based on a companies reputation in the industry and how long they have been around. And remember these shops are rarely the most obvious and high profile, or the ones with the countless certification plaques hanging in the foyer, you'll have to talk to many people to uncover them.
I agree that it is important that the shop isn't a one trick pony (IBM only etc.)
Find a shop that has researched other proven succesful and more cost-effective solutions to compliment the name brand solutions.

Hi,

Simple Templates that you can download for free don't provide the information necessary and ones that are chargeable still expect you to do all the analysis. Companies that provide an IT assessment usually do so because they want to sell you additional products and services and so tailor the results accordingly.

That is the reason we developed IT Assessor (http://www.assessortech.com/ITAssessor.html).

IT Assessor does all the analysis for you and gives you an independent view of your infrastructure no matter what size of operations you have. You just enter the parts of your infrastructure you want to assess and then answer the questions about those IT Assets. IT Assessor then analyzes and documents all this in a detailed technology report at a cost point that everybody can afford.

Check it out: http://www.assessortech.com/

Mike
Sales Director
Assessor Technologies Ltd