The end customer was the IT department, which had its own plans for the optimization of IT systems, however, the top management did not want to provide the investment in the amount requested by IT professionals. External expertise was needed to justify the budget.
ICL Services, one of the leading IT outsourcing companies in the world, won the tender, and in June 2017, its employees began the auditing of the IT infrastructure and communication channels of the Customer.
The Customer planned to increase the number of remote locations by 30–60% every year. Therefore, it was necessary to understand whether its IT infrastructure can meet the demands of the growing Group and ensure business continuity.
Key Challenges
- To identify issues and bottlenecks in the IT infrastructure
- To develop an evolution strategy for the corporate data transmission network for at least three years, taking into account the plans to increase business volumes (from 30 to 60% annually
- Provide advice on purchase of equipment
- Determine the maximum operating time of the installed equipment and develop the life cycle of IT systems
- To carry out the expertise of transformation projects proposed by the Customer's IT department
- To get detailed information about the existing IT landscape
- To get a road map for standardization of the network infrastructure to reduce the cost of its support
Implemented our solution
The Customer's enterprise data networks (EDNs) represented a complex system covering four regions in the Central Federal District and the Primorye Territory of the Russia Federation. In addition to the analysis of EDNs in those regions, an audit of IT application systems was conducted at the Customer's headquarters.
Two ICL services system architects conducted a survey in two weeks: the experts analyzed more than 200 units of equipment, and conducted several dozen interviews with the Customer's staff at different levels: from engineers to IT managers.
However, it required a whole month and participation of 10 experts from different fields to conduct a comprehensive examination of the collected data and prepare the final report.
The audit revealed the following bottlenecks in the current implementation of the systems:
- Lack of uniform standards for the regions of presence
- Poor IT fleet management
- Lack of version control
- Routing and cybersecurity issues
At the same time, fault tolerance and predictability of recovery time are among the most important requirements for such a distributed IT environment.
The audit helped the Customer evaluate potential investments and make the IT system easily scalable.
ICL Services also conducted an independent examination of the Customer's IT projects and optimized them. As a result, the Customer received a full-fledged business case with specific stages, action plans and investment calculation.
By implementing the concept, the Customer will increase the availability of IT services by reducing the number of accidents and recovery time, as well as cut the cost of IT infrastructure ownership.
Results
- Full IT infrastructure audi
- A full-fledged business case with specific stages, action plans and investment calculation