Milan S. Markovich                      

Independent Systems Consultants For World Class Business Solutions

IT Strategic or Master Planning, Disaster Planning and Migration Planning

We like to say that systems planning is analogous to the carpenter who cuts once, but measures twice (or more). More often than not, proper planning saves much more than it costs in lost time and effort. Many businesses today depend upon their systems in order for their business to function at all. If their system is down, their business is down or severely crippled until it is back up. Lost revenue and poor customer relations may result. If a business outgrows its capacity, or the nature of business changes but the systems cannot accommodate that change, business is lost until it can change. Proper IT planning cures both of these problems that can affect all businesses, by helping you to get in front of the changes to anticipate what needs to be done beforehand.

IT Strategic or Master Planning

Strategic or long range planning encompasses anticipated business changes and requirements and how they will impact the existing IT platforms and strategies. Adequate capacity is just one of many considerations that should be addressed. Obsolete or inadequate hardware platforms and operating systems, network capacity and redundancy, security, application set changes, outsourcing and forecast business growth are just some of the other areas that typically are included.

ISC uses proven methodologies to assess and recommend alternative strategies that best fit the expected changes facing the business. This plan will cover a three to five year period and is usually updated annually. It forces management to focus on these changes at least once a year, and keeps a three to five year planning horizon always out front. By anticipating change, the IT changes are far less reactionary and hence, less disruptive to the business operations.

Disaster Planning

Disaster planning includes processes and procedures that are to be put in place in the event of an unexpected hit to the IT resources. Fire, flood, earthquake and employee sabotage are the more common scenarios. Whether to provide for offsite processing facilities as an ongoing or backup resource would also be evaluated. Other areas are system backups, offsite storage of backups, power protection, network redundancy, password policies and key personnel coverage.

Our proven methods and experience are applied to your business situation to provide you the level of protection warranted by the potential risk of systems outage to your ongoing business functions. This area is one of the most commonly overlooked areas by management - until disaster strikes. Unfortunately, it then becomes abundantly clear just how important prior planning really is.

Migration Planning

Whether you are migrating to a different hardware or network platform, or a new software application, a good migration plan that spells out tasks and responsibilities in a realistic timeframe will save your staff much in aggravation and your company in costs. While database conversions and file translations may be the IT focus, the business users and data owners should all be active participants in developing a good migration plan.

In all cases, migrations should go as smoothly as possible and without incident. We treat all system migrations in this manner. Migration plans should provide for most contingencies, so that at certain checkpoints, you can revert back to the last checkpoint, or all the way to the beginning to rectify the problem and restart the process, or reset the migration to another day. All staff involved in the migration should have a clear understanding of their role, and the overall plan. Once the plan is drafted all key players should review and finalize it to smoke out any unforeseen issues. A good migration plan is a must to ensure minimal business disruption.

Our consultants have years of hands on experience planning and doing successful migrations. Let us use that experience to your benefit where needed.

Whatever IT planning needs you may have, ISC can help you. Call us or use the form below for a free, no-obligation consultation today.

[ Home ] [ Up ]

Copyright © 2004 Independent Systems Consultants