Your IT Rationalization project will be designed to focus on the goals to be achieved, either as an essential part of your Digital Transformation program, or with specific shorter-term goals like cost reduction, efficiency improvement, and identification of innovation opportunities. It involves an enterprise-wide analysis of the IT portfolio (data, application, infrastructure, organization and business processes). We carry out these projects with the holistic approach of Enterprise Architecture.
We believe that sound enterprise architecture which analyzes Business Functions and Key Drivers, Operational Processes, Systems and Technology, is the best approach for enabling the business operations of the organization to transform through technology. The Enterprise Architecture process yields structures and guidance which can help organization most effectively leverage people, process and technology investments to achieve its business objectives. From the IT perspective, Enterprise Architecture is a well-defined practice for conducting multiple levels of analysis, design, planning, and implementation for the successful development and execution of strategy.
Application & Data Rationalization
Our Best Practices approach to application rationalization involves categorizing your IT portfolio according to return on investment, alignment with strategic goals and other factors, identifying redundancies, and developing and implementing a roadmap to financial and operational optimization.
Application and data rationalization is a critical element in a multifaceted approach to transforming an enterprise’s information technology landscape into one that is simplified, integrated, secure and economical. The rationalization assessment identifies which organizational, functional and governance aspects of the current state support future goals and which do not. DivIHN focuses on understanding and socializing the issues driving the need for rationalization, how well the IT strategy aligns with the business strategy, and any constraints that exist, including regulatory, environment and security or privacy requirements.
Future State
Our Enterprise Architects assist in articulating the vision for the Rationalized Future State of the Application and Data landscape. The Future State is often presented in the format of Blueprints and Roadmaps. Blueprints are high-level visual representations of the tangible components of the Future State Architecture. There may be one Blueprint reflecting an end-state or several reflecting transitional application and data architectures. Roadmaps are a key deliverable of the assessment and a fundamental part of tying together strategic planning, enterprise prioritized initiatives, and deliverables. They allow IT and the businesses to map out a series of actions or projects that are required to move from where it is today, to where it wants to go.
Sustainability / Governance
With deep experience in IT Governance, we will assist you in creating or updating a governance framework which defines the policies, structures, targets and reporting systems necessary to address the material risks and opportunities that sustainable development and architectural initiatives present. Governance keeps the corporate sustainability strategy on track. It makes sure the strategy remains effective, and that accountability for execution sits at the right level of the organization. Proper governance facilitates compliance with internal and external regulations. It provides process frameworks and definitions and ensures that associated content and documents are properly managed.
Asset Management
Asset Management is important during Rationalization to formulate our Transformation and Sustainability recommendations and roadmap. IT inventory management will help you manage your systems more effectively and save time and money by avoiding unnecessary asset purchases and promoting the stewardship of existing resources across their lifecycle.
Business & IT Process Rationalization
A Business Process Model is often the starting point for the assessment process. Our business analysis discovery techniques capture how a business process works and how individuals from different groups work collaboratively to achieve a business goal. Understanding the current processes and their impact on automation is critical for the development of our Applied Enterprise Architecture recommendation and Transformation Roadmap.
As a result of the assessment, we will provide recommendations to improve the interaction of business processes, technical processes, and applications systems. The recommendations may describe governance changes, systems design and development methodology improvements and application and data architecture initiatives, all of which facilitate integrated and collaboratively developed technology solutions to enable strategically aligned business processes.
Hardware & Network Infrastructure Rationalization
Our first major step in this would be to generate a current state assessment to create a clear picture of the existing hardware and network infrastructure. When an organization is looking to upgrade or expand its infrastructure, the first step is to understand the capabilities and shortcomings of the existing infrastructure. This assessment identifies infrastructure topologies that are candidates for redesign, infrastructure technologies to be upgraded or replaced and performance issues such as application, storage or network bottlenecks. If issues are uncovered, we will recommend remediation plans to address the problems and optimize performance.
Infrastructure rationalization is the process of aligning an organization’s computing, storage, network, and desktop resources with its current and future application portfolio. This process builds on the current state assessment examining the inventory of all deployed infrastructure resources, understanding them in the context of the application portfolio and categorizing them according to return on investment, alignment with strategic goals and other determining factors.
Future State
We present Future State recommendations in the format of Blueprints and Roadmaps. Blueprints are high-level visual representations of the major components of the Future State Architecture. There may be one Blueprint reflecting an end-state or several reflecting transitional architectures.
Roadmaps are a key deliverable of the assessment and a fundamental part of tying strategic planning and enterprise architecture prioritized initiatives, and deliverables. They allow IT and the businesses to map out a series of actions or projects that are required to move from where it is today, to where it wants to go.
Governance
Our governance framework will define the policies, structures, targets and reporting systems necessary to address the material risks and opportunities that sustainable development presents. Our governance model recommendations will help keep the corporate sustainability strategy on track. It makes sure the strategy remains effective, and that accountability for it sits at the right level of the organization. Proper governance facilitates compliance with internal and external regulations. It provides process definitions which can be understood by all involved and provides for the proper management of associated content and documents.
Network
Technology advances such as software-defined networking, VPN-based WANs, increasing reliance on cloud and hybrid cloud services and more are creating compelling business cases to assess data and voice networks independently of other infrastructure components. Our network-only infrastructure assessments have identified significant cost savings opportunities while refreshing the network architecture to incorporate current technologies, the right mix of on-premises, cloud, and hybrid cloud topologies, and best network management security practices, all tailored to the organization’s specific performance, reliability, security, redundancy and resiliency, geographic and other needs.
Compute
Enterprise compute capabilities are no longer bound to traditional data center virtualization technologies. Enterprises increasingly find compelling cases for a blend of traditional on-premises compute capacity with elastic cloud-based computing resources. This is just one example of the business and technology drivers that suggest an opportunity to assess the current computing footprint independently of other infrastructure assessments. Our infrastructure experts perform this assessment and recommend a roadmap to a more flexible, cost-effective compute capability.
Storage
Multi-tiered storage technologies continue to evolve and offer new opportunities for cost savings, performance improvements, replication, and containment of storage sprawl. An enterprise storage environment is often a candidate for assessment independent of other infrastructure components. Our storage architects have extensive expertise in best storage practices and a variety of on-premises and cloud-based storage technologies.
Enterprise
At DivIHN, we always approach our projects with a holistic frame of reference. A storage rationalization project, for example, cannot be executed in a vacuum. We look at the whole context, including business drivers, operations, systems (applications), and other elements of the technology landscape to deliver recommendations and solutions that make sense for the enterprise. This point of view also enables us to provide high value in rationalization projects that span multiple domains of applications and infrastructure. Whether the project is focused on a specific technology area or spans the whole of IT, we believe it is critical to understand how all of the things work together to provide business value. In light of other business goals and current and planned IT projects, we will provide IT Application rationalization recommendations, blueprints, and roadmaps that make holistic sense for the enterprise.
Finance
Our team of experienced executives assist with IT expense planning, project budgets, ROI projections, and vendor management initiatives such as contract reviews. This becomes particularly important in the prioritization and sequencing of multi-project rationalization programs.
Migrate, Sustain, Replace, Invest Dispositions
Rationalization recommendations include dispositions for specific applications and infrastructure technologies. DivIHN employs a fact and principle-based methodology to assign one of four dispositions: Migrate (to a lower cost platform); Sustain (continue as-is); Replace (sunset or retire an application or technology in favor of a functional equivalent); Invest (optimize the performance and functionality of key resources, making appropriate investments).
Team Organization
Fundamental in the development of the Rationalization project plan is understanding the current IT organization’s structure and competencies. The DivIHN advisory team includes seasoned IT Executives with C-level experience. Our IT assessment will address staff skills needed to support rationalization and the transformation to the future enterprise architecture state.
The Future State Definition provides a high-level description of the overall change vision, current and future states as well as gap analysis and key change interventions required. The gap analysis gives an initial view of the scale of the required organizational change. DivIHN defines the current and future state in people, process, technology and organizational dimensions. Key change interventions are drawn out by considering each of the above dimensions against the best practice areas; visible change leadership; smart engagement processes; strong individual performance; supportive organization; and culture and meaningful change measurement.
While the DivIHN Organizational Roadmap addresses improving competencies, alignment with the business and the organizational architecture over time, it also focuses on the organizational culture. Guidance on transformational change from the current organizational culture to one that fully embodies quality may be a recommendation. This roadmap would integrate the “process” and “human” considerations to achieve key foundational elements of Leadership; Employee Voice and Alignment; Customer Focus; and Teamwork and Collaboration.
