Methodology

The brief about the planned methodology that MIND adopts while undertaking a IT Infrastructure Support project is as mentioned below:

Step I – Assessment and Inventory

The key purpose of this phase is to clearly identify the physical infrastructure and current processes. The inputs which are gathered in this stage are:

Hardware Inventory (along with details like model no, IOS version, etc)
Formulation of network topology (details like IP addressing, SNMP Read string etc would be required at this stage)
Identification of status of the assets
Current processes that are in place to support the Infrastructure
Identify current problem areas
Document the setup (if not already available)

Step II – Define scope of work and SLA

Based on the inputs gathered in Step I, the next step is to identify the scope of work and also define the relevant SLA’s. The different activities performed in this stage are:

Discuss with client about his expectation on the scope of coverage in terms of devices and services to be monitored.
Formulate the parameters or attributes to be monitored and map this to the compatibility with the available devices.
Incase of any gap in terms of service expectation Vs the Infrastrure status then suggest workaround or remedial measures.
Finalize the service deliverables for the set of Infrastructure.
Define alerts and triggers for threshold breaches
Establish reporting mechanism and contents

Step III - Handover/Transition

After settings up the scope of work, incase of large enterprises there is an essential requirement of an overlap period with the existing support framework. Hence it is recommended that the existing processes and methodology be changed (if at all they require a change) in a planned and step by step fashion instead of “Single-Big-Bang” methodology.
The time duration for this activity varies from organization to organization depending on the size of Infrastructure and also the maturity of the existing processes. But normally it takes anywhere between 2 to 6 weeks approximately.

Step IV - SLA based Support

In this phase the entire scope of services which were agreed upon are managed by MIND and if the corrective actions are also part of scope of MIND then that is measured as per the predefined SLA. The client’s staff is kept updated on the day to day basis on the SLA compliance and also for any exception reporting. The key deliverable for this phase are:

Provide users with services that have been agreed upon in the scope of work
Monitor and review the SLA’s adherence
Reporting of the data and exceptions to clients staff as per agreement
Review the services and discuss the improvement plans with client
Example of SLA’s that are normally used are
Response time of the call
Resolve time of the call
No. of repeat calls for the same problem
Customer satisfaction index
Uptime of the core IT infrastructure like servers, LAN, WAN, UPS etc.