Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
ect team may choose from that list. IA standards may provide a specific vendor and
a specific product and the project team must use that product and no other.
Vendor details like number of employees, financial backing, support capabili-
ties, willingness to place source code in escrow, etc., are all as important as product
features, performance, and integration into the enterprise technical environment.
The most wonderful technology is no good if the support structure behind it goes
out of business.
2.11.10
Product Selection
Product selection is complementary to vendor selection, and the results of both
a vendor analysis and a product analysis govern the best choice. Vendor selection
criteria look at the business behind the product. Product selection criteria look at
the technical capabilities of the product and the ability to integrate that product
into enterprise operations.
2.11.11
Implementation
Upon product selection, there remains the challenge of actually getting it to work
in the enterprise operating environment. The vendor and product user groups will
offer assistance for effective implementation. Implementation guidance includes
configuration, administration, establishing a test environment and staging envi-
ronment, pilot testing, and enterprise deployment.
2.11.12
Operations and Maintenance
Seek out industry best practices for operations and maintenance. User groups often
offer far more valuable insight into effective operations than the vendor does. The
actual users face the challenges of integrated operations where multiple applica-
tions from multiple vendors have to work effectively on the same network and same
systems. The vendors themselves do not have the resources to test every possible
permutation of integrated environments. Nor, for that matter, does any single user.
However, a user group that contains dozens or hundreds of separate users provides
valuable insights.
The total cost of ownership includes administration, maintenance, patching,
upgrades, and fixing problems. The architectural team provides some insights on
the total ownership experience. Seeking out best practices for operations and main-
tenance adds to this knowledge. One objective for the architectural team is to
man-
age expectations
of executives, management, and operations personnel. Expectations
of adequacy are happy with slightly better than adequate. Expectations of excel-
lence are not happy at all with results slightly better than adequate.
