Architecture Review

Capacity and performance management and planning provides a cross-functional perspective of business and ICT, encompassing application design & infrastructure design.

Customers often want performance improvements or assurance concerning the capacity of their systems, without the appropriate architecture in place for their needs. A review of their current architecture and the options open to them can be run in parallel with other performance and capacity services.

A wealth of experience across numerous platforms, technologies, businesses and ICT functions, puts Capacitas in a unique position to offer such an architecture review service.

Need

• Is the current architecture fit for purpose?
• How scalable is the current architecture?

Challenges

• Understanding the business drivers of the architecture
• How to measure the business drivers
• Understanding the capacity and performance requirements of the architecture
• Finding a systematic way of establishing trade-offs between different architectural choices
• How to incorporate performance monitoring and reporting into the architecture

Our Service

Capacitas offers a comprehensive architecture review service, comprising a number of activities:

• Technical Audit and Analysis
  • 360 degree risk diagnosis including capacity, performance and availability
  • Data collection including software and hardware architectures, interfaces to other systems, performance and availability data from production systems, performance data from test systems, business volume forecasts, systems management data and SLAs
  • Identify capacity and non-capacity risks in the current architecture
  • Scalability study of existing architecture to assess whether business volumes can be accommodated
  • Identify risk mitigation

• Solutions
  • Identify quick wins
  • Propose replacement architecture options with pros and cons for each
  • Define capacity and performance requirements of the architecture
  • Define capacity and performance monitoring and reporting requirements
  • Define business volume requirements of the architecture
  • Define criteria for choosing a solution
  • Document roadmap to new architecture
  • Assistance in implementing the new architecture
  • Performance and stress testing of the new architecture, where appropriate

Features & Benefits

Delivering Results:

• Reduced risk of service outages
• Cost-effective sizing of infrastructure positioned to support business growth and future service enhancements
• Improved cost control through reduced risk of unplanned expenditure in reaction to service performance and stability incidents
• Appropriate infrastructure for business needs or understanding of actions needed to achieve this
• All single points of failure reviewed and suitable mitigation identified
• Services can support business continuity in event of disaster, or understanding of actions needed to achieve this

Flexible Resourcing:

• Staff only used when needed – no on-going charges compared to permanent staff or contractors
• Testing can be conducted on-site or off-site (e.g. over VPNs) if appropriate

Value-for-Money:

• By leveraging our experience from performance and capacity work to assess the overall enterprise architecture, customers can avoid wasting money on over-priced architects

Pragmatic Approach:

• Preliminary scoping work with an honest appraisal of whether the review is worthwhile
• A simple technique of using a template listing all components of the architecture, including management areas, at all stages of the process, ensuring that nothing is missed and that the impact of one area on all the others is taken into account
• Relating the business strategy and processes to the enterprise architecture and the infrastructure

Next Steps

• To email for further information click here
• Call our offices on +44 (0) 20 7841 9950 to arrange a meeting