Your Information System Assessment
John,
You know that Information Technology is a vital asset to any business.
Imagine your own company without a functioning network, servers or business
applications. Chances are good that when any of these critical systems go down, business
grinds to a halt. Technology is at the center of all business processes today. It opens vast
opportunities for profitable growth but it’s critical for a company to assess its systems and
server technology or it will become problematic to provide support and security – and the
higher the risk of hampering a company’s agility.
Business can take advantage of numerous benefits from updated server technology
including:
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A more secure and reliable architecture
The opportunity to take advantage of virtualization
Reduced downtime which can negatively impact a
business’ image in the eyes of customers
Preparing for the increased demand mobile requirements
place on servers
Cost savings - older systems can actually cost more to
operate than newer systems cost to procure
Current trends in technology (cloud computing, virtualization, etc.) make it possible to
develop new uses and propel user productivity and organizational efficiency to new levels.
However, these new opportunities and trends can thrive only with modern, efficient, and
secure infrastructures and information systems.
This assessment has been designed to assist you with this process in order to meet new
challenges. The document developed from your answers to the questionnaire contains
three main sections:
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Your IT dashboard
Your focus areas (strengths and areas for improvement)
Best practices and recommendations based on the identified areas for improvement
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Your IT Infrastructure dashboard…
You have 80 personal computer equipment assets (desktop computers, laptops, and
tablets), located at 1 site and are managed internally..
Your IT infrastructure is based on the following characteristics:
Information System are managed
5 Servers
internally
- Lenovo is the preferred brand
The oldest Server Operating System is Windows
Server 2003
Virtualization is not deployed in your infrastructure
Applications are used through Cloud Computing infrastructure
Within your organization, the IT infrastructure needs to be developed. It limits you from
enjoying all of the advances in IT in recent years, on both a technological and an economic
level. Discussions about modernizing your infrastructure (operating systems, cloud
computing, updated servers, outsourced management, etc.) can re-energize your
infrastructure, boost user productivity, and lower risks.
Efficiency
Performance
Security
38%
Improve
Weak
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Your focus areas…
In order to enjoy the full potential of the latest technical innovations, it is essential to
analyze your organization's strengths and areas for improvement.
The following table summarizes the items that are advantages and the items for which a
significant improvement can save time, improve efficiency for the organization, and
increase productivity for all users.
Strengths
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You are already using cloud
computing applications or services
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You have put a backup recovery
plan into place to protect against a
major incident
Areas for improvement
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Your information system is
managed internally. You may want
to look into outsourcing selected
area to allow you to focus on key
initiatives.
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Part of your server infrastructure is
obsolete: Strong impact on
performance and reliability
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Aging operating system: Security
and compliance risks may arise in
the upcoming months
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You have not had the opportunity
to integrate virtualization within
your infrastructure
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Your applications and data are
apparently not secure from the
standpoint of effectiveness
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You are only partially satisfied with
the performance level provided by
your IT infrastructure (server and
storage)
Best practices & recommendations…
With your organization and challenges in mind, several best practices should be applied to
optimize your infrastructure.
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Findings: Your server infrastructure is aging. Part of the infrastructure is 4 to 5 years old.
You may encounter an increasing number of performance problems and risks in terms
of reliability.
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Best practices: It is strongly recommended to refresh servers every 60 months. This
helps ensure an efficient infrastructure, optimal security, and better productivity for
users. Think back five years. Few businesses were thinking about social media and the
smartphone was just two years old. It’s hard to know what kind of technological
advances the next five years will bring, but new servers will help businesses prepare for
new capabilities. New systems are more robust and provide maximum uptime for
applications and data. For example, updating your infrastructure with the Lenovo
ThinkServer server with Windows Server 2012 and the latest Intel Xeon processors can
modernize and standardize your IT infrastructure and consolidate servers.
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Findings: Your operating system will no longer be supported by Microsoft after July
2015. Under the Microsoft support policy, your servers will no longer receive new
updates, security patches, etc. after that date.
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Best practices: It is strongly recommended you prepare to migrate your current server
operating system to Microsoft Windows Server 2012. Migrating will give you a secure
environment that is supported by Microsoft. Then, because your current environment is
based on technology that is more than 10 years old, migrating will give you the
opportunity to enjoy major advances: the ability to be cloud-ready, greater business
agility and the ability to adjust capacities as your business grows, greater uptime, the
potential to implement backup and recovery solutions at the lowest cost, etc..
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Findings Virtualization is not integrated into your infrastructure. This is a strong trend
for all IT infrastructures. It is a technological solution you should investigate.
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Best practices: Virtualizing some or the entire infrastructure presents many advantages.
It lowers equipment purchase costs, simplifies server management, increases the
flexibility of the infrastructure, and adapts IT resources to business needs. However,
virtualization must use a high-performing environment. Installing the Microsoft
Windows Server 2012 operating system is recommended to fully benefit from
virtualization.
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