IT Discovery is a critical and complex exercise that should be completed prior to any cloud, data center migration, transformation, or consolidation effort. Mapping systems to business applications provides the required visibility into dependencies that need to be considered as a part of these programs. CTM Technology Group will lead your organization through this process utilizing existing tools in your environment as well as industry standard data collection tools. By the end of our engagement, you will have all the necessary details to begin migrating or consolidating systems and applications based on key dependencies.
Why Map Dependencies?
Organizations require Application Dependency Mapping for multiple reasons. Mapping dependencies provides an accurate snapshot of the IT environment. It helps identify opportunities and uncover risks that could potentially impact a data center migration or a migration to Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud. IT organizations that want to minimize any impact to the Business with migration and consolidation efforts need a comprehensive, and accurate inventory and mapping of all their systems, applications, and dependency relationships.
By identifying relationships and dependency groupings, applications can be clustered together in preparation for these programs. Organizations can also use dependency mapping to develop capacity plans or roadmaps. In addition, mapping systems and applications allows for more accurate CMDBs and aids IT Operations in ongoing support of their business.
What is the Process?
CTM Technology Group leverages our Application Mapping Methodology to complete IT Discovery. We document your organizational goals and agree on the scope of the discovery effort. We collect and review any existing documentation and inventories you have, along with performing physical inspections of your environment. CTM verifies any data you provide and review with the application or business teams. We distribute questionnaires, hold application centric workshops, and perform follow-up interviews with subject-matter experts. When supported by our clients, we utilize automated discovery tools to provide additional data points or verification.
We consolidate the data, complete an analysis, and start to form the system and application dependencies. We validate the analysis with our client and review emerging themes. With the data collected and the subsequent analysis, CTM generates an IT Discovery summary report along with a roadmap and provides an executive presentation closing out the effort.
See CTM's Application Mapping Methodology for additional details on our process.
How Long Does IT Discovery Take?
IT Discovery and Mapping typically lasts anywhere from six to fourteen weeks, but is highly dependent on a number of factors that should be documented prior to any engagement. When deciding about a discovery initiative, be ready to discuss your organizational goals and provide access to CMDBs and other inventories. In addition, consider the availability of your Subject-Matter Experts, the number of applications, servers and databases running in your organization, and whether you will support running discovery tools?
