Professional Services

The first step in the process normally involves having a discussion about your high-level requirements. This can normally be captured at the pre-sales stage, but sometimes follow up meetings or conference calls may be required if the discussion involves complex technical issues.
The requirements analysis forms the basis of the project and feeds into the “Proof of Concept”, “Statement of Work” and “Design” stages, so it is important to ensure that all the requirements are captured.

The Proof of Concept (PoC) is not mandatory, after all the technology is tried and trusted, but some customers prefer to run a PoC in a lab environment to ensure the product meets specific requirements. Also a PoC is useful for validating the solution within the customers environment, for instance if there are unusual or critical devices present on the network (e.g. industrial or medical equipment).

The Statement of Work (SoW) is a critical document that outlines our responsibilities and those of the customer. It will provide a high-level overview of the work that needs to be done. If the customer decides that additional work is required that falls outside the scope of the SoW, additional professional services may be required. Therefore it is important to ensure the Requirements Analysis has captured all requirements.

Once the Requirements Analysis has been completed, we would normally hold a Design Workshop if there are more in-depth technical discussions required. This workshop is designed to discuss the fundamentals of the implementation, down to such details as DNS forwarder statements and DHCP scope options.

Based on the Requirements Analysis and Design Workshop, we can produce a High-Level Design (HLD) document that provides a general description of the solution and how it will work within the customers environment. Some customers do not require a HLD if they are already familiar with the technology or if they have produced their own internal HLD to help them get budgetary approval from the stakeholders.

Based on the Requirements Analysis and Design Workshop, we will produce a Low-Level Design (LLD) or detailed design that will go into deep technical detail about the solution and how it will be deployed and configured. This will include network configuration details along with specific DDI configuration information. The LLD acts as a reference document that all subsequent stages of the project are reliant upon.

The Implementation and Regression Plans will detail how the solution will be deployed and can be used to generate change control requests. The Implementation Plan will also specify such details as the timing of changes, pre-requisites for each stage and if there is data to be migrated, the migration process and the steps involved.

The Regression Plan will provide an action plan (i.e. a backout plan) should a change during the implementation need to be reverted to a previous “known-good” configuration. The regression could involve a complete reversion or reversion to a partial deployment. For instance, if an issue is discovered that requires a regression, but the issue is not service affecting, the customer may not require a complete reversion but may be satisfied with a partial reversion.

The User Acceptance Test (UAT) plan can be as complex or as simple as required. A simple UAT plan may be executed to check that the implementation has been successful.

If a more formal UAT process is required (e.g. if the environment is particularly complex), we will happily work with you to develop a suitable UAT plan to meet your requirements.

We recommend customers attend a training course prior to implementation so that when the solution goes live there is staff who have familiarity with the product. This can be of great benefit during the first few weeks after going live as it minimizes the chances of a mistake occurring and reduces the number of support calls required.

Bespoke onsite training can also be provided where customers prefer tailored training for end users.

The implementation/deployment stage is the culmination of all the previous stages and will follow the Implementation Plan. Depending on the customer’s working practice, work can be performed during the normal business day, such as preparing the hardware and importing data. Normally a change freeze is required if there is an existing DDI/IPAM solution, so that the data can be migrated without additional changes occurring at the same time.

If existing DNS/DHCP servers are being replaced, the swapping of IP addresses or cables would normally take place outside of normal business hours with these changes fully supported by our engineers.

As soon as the implementation/migration is complete, the UAT plan is executed. This is the final step before declaring the implementation a success. If there is an issue found the Regression Plan can be executed.

We would recommend that an engineer be present on site for the first day or two after going live to monitor the system, check the logs for any issues and generally be on hand to answer queries and provide introductory sessions. The system will be formally handed over during this stage.

Finally, we recommend running post-implementation training courses. We run a variety of courses including in-depth technical and troubleshooting courses, as well as providing focused end-user training for users that simply need to allocate IP addresses. Check our training section for more detail.