The Occam Group-Independent Analysis and Management of IT Resources

1
The Occam Group-Independent Analysis and
Management of IT Resources

• Company Overview

2
Service Offerings

• Assess, design, implement and operate
• Enterprise Monitoring
• Application Readiness
• Application Architectural Design Validation
• Application Forensics
• Dashboard/Scorecard
• ITSM / ITIL Solutions
• High Availability Solutions
• SOX Readiness

3
The Occam Groups Industry Position
What methodology and tools will lead to the
greatest level of client satisfaction?
Methodology
The Occam Group
Large Consulting Group
Reseller
Tools
HP
IBM
CA
Micromuse
BMC
Netscout
4
The Occam Group Model vs. Large Consulting Model
Large Consulting Model
The Occam Group Model

• Aligned with large scale projects.
• Strong project leads, commonly teamed with a
  body-shop delivery staff.
• Seek long-term client relationships based upon
  large scale, long-term projects.
• Generally high billing rates for skills
  delivered.

• Aligned with short-term project based success.
• Strong project leads with highly experienced
  delivery engineers.
• Seek long term client relationships based upon
  repeatable, short-term projects.
• Billing rates are targeted at delivering
  equivalent skills for up to 100 per hour less
  achieving much better value

5
The Occam Group Model vs. Reseller Model
Reseller Model
The Occam Group Model

• Aligned with product sales.
• Strongly discouraged from presenting multi-vendor
  solutions thru vendor pressures.
• Product oriented deployments that minimize
  customization and maximize products.
• Profits from product sales and services. Creates
  loyalty to vendors often at the expense of the
  client.

• Aligned with client solutions.
• Develop best-of-breed solutions with multi-vendor
  technologies.
• Client oriented deployments to minimize products
  and maintenance.
• Profit from services only. Creates strong loyalty
  to customer. Long term successful solutions
  create repeat business.

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Level of Client ValueSolution quality and
solution cost
The Occam Group
Large Consulting
Reseller
Average
Low
Exceptional
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Satisfaction Driven By Methodology
To deliver IT solutions that maximize client
satisfaction
8
Methodology - Planning

• The Occam Group remains focused on the business
  drivers throughout the analysis, design and
  implementation process.
• Take time to understand concerns, existing
  skills, existing products, and available budget
  to produce the best recommendation for true value
  success.
• Project oriented focus - defining with a high
  level of detail the resource and task
  requirements needed for accurate expectations of
  time and budget.
• Perform the vital planning tasks in conjunction
  with product selection. We do not select
  products oblivious to the environment they will
  need to operate in.

9
Methodology Our Process

• We bring an existing refined method to the
  planning that includes
• Define requirements through an interview process
• Business (SLA/SLO) definitions that are
  measurable
• Identifying key technical product specifications
• Select products to best meet the requirements
• Develop an architectural component solution
• Develop a fully loaded project plan
• Implement in phases building organizational
  support and minimizing risk.

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Methodology Staff

• Implement with experienced IT professionals
• Average of 15 years experience.
• Our staff undergo rigorous interview/testing
  process to ensure technical ability and
  communications skills.
• Our primary focus is on the actual IT
  technologies not a specific software. We
  understand the complete IT resources to be
  analyzed managed.
• How well will you deploy a management tool if
  you do not understand how best to use it?

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Methodology Product Use

• Strategically select products to meet client
  requirements based on function, vendor stability
  support, ease of adoption, etc.
• Extensive use of open standards technologies.
• We thoroughly evaluate each technology in-house
  to prove its capabilities before we recommend it
  to a client.
• Select multi-vendor technologies for
  best-of-breed solution.
• Limit number of different vendor products to
  reduce complexity and increase adoption and
  success.
• Bring existing work effort to dramatically
  increase the effectiveness of a tool at greatly
  reduced implementation time ().

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Methodology Tool Creation

• The Occam Group specializes in the creation of
  tools in situations where no tool or integration
  exists.
• Examples of tools we have created include
• Custom X.25 Packet Node Monitor to track status
  and configuration 7x24 for 10,000 nodes.
• Writing directly at the OVO product API level to
  construct a solution resolving overlap of private
  IP address spaces within the environment.
• Creation of an SNMP agent for a proprietary
  device where no standard monitoring method
  existed. Enabling access from many standard
  products.

13
The Occam Group Promise

• To clearly say what we will do and
• Relentlessly deliver what we say we can do for
  our clients .

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Service CapabilitiesIndependent of Supply
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Clients

• AAA of Michigan
• BondDesk
• Beaumont Hospitals
• Buckeye Telephone
• Chase Manhattan Mortgage Corporation
• Cardinal Health
• CheckFree
• Cisco
• Comerica
• Corporate Express
• Donnelly Automotive
• DTE Energy
• EDS
• General Electric
• General Motors
• Great Lakes Gas Transmission Co.
• Henry Ford Health Systems
• Hewlett-Packard Consulting
• Holcim

• Inteq
• IBM-Micromuse
• Johnson Controls
• Kellogg/Keebler
• La-Z-Boy
• Lexis Nexis
• Life Line
• MCI
• Meijer
• Ohio Department of Human Services
• Ohio Department of Administrative Services
• OnStar
• SBC
• SmartPipes
• Spectrum Health
• State of Michigan
• Sterling Commerce
• The Limited Brands, Inc.
• Trinity Health

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The Occam Group

• The Occam Group Methodology Details

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The Occam Group Methodology DetailsEnterprise
Management Industry Perspective
Traditional management areas (FCAPS)
Industry wide tool capability increases
Enterprise management industry tool
maturity Increases
Security
Configuration
Asset
Performance
Fault
Complexity increases
IT Services
Rare (lacking tools for complex components)
Moderate (Emerging tools, No common methods)
Value increases
Vendor Services
Application
Host Hardware
Moderate (Emerging tools / low integration)
Common (Many tools, Moderate to low integration)
WAN Elements
Simple components are combined to create complex
enterprise services
LAN Elements
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The Occam Group Methodology DetailsLong-term
strategy Architectural Template
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The Occam Group Methodology DetailsProduct Life
Cycle Development to Production Workflow
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The Occam Group Methodology DetailsOperational
Methods Message Policy

• Operations Events (Production by definition)
• Subset of all available events
• Must be matched
• Message must be fully defined
• All fields should be populated.
• Instruction text should be developed
• Approved by operations
• 2nd Tier Events (Production Events)
• Include all operations events in addition to
  events for 2nd level support.
• Must be matched
• Fully defined

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The Occam Group Methodology DetailsOperational
Methods Message Policy (cont)

• Development
• Development messages should be converted to
  production messages, or suppressed on a regular
  basis. Typically performed by subject matter
  experts.

22
The Occam Group Methodology Details Aligning
Tools to the Methodology

• Implementation of formal message policies within
  operations console.
• Grouping of messages that support ITIL concepts
  for message classification (FCAPS) and routing.
• Specialized layout of management templates
• Allows for versioning of templates
• Allows for dev/tst/prd version of templates
• Allows for update of templates and distribution
  by SMEs (subject matter experts)
• External instruction text interface