GroundWork - Consulting - Expertise to keep your system current

Design, Strategy and Customization

To remain effective, IT infrastructure management systems need to evolve with your needs. GroundWork Consulting provides the service and expertise to keep your system current as your business grows. Our experts have a deep understanding of open source, IT management and monitoring best practices, and can apply that knowledge to your system. Our consulting services are flexible enough to accommodate a diverse range of needs, including:

Application Monitoring Design

Often the performance and availability of a business process is determined by the performance of its underlying applications. Through Application Monitoring Design, GroundWork consultants can determine the right mix of internal (white box) and external (black box) monitors and metrics for managing application performance. Learn more about the monitoring design principles behind GroundWork Monitor, or download the white paper (PDF).

Monitoring Tools Rationalization

Often as networks grow, so too does the number of monitoring systems. Left unmanaged, these multiple and often overlapping tools can generate unneeded complexity, increase maintenance expense, and generate redundant alarms. GroundWork Monitoring Tools Rationalization creates a more efficient and manageable system by evaluating existing tools, identifying redundancies, deciding which tools to keep, and determining what jobs they should handle. Download the monitoring tools rationalization white paper.

IT Dashboards

Built on an open source platform, GroundWork custom IT Dashboards give you at-a-glance access to the real-time status of your infrastructure's availability and performance. With this information consolidated at one source, you're better equipped to manage and maintain optimal service levels.

GroundWork IT Dashboards use standardized data collection and interface methods to collect and consolidate infrastructure summary data, including service levels and support costs, for easier IT analysis, forecasting, budgeting, and management. This real-time data improves visibility of your entire infrastructure, including associated costs, service levels, and exceptions. With a single glance, you can determine actual network performance, promised service levels, and any gaps.

Technical and business data can be viewed by individual business units so you can more effectively maintain strategic alignment between your IT and business groups. As a result, you are better equipped to evaluate performance, identify top-level infrastructure trends and performance metrics, manage service levels, determine service delivery responsibilities, provide more consistent service delivery, and reduce costs of delivery. The combined effect will improve the business efficiency of your IT operations and strengthen IT customer relationships.

Infrastructure Configuration Discovery

Changes in your business environment can lead to mismatches between your intended network configuration and what is actually on your network. Such mismatches compromise network security and inhibit efficient capacity utilization. Groundwork Consulting can perform an independent audit to check your infrastructure's configuration and identify inconsistencies. We'll help you deploy a solution that gives you the visibility you need to stay in control.

IT Activity Based Costing

To run IT like a business, you need a standard system of analysis. GroundWork Consulting uses Activity Based Costing methodology to analyze your IT unit production costs. Using data from your monitoring systems, web logs, network traffic and service desk, we'll determine your applications' direct and indirect costs, and then show you how to allocate costs appropriately to business units, internal and external customers.

For more information about GroundWork Consulting Services, please email [email protected].

GroundWork Consulting can

Design customized monitoring capabilities for your enterprise applications

Design solutions to keep you in control of asset and configuration changes in your IT infrastructure

Review and rationalize your installed monitoring tools

Design customized IT dashboards that integrate IT performance data with your business

Design systems and processes for IT activity-based costing