Project Description
Industry: Public Utility
Size: Large
Task: Service Mapping for Data Center Migration
Duration of the project: 4 months
Project Overview
- Client had a populated CMDB using ServiceNow discovery that was being used primarily for regulatory needs. Lacking accurate business context
- Client was preparing to build a new data center for DR reasons and wanted to build out a new production environment on premise and in the cloud. To reduce the risk of the migration and to ensure no customer disruption, the 60 most critical business services were selected to be moved in phase 1. Data needed to do move group analysis was disparate and not all in one area
- Our task was to service map the top 60 business services and provide data reports to the project for App to Infrastructure relationships as well as out of domain App to App dependencies. ServiceNow service mapping was used to dynamically map these business service and to report on underlying dependencies while also track sign-off and overall status of the process.
- We were able to map out and validate 70 Business Services that included web, application, database, custom GIS applications, and industry leading energy management solution
- Built out simple-to-consume dependency reports that allowed them to plan out their migration strategy effectively
ConfigureTek’s Approach
The data center migration planning was well on its way already, so we were flexible with our approach to provide value where we can while not forcing them into further process that would ultimately annoy the SMEs (who were already overwhelmed as it was). We were able to save the implementation time by running all approvals through ServiceNow which the company users were already used to doing on a day to day basis. We were also able to create a paper trail for the sign-off activity so that it could be referenced later when it came time to re-validate after the phase 1 migration had completed.
• Reviewed fundamentals of Service Mapping with customer
• Worked with customer to build out their Business Services portfolio
• Worked with customer to send out questionnaire emails and mined data repositories for necessary information to complete service mapping
• Reviewed their existing CMDB and identified potential gaps and discrepancies in the configuration that could cause Service Mapping to fail
• Validated each Service Map created with the SME’s to ensure every dependency was captured accurately
• Requested and captured sign-off within ServiceNow to ensure a complete electronic paper trail
• Operationalized the Service Maps to allow them to be used throughout the ServiceNow platform
• Created and delivered reports depicting App to Infrastructure and App to App dependencies
Challenges
The customer had a populated CMDB using ServiceNow discovery that was being used primarily for regulatory needs but lacked accurate business context.
The customer was preparing to build a new data center for disaster recovery (DR) reasons and wanted to build out a new production environment. To reduce the risk of the migration and to ensure no customer disruption, the 60 most critical business services were selected to be moved as first step (Phase 1). The following project tasks were created to address these challenges:
• Create service maps for the top 60 business services
• Provide Application to Infrastructure relationships reports as well as out of domain Application to Application dependencies
• Track sign-off and overall status of the service mapping process
• Provide dependency reports to plan out migration strategy effectively
