Risk assessment is the key

The move from the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement to Premier Agreement gave Nampak immediate solutions and an overview of its environment, which has led to considerable cost savings. Added to which the company now has a high level of response from Microsoft if it encounters any problems.

“We have a partner on the development side who has also been handling urgent system risks on SharePoint for us,” said Shawn Gray, OPT Manager, Nampak. “This has been fine, but it was expensive and impacted on operational effectiveness because we needed to have someone on call all the time in a reactive role. That pulls the partner away from the development work, which is their primary skill.

“We were an Enterprise Agreement customer of Microsoft and there was nothing wrong with this agreement, but it didn't give us a strong management component. For example, when we had to bring in professional services to do something, we relied heavily on that company to manage the work with their project management skills.”

Nampak was experiencing difficulties, particularly with SharePoint Server, and Microsoft suggested the company should use components of the Premier Agreement, which would give them much more support from Microsoft.

One of the aspects of Premier Agreement is a Risk Assessment by Microsoft engineers of exactly how the system works and where improvements can be made to reduce downtime. It also gives 24/7 high-level response to anything that is needed to keep the system running properly.

“Already, in the setting up of the Assessment there were risks which Microsoft identified. Things we should have been doing and ranged from small incidental things to major problems that put the entire infrastructure at risk,” said Gray. “The Assessment took about 10 days, during which the engineer solved all the high risk components. All the work that needed to be done could be carried out in-house and we didn't need to call in our outsource partner at all.”

The entire system was checked and advice given on how to deal with various aspects which meant that Nampak could handle all the risk elements within its IT infrastructure.

“There were no problems with SharePoint Server itself - the risks came from how it was set up and the way we were managing and maintaining it. So now we have incorporated the suggestions into our monthly maintenance programme and the difficulties we were experiencing have been solved.

“We have just upgraded our Windows 2003 Server backend to 2008 and we were able to rebuild the entire SharePoint infrastructure without difficulty, or outside assistance, over a weekend. Previously this kind of work would have involved an architect, a couple of solution application developers from the partner, plus our own staff. This time we had one person, in-house, who handled the entire thing.

“We are now planning to do an assessment on the SQL Server elements, which will enable us to improve our service delivery and eliminate any outstanding problems there.”

The Assessment has led to considerable savings of time, effort and money, including man-hours and overtime as well as the downtime of the system and the frustration this causes in a big company like Nampak.

The company will be moving shortly to Microsoft Exchange 2010 and is looking at using Premier to assist in performing an evaluation and managing the implementation, with the work will being done by a third party.

Other benefits have included chalk-and-talk workshop training elements and knowledge transfer, which have enabled IT staff members to achieve a higher knowledge level.

“Because we now have a stable environment, our partner has been able to go back to the project work, which is where their strengths lie, and add value to the system rather than being pulled of this work to give support,” said Gray.

The Microsoft Premier Agreement is split into three parts.

* Some 80hrs of a TAM's time per year.

* An engineer checking pain points, which a company may be having and making recommendations, including a formal risk assessment.

* The reactive component where the system has gone down and Microsoft will assist, either telephonically or on site.