StorTech helps organisations to understand, store, secure and manage their information in order to drive business efficiency, mitigate risk and reduce operational costs.

We offer traditional enterprise-level support services such as Service Management, Risk & Governance, Business Continuity Management, Training, Project Management Technology Installations and Continuous Improvement. Our Professional Services drive organisational and operational improvements, adding true business value while enabling the Business Value Chain.

Effective thought leadership brings a consistent, integrated approach and a vocabulary, which are valuable contributions to our Clients.

Services

StorTech's Professional Services offer Consulting and ITIL Education to ensure continuous Business Improvement.

1.    Assessments
Projects often fail to have the required success due to the lack of planning. StorTech's Professional Services have designed various assessments that are strategically applied to identify the correct scope of projects that will ensure that the short to medium term objectives are met. These assessments are listed and described below:

o   ITIL Assessments
Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is internationally the de facto standard in service management and it ensures integrated, centralised processes that align an organisation's IT processes to corporate business requirements. StorTech's ITIL Service Maturity Assessment investigates an organisation's maturity in terms of ITIL. We investigate your organisation's processes, people and technologies. These assessment reports recommend actions that should be taken by organisations to improve ITIL maturity.

o   Storage Assessments
StorTech's Storage Assessment provides invaluable insights into your existing data storage infrastructure and resources. With this assessment, our professional consultants investigate your storage environment: the hardware, software, databases and how they are integrated. The results of the assessment are used to build a storage management strategy that is closely aligned with your organisation's business needs.

o   Information Management Maturity Model (IM3) Assessment
IM3 is a web-based self-assessment process that asks several value judgement questions, the answers to which are compared against established and well-refined benchmarked results from many industries. The output positions the client in various categories of information management maturity that can be used as starting points for developing business improvement programmes.

o   Backup Environment Profile Assessment
With this service, StorTech provides objective evaluations and recommendations that help maximise existing storage performance, increase data security and manage data retention and regulatory risk at an optimum cost, focusing specifically on your backup and restore processes. The Backup Environment Profile focuses on providing information covering all aspects of the backup environment and disaster recovery plans. The service is available for Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, Netware, Linux, W2K and NT environments and provides information on Netbackup, Networker, TSM, CA BrightStor and other backup products, tape libraries, tape drives, disk systems, switches and HBAs involved in backups.

o   Consulting
All our Consultants have implementation experience in a vast number of industries. The Alignment and Improvement of IT Processes within clients focuses on actual Business Value rather than just the theory of the Best Practices found in the some framework books. All our Consultants follow the Alignment Approach described in Section 3 (Approach). This ensures independent sustainable Consulting within clients since we follow proven approach.

2.    Education
Without a sound theoretical basis a ITIL Alignment any ITIL Project is bound to fail. ITIL Education Services support the ITIL Consulting Service by ensuring that the capacity to disseminate ITIL information exists within the various ITIL target groups. The ability to Reflect and Act on ITIL information is vital to ensure the successful alignment to ITIL.

3.    Project Management
StorTech's Project Management Service is usually delivered through the international best practice for Project Management (PRINCE2). All projects are delivered though this framework to ensure that:

o   Customer satisfaction

o   Agreed milestones

o   Agreed budgets

o   Project objectives are managed and achieved to expectation.

4.    Business Service Continuity Management (BSCM) and IT Service Continuity Management (ITSCM) Service

The goal for BSCM is to support the overall Business Continuity Management process by ensuring that the required IT technical and services facilities (including computer systems, networks, applications, telecommunications, technical support and Service Desk) can be recovered within required, and agreed, business timescales.

ITSCM focuses on the IT Services required to support the critical business processes. The impact of a loss of a business process, such as financial loss, damage to reputation or regulatory breach, is measured through a Business Impact Analysis (BIA), which determines the minimum critical requirements. The specific IT technical and service requirements are supported by BSCM. The scope of BSCM within an organisation is determined by the organisational structure, culture and strategic direction (both business and technology) in terms of the services provided and how these develop and change over time.

Benefits

The key benefits of using our Professional Services:

        Improve the quality of IT Services

        Improve bottom-line results

        Provide cost justifiable service quality

        Provide services that meet business, client and user needs

        Provide documented roles and responsibilities

        Provide integrated, centralized processes

        Align IT processes to Corporate Governance requirements

The following are some of the generic benefits that will be realised by engaging with StorTech's Professional Services:

Business benefits

        Improved quality of business operations by ensuring that IT processes underpin the business processes

        Reliable business support provided by processes such as Incident Management and Change Management as well as the Service Desk

        Customers will know what to expect from IT and what is required of them to ensure this can be delivered

        Increased productivity of business and Customer staff because of more reliable, more available, IT Services

        IT Service Continuity procedures are more focused on the business needs and there will be more confidence in the ability to follow procedures when required

        Better working relationships between the Customers and the IT service provider

        Enhanced Customer satisfaction as service providers know and deliver what is expected of them.

Financial benefits

        Cost-justified IT infrastructure and IT services.

        When our advice is implemented, it should give long-term financial benefits, for example:

        By the identification of causes of Incidents recurrence of failures can be prevented

        The cost of implementing Change will be reduced and the impact on the business will be minimised

        Services will not be over-engineered but they will be designed to meet the required availability targets

        Maintenance contracts for both hardware and software will be cancelled when the components are no longer required

        'just in time' Capacity provision

        Appropriate service continuity expenditure

Employee benefits

        IT staff will know what is expected of them and have the processes and training available to ensure that this expectation can be met

        Increased productivity of IT staff

        More motivated staff; improved job satisfaction through better understanding of capability and better management of expectations

        Improved visibility and reputation of the IT department again leading to more motivated staff

Innovation benefits

        Clearer understanding of the requirements of the IT service provision will ensure that IT services are delivered that underpin business processes

        Better information on current services (and possibly on areas where changes would bring most benefits)

        Greater flexibility for the business through improved understanding of IT support

        Increased flexibility and adaptability is likely to exist within the services

        Improved ability to recognise changing trends and to adapt quickly to new requirements and market developments

Internal benefits

        Improved metrics and management reporting

        Better information on current services and on where changes would bring most benefits

        Improved communications and inter-team working (both IT and Customer)

        Clearly view and defined roles and responsibilities

        Process maturity benefits that are repeatable, consistent and self-improving.

Approach

Professional Services are typically custom-consulting engagements conducted by our team of professionals based on agreed Statements of Work that leads to millstones reached with set deliverables. Our services are tailored to the Client's exact requirements to determine scope and price.

Our Professional Services approach is to gain a current state understanding of an organisation's ICT services needed. These services include the People, Process and Technology aspects. We do this through an information-gathering process by holding interviews and using questionnaires. The information gathered is analysed and presented in report format, in some cases along with industry best practices metrics, where available. Reports are scoped to present the current situation as well as the future state requirements that summarises the GAP that needs to be improved.

The results that derive from our Professional Services assessment engagements assist us in developing and implementing practical deliverables to build our solutions, which are architected, deployed, secured and managed to support your business objectives.

IT service provision, in all organisations, needs to be matched to current and rapidly changing business demands. The objective is to continually improve the quality of service, aligned to the business requirements, cost-effectively. To meet this objective, three areas that considered are:

        People with the right skills, appropriate training and the right service culture

        Effective and efficient Service Management Processes

        Good IT Infrastructure in terms of tools and Technology