Bull Projects and Delivery into Higher Education

Our approach and methodology to projects forms the foundation stone for a successful implementation. Smooth implementations depend upon careful planning, extensive analysis, skilled project management, along with listening and understanding the needs of our customers. Fully recognising that different institutions have different requirements, goals, and objectives, our professionals effectively manage people, costs, and deadlines, to successfully complete projects on time, within budget, and to standards recognised by industry best practice. In addition, we achieve this with full service continuation, and without the risk normally associated with change.

Every programme we undertake incorporates a number of projects, which will have been identified by the various stakeholders for review. The key focus of any programme is to deliver the design, specifications and implementation planning of the following but not limited to:

• Planning, Design, Service levels, and alignment
• Infrastructure
• Interoperability
• Availability and DR Planning
• Management
• Security
• Migration & Service Continuity
• Support Services

An output document will be generated, and will highlight multilevel processes within each of the above headings, and detail best practices, procedures, and change management required to provide a successful conclusion.

The Programme will also produce a Project Control (PCD) and Statement of Work (SOW) document, which will be approved by IT Management before the implementation and migration phases.

The on-going management of our projects are facilitated by the production of regular project documents, including Project & Resource Plans, Change Control, and Risk & Issue Logs

Our Project managers and consultants work with the institution's and program's objectives fully in mind. These objectives typically include: -

• Design, build and deliver a high quality infrastructure. The design should include interoperability with existing architecture and a provision for expansion requirements going into the future.
• Provide a fault-tolerant and available infrastructure to support any business continuity plans and agreed quality & service levels.
• Provide appropriate backup and restore for critical systems and services.
• Eliminate risks to the smooth running of the institution during transition periods.
• Manage each project within agreed budgets.
• Standardise services where appropriate.
• Provide comprehensive Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) documentation.
• Design simplicity and efficiencies into every project for ease of ongoing management, and carbon emission avoidance.

One of the big concerns most institutions have with any project is the migration from the old to the new. This is fully understandable, and one that Bull recognises and incorporates within every project.

As migration is so critical, and different organisations have varying requirements, detailed discussion will have to be had with each customer to determine the exact approach and time required.

The term migration is often used to refer to several different operations, Infrastructure, Services, and Data. It can also be project based / once-off, or ongoing. Ongoing is normally associated with data and a tiered storage solution, and is normally rules based and automated.

Migrations typically follow the same basic methodology illustrated below.

Planning is the number one success factor for any migration project, independent of the complexity. Not only does upfront planning help shorten the duration of the migration process, but also it reduces services' impact and potentional risk e.g. application downtime, performance degradation, technical incompatibilities, and data corruption/loss. The migration plan, the end result of the planning, defines what is moved, where it is moved to, how it is moved, when it is moved, and approximately how long the move will take.

The migration plan components include, but are not limited to:

• Migration strategy and key activities
• Dependencies
• Required equipment and migration tools
• Customer expectations
• Test plan
• Verification procedures
• Risk management and contingency plans
• Change control procedures
• Project schedule
• Post implementation activities/responsibilities
• Migration completion criteria

All Bull's consultants and delivery personnel are very experienced, highly trained, and have been in the business a long time. Dedicated resources with the appropriate accreditations and experience are always allocated to our projects.

Bull specialises in Data Centre consolidation, relocations, and migrations.