Analysis of Your Existing Hardware System

Analysis of your existing hardware system is a little bit more involved. The fundamental objective of your hardware system is essentially three-fold: provide efficient support (‘hardware platform’) for (1) access to your corporate knowledge base; (2) corporate processes and projects and (3) corporate communications – internal and external.

In practice, it means that hardware should efficiently support both all data stores and your computer software that processes and manages this data. Obviously, it must comply with your overall information management strategy.

‘Efficient’ in this context means (a) performing all necessary functions; (b) doing it fast enough – essentially ‘right away’ and (c) doing it cost-effectively. The latter means better than (1) competition; (2) than any possible replacement on the market and (3) than any outsourcing option (e.g. HaaS – ‘hardware as a service’). (2), and (3) relate mostly to individual hardware items and hardware subsystems.  In reality, your system must exhibit the right balance between in-house and outsourced components.

To make it happen, your hardware system must have the right structure, which must be both comprehensive and lean in terms of capacity and performance. The latter means that the excess capacity must be just enough to handle both the growth of your company (and, therefore, your data, information and knowledge processing needs) until the right upgrades and acquisitions are installed and to handle – in the interim – peak information load. This structure must be based on the optimal hardware architecture and its components must fit together very well.

This system must be designed by a highly competent hardware system architect. This professional is usually provided by an experienced systems integrator that develops and deploys comprehensive information and knowledge management solutions (hardware + software + consulting services). I will discuss these solutions in more detail in the section on analyzing your software system.

To perform a thorough analysis of your hardware system, you will need a comprehensive description of this system. Which must be well-structured, accurate and up-to-date. This description will be used by your hardware system manager who must use the optimum methodology and a highly efficient business process of hardware system management.