Working with non-standard requests:

Assessment of potential threats of disruption to the work of a large geographically distributed holding during a change in the order of time zones, a change in the geographical reference of time zones and transitions to daylight saving time. Checking the health of official updates released by Microsoft for all infrastructure servers and office applications. Checking the transitions of single and recurring scheduling and maintenance events. Assessing the risks of desynchronization and stopping the operation of the entire infrastructure and corporate network of the customer

Completed works:

- Analytics of business processes tied to cyclic events

- A special script has been developed to proactively change time zones in case of desynchronization of events after the actual transition is detected

Results:

- The level of risk of failure and shutdown of the entire infrastructure was assessed as unlikely

- The implemented script helped eliminate small events with a low impact factor and avoid user dissatisfaction and disruptions in the work of the geographically distributed structure of the company.

Infrastructure optimization

A large transport company with geographically distributed offices and branches launched a project to consolidate all departments into a single infrastructure.

Complexity of the task: high variability of configurations (more than 15), the total number of users is more than 2000, high criticality to interruptions in communications and availability of corporate information systems with potential risks of data loss.

Completed works:

- Development of reference architecture

- Preparation of individual migration plans

- Development of a schedule and procedure for migration

- Data backup plan and current configurations

- Risk assessment of shutdown and decommissioning of each corporate information system

Result:

- More than 20 servers released

- Optimization of service, update and support times

- Infrastructure TCO reduced by 20%

- Re-examination of potential security risks showed a decrease by several times

- Created a single platform for launching and managing corporate applications for business

Risk mitigation

A large bank with more than 15,000 users, when assessing the risks of failure of various information systems, revealed a high level of influence of an internal mail server based on MS Exchange on the functioning of core business functions. In accordance with the results of the assessment, work was ordered to prepare an emergency recovery plan in the event of a failure of the mail service

Completed works:

- Examined of the current installation and verification of the system operation regulations

- Prepared of a list of potential scenarios for failure and disruption of the mail service

- A procedure for testing and identifying problems was developed, as well as a procedure for routine emergency recovery work

- Conducted training for IT department personnel

Results:

- A year after the completion of the work, a technological failure occurred during the system update, and as a result, the service was stopped. Due to the presence of regulations and the implementation of instructions, the system engineers restored the system in 20 minutes

- A follow-up evaluation of the results was made, which showed that the lack of regulations required engineers up to 24 hours to find and fix the problem. In fact, the bank would be paralyzed for a day, the losses amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars / euros

Floating problems

The customer is a large grocery retail company operating two parallel corporate mail systems simultaneously, with a large number of users and mailboxes. There was an intermittent problem with mail delivery failures, which was presumably caused by a transport service failure on the Exchange Server side.

The situation was complicated by the high criticality of the task for the company's core business, as it caused downtime in the main operations for transferring information between distribution centers, points of sale and the company's logistics

Completed works:

- Analysed of the accumulated statistics on the logs collected from mail servers.

- Checked the correctness of the settings

- Made changes to the settings in accordance with the methodology for setting up geo-distributed mail systems and integration with third-party mail systems

Result:

- Elimination of periodic errors that occur on the transport services of the company

- The work was carried out without the need to reinstall servers, change configuration or stop user services

Risk reduction

A large bank with a large number of branches and departments uses MS Exchange as a corporate mail system. Business processes are set up in such a way that the system is the main one for messaging between employees and is included in the main business-critical systems. The main difficulty in operating, maintaining and updating this system is its bulkiness and geographical distribution. As a result, high requirements for engineers maintaining the system.

Objective: Reduce the risks of potential shutdown or failure of the core system during maintenance and operation

Completed works:

- Analysis and verification of activities for the implementation of planned work, identifying potential errors and assessing the impact of the "human factor"

- Development of scripts to automate routine maintenance, their implementation in the current work of engineers

- Development of transport agents for the implementation of the tasks set by the customer

Result:

- Reducing the risks of stopping the system during scheduled work to zero by means of a preliminary check of the order of routine maintenance and automation of manual operations.