About Transitional Data Services

Transcription

1 About Transitional Data Services Transitional Data Services (TDS) is a leader in professional services for the Virtual Data Center with offerings including cloud migrations, data center migration and consolidation, network and infrastructure design, and technical operations. TDS created proprietary software, TransitionManager, to empower our consultants and clients to inventory IT assets, visually display application dependencies, and create interactive run-books to execute transformation tasks collaboratively. Our clients realize minimized risk, improved project efficiency and increased speed of transformation, while facilitating more predictable, ongoing technical operations. TDS s clients include Kayak.com, The University of Texas, Boston Red Sox, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and Liberty Mutual. TDS Revolutionizing Data Center Migrations When a company needs to execute on a data center migration, relocation or consolidation, it s important to have proven methodology to provide end-to-end migration services, which encompasses: Comprehensive program and project management; Enterprise-wide discovery of application and IT environments; In-depth analysis of all application and server interdependencies; Detailed planning of complex move grouping, and; Execution and management of virtual and physical move events. However, methodology is only half of the challenge. You need solid tools that store and manage the discovered data. You need the ability to efficiently analyze and make critical business decisions on that data, and you need the capability of executing flawless migration events. That s why TDS created TransitionManager TM. The Power of TransitionManager TransitionManager is a SaaS based or on-premise product that allows for online collaboration while providing real-time project updates and status. The tool helps take the proven methodology and streamlines the process by taking advantage of enhanced dependency analysis functionality, interactive move-day runbooks, and so much more. TransitionManager has proved to reduce overall downtime during a move event by more than 35 percent over industry standards. It is an integral piece in our ability to successfully complete end-to-end migration and IT transformation projects faster, more efficiently, and virtually risk free, in even the most complex operating environment.

2 Data Center Services After years of experience and hundreds of data center moves, migrations, consolidations and assessments you can count on Transitional Data to meet or exceed your goals when facing choices around transforming your data center. We offer the following solutions: Data Center Strategy Relocation, Migration and Consolidation Data Center Site Selection Automated Migration Software IT Services In today s ever changing operating environment, IT professionals face diverse technology challenges from cloud computing, server virtualization and desktop management to regulatory compliance, data security and IT support. TDS IT Services can help lessen the burden of IT management by providing always on availability of your applications and throughout your entire network, allowing you to focus on your core business and functional goals. We have expertise and resources to support your most strategic IT needs, including your network, physical and virtual servers, storage and security to data center services and full IT support; and are customized to your specific needs and technical environment. 24/7 Technical Operations Cloud Migration and Operations IT Outsourcing Network Assessments and Remediation Data Center Audit and Capacity Planning Office 365 Migrations Our History Since 2002, Transitional Data has helped hundreds of customers migrate, relocate and consolidate data centers and run IT operations for companies to reduce costs and increase efficiency. TDS s clients capitalize on deep expertise in moving their mission critical data, system applications and supporting IT operations effectively. As time progressed, the traditional tools used to migrate, relocate and consolidate were single user, had significant limitations and were clearly outdated and inefficient. In 2008, TDS developed leading edge tool TransitionManager due to the challenges of changes in the virtual data center. TransitionManager was designed with the intention of reducing risk, executing on moves swiftly and utilizing an automated, streamlined, intelligent technology tool. TransitionManager is being touted by industry analysts as the premier move and monitoring tool for the virtual data center. Clients love TDS What a great partner! TDS brought the right people, tools and experience to assure a worry-free data center relocation. And with the help of TransitionManager, our complex data center move went off like clockwork with full visibility throughout the process. TDS has helped us grow our server farm by 300% and network traffic by 1000%, all of which has allowed us to become a top 10 travel web site. TDS applied their expert knowledge, organization and TransitionManager software to efficiently migrate hundreds of applications and servers from California to Nevada, with zero unplanned downtime. We needed an experienced partner capable of delivering an end-to-end data center migration project to our new state-of-the-art data center, with no adverse impact to the business. In 2008, business began to shift from the physical data center into the virtual data center space. The virtual data center configuration makes growth easier and added tremendous savings while increasing security and uptime. TDS s expertise extended out to high availability IT services, strategic IT point solutions and cloud migrations, including application migrations.

3 Data Center Migration, Relocation & Consolidation Today s data center has evolved beyond its roots as a traditional enterprise data center it is substantially more diverse and fluid than its previous incarnation. The core of this fluidity springs from data center managers embracing the concept of a virtual data center: in essence, a pool of physical and virtual resources that can be scaled as needed. The flexibility of a virtual data center allows its managers to tailor departmental infrastructure for increased responsiveness for their internal and external clients needs. A virtual data center s resource pool includes computational, storage, network, and security infrastructures. These easily scale up and down as requirements change. As a result, more data centers worldwide are adopting a New Normal-informed paradigm. At the same time, the rate of change is soaring inside these increasingly dynamic data center environments. Your Situation Now? Organizations embark on data center relocations, migrations, or consolidations for different reasons, with examples including: Company leadership is seeking cost and resource efficiency Your current data center can no longer support your need for growth in terms of space, power, or cooling Organizational restructuring such as a mergers or acquisition has created the need to consolidate data centers An older data center design has too many single points of failure and the risk of outages is too high for current business needs Choose Your Move. Make Your Move. There are so many options when considering a data center transition. Strategy is important but it s vital that you know your baseline and then from there design a strategy that fulfills all of your goals. The real power of any solution is working with people who understand the world of data center transitions and can recommend solutions on an unbiased basis. There are many choices to consider, including: Data Center Move Strategy: Ensure the strategy minimizes downtime and risk. Ensure the strategy accelerates move events, reduces planned downtime and minimizes the risk of unplanned outages. The strategy should determine the destination environment for all assets (new data center, cloud, retire, etc.) Develop the move strategy based upon the Current State Analysis Assign applications and servers to move bundles Utilize tools like TDS CostModeler to understand financial impact of migration to the cloud Analyze and understand all non-financial reasons before virtualizing/migration to the cloud Virtual & Cloud Migration: Analyze opportunities for virtualization and cloud computing. Analyze organizational and application opportunities for virtualization and cloud computing Develop and execute virtual move strategy Implementation of new hardware, where appropriate Migrate data according to industry best practices

4 Assist with cloud provider selection Colocation Data Center Site Selection: Choose the right facility for your organization and its future growth needs Create Data Center Requirements Document Develop, disseminate and collect RFP s Normalize responses and identify irregularities. Assist with site selection recommendations & contract negotiations Consult on build/design/layout of data center space Environment? You Can Choose That Too! The TDS data center relocation methodology follows a specific process to ensure smooth and successful data center migration events. With the help of our purpose-built system, TDS s unique TransitionManager, our engineers are capable of executing even the most complex physical, virtual, or hybrid relocations. Physical The foundation of any relocation event is a thorough inventory of your data center s assets. Working with your team, our engineers inventory all of the applications, servers, storage, network and other hardware. Dependencies between assets are discovered, and a dependency map of your specific environment is developed to be used as the basis for planning the relocation events. TransitionManager is used to automatically generate custom run books, which serve as step-by-step plans for the move event. As part of the planning process, all assets are tagged with barcode labels generated by TransitionManager, which also maintains complete source and destination room layouts and rack elevation diagrams. During move events every task is controlled and logged by TransitionManager, providing the entire project team with real-time status for all assets. A project manager or lead move engineer performs audits on rail installation, server locations and cabling throughout the move, and a final audit is performed upon competition of the project to ensure move accuracy. Virtual Planning a virtual relocation begins in the same manner as planning for a physical relocation; by identifying the assets running in your virtual environment and their interdependencies. With the dependency maps and information from current systems in hand, our engineers will analyze your current environment, design the new one, and make recommendations on hardware and/or software purchases to run the new virtual environment. In the case of a physical to virtual move, the next step is to install the hardware that will host the virtual servers, and then perform test migrations. After a successful test migration, our engineers will do a complete conversion of your physical servers to their virtual counterparts, as well as converting/migrating any existing virtual servers. For a virtual to virtual migration, our engineers act as project managers for your staff to ensure a smooth transition from your existing servers to their new environment. The final step for both processes is to test application performance in the new environment. Clients love TDS What a great partner! TDS brought the right people, tools and experience to assure a worry-free data center relocation. And with the help of TransitionManager, our complex data center move went off like clockwork with full visibility throughout the process. TDS has helped us grow our server farm by 300% and network traffic by 1000%, all of which has allowed us to become a top 10 travel web site. TDS applied their expert knowledge, organization and TransitionManager software to efficiently migrate hundreds of applications and servers from California to Nevada, with zero unplanned downtime. We needed an experienced partner capable of delivering an end-to-end data center migration project to our new state-of-the-art data center, with no adverse impact to the business. Hybrid Today, data centers aren t what they used to be. In recent years, data centers have transformed from large physical spaces filled with racks of gear and critical infrastructure into a broad variety of new forms of computing. Virtualization, SaaS and cloud computing are now key elements of most organization s data center environment and absolutely must be considered and analyzed when deciding how to relocate your data center. It is worth considering moving data off individual physical servers and into more efficient, and often less expensive, computing environments. But how do you decide which applications to move and where to move them? How do you ensure that business needs

5 Revolutionizing Data Center Transformation with TransitionManager TM If you have participated in a data center migration, relocation or consolidation, you know that they are time consuming and complex. Tools such as Excel and Project seem to increase the already challenging process. The answer: a web-based purpose build, end-to-end data center collaborative orchestration software solution we call TransitionManager TM. By using TransitionManager with its automated run book capability, we have accelerated the migration process by more than 35%, reduced human error by over 98% and as a result TDS has significantly decreased the risk of migrating, consolidating or relocating your data center. TransitionManager is a software solution that allows for online collaboration while providing real-time project updates and status. The tool, combined with a proven methodology streamlines the process by taking advantage of enhanced dependency analysis functionality, interactive move-day runbooks, and much more. It is an important component in the success of any end-to-end migration and ensures fast, efficient project execution with minimal risk even for the most complex data center environment. Purpose Built TransitionManager for Data Center Migrations, Relocations and Consolidations TransitionManager leverages hundreds of moves, decades of technical expertise and a comprehensive set of best practices for planning and managing all aspects of data center transformations. TransitionManager along with TDS s expert consultants streamline the complex, resource-intensive and challenging aspects of data center migrations, relocations and consolidations, including inventorying IT assets, determining true interdependencies in order to bundle related applications and infrastructure into logical groups for migrations, and the creation of minute-by-minute move-day runbook execution plans for migration events. TransitionManager optimizes communications, collaboration and visibility across the organization and accelerates IT transformation, reduces risk and empowers your IT solutions for today and the future. TDS Leverages the Virtual Data Center and it s Transformation Today, the data center no longer looks like the traditional enterprise data center - it is much more diverse and fluid than that dated paradigm. Data center managers have embraced the concept of a virtual data center, which is a pool of physical and virtual resources that can be scaled as needed. The flexibility the virtual data center concept provides allows data center managers the ability to more closely tailor the data center infrastructure to match the requirements of their company s needs. The virtual data centers resource pool of compute, storage, network, and security infrastructure can be scaled up and down as requirements change, and as a result the rate of change inside data center environments is continuing to increase.

6 With TransitionManager, task assignment and relocation execution are easy. Physical equipment is barcode labeled, and shutdown, un-racked, re-racked and startup procedures for every device are detailed in TransitionManager s runbook. As servers are shut down, technicians are alerted via handheld scanners and the servers are scanned, un-racked, cleaned and packed for shipment. The end-to-end process is tracked in TransitionManager, with real-time visibility provided to the entire move team via executive dashboards, asset tracking, and workflow screens. Relocation project managers review workloads, recognize bottlenecks, and direct floor teams as needed without the delays inherent in manual processes. As engineers work throughout the data center, TransitionManager provides real-time command and control of every aspect of the migration. Methodology Discovery TDS begins engagements with a complete inventory of all IT assets, applications and continuing through all of your physical and virtualized servers, databases, and network equipment. Until you have a solid understanding of where you are it s impossible to map out your future. With TransitionManager, scope project at hand, identify potential projects and build a business case to justify internal funding and approvals. Inventory & Asset Management Cable Tracking & Management Analysis & Planning A complete understanding of the dependencies between applications, servers, and other infrastructure is essential to ensuring that applications work properly after migration. TransitionManager s dependency analysis module helps the project team visualize these interdependencies and develop migration bundles of assets that must be moved simultaneously. Bundles are further combined into optimized move events designed to accelerate the project. This is where most of the work is performed for your IT Transformation. Task Scheduler Plan Graph Dependency Analysis & Map Dependency Console Automated Runbook Generation Execution TransitionManager s origin was as a solution for managing the multifaceted activity associated with major relocation events. For both physical and virtual migrations, project managers review workloads, recognize bottlenecks, and direct teams as needed without the delays inherent in manual processes. Simultaneously, management has a real-time view of the project s progress through TransitionManager s web-based executive dashboards. Transitional Data Services (TDS) is a leader in professional services for the Virtual Data Center with offerings including cloud migrations, data center migration and consolidation, network and infrastructure design, and technical operations. TDS created proprietary software, TransitionManager, to empower our consultants and clients to inventory IT assets, visually display application dependencies, and create interactive run-books to execute transformation tasks collaboratively. Our clients realize minimized risk, improved project efficiency and increased speed of transformation, while facilitating more predictable, on-going technical operations. TDS s clients include Kayak.com, The University of Texas, Boston Red Sox, Cedars- Sinai Medical Center, and Liberty Mutual. Transitional Data Services 1700 West Park Drive Westborough, MA [email protected] transitionaldata.com Move Execution Plan Orchestrated Execution Task Generation Task Assignment

7 Data Center Common Challenges Every data center or IT environment is different and each company has its own individual needs when it comes to understanding their data center environment. That being said here are a few of the most common concerns, issues, challenges: What do I have? A baseline, or lack thereof: Companies typically think they have a handle on what is on their networks. They will know some of their physical assets (servers, storage, network devices) but usually have less of an understanding of their logical/virtual assets (virtual servers, applications, databases). TDS has found that no matter what percentage of their assets that they think they know in reality they will be off by 20 percentage points or more (e.g.: Think they know 80% but in reality is only 60%). Without a true baseline of your assets, it is difficult to develop a data center transformation strategy. TDS will inventory your existing assets, so you can build an effective plan. What relies on what? Asset dependency map: Often times, dependencies are not fully known meaning, it s not entirely clear which applications are dependent on what equipment and which databases and support what other applications? If you don t know how your assets are related and what they are dependent on then how can you possibly transform your environment? Many times the knowledge is there but it is locked in the heads of the company s subject matter experts. TDS unlocks this knowledge through interviews and leveraging its purpose built software tool TransitionManager to develop an up-to-date dependency map of your infrastructure and applications. What are my risks? Perceived vs actual risks: Another challenge many companies have is understanding what the true risks are associated with a data center transformation vs what the perceived risks are. When a company doesn t have much experience with data center migrations, consolidations and relocations they can assume that the primary risks are in areas such as: a server being dropped or not powering back up after a move, a transport truck having an accident while loaded with equipment, and things of this nature. Through TDS experience we have learned that these are the most crucial risks at all. It is things that the customer doesn t recognize or put a lot of credence into such as: breaking dependencies between applications., servers and databases so that a workflow no longer operates, a move window that is too small for the amount of assets being migrated due to bad discovery, dependency mapping or execution. In our hundreds of data center moves, TDS has seen virtually everything. Hindsight is 20/20, but deep experience is even better. We find that data center changes are so specialized, that it s in a company s best interest to mitigate risk with an expert s help. How do we accomplish this with the resources we have? Amount of resources vs time: Then there is the issue of amount of resources available vs the work to be done. My people already have a full time day job. How can we possible fit this in? By using a web based, proprietary software tool specifically designed for data center activities like these TransitionManager enable effective and efficient communication and execution your events in one collaborative system. Why won t the general tools I use today work? Off the shelf vs purpose built tools: Most data center projects use Microsoft Excel and Project. These tools were not designed to handle this type of activity and are not integrated into the specific methodologies necessary to execute a successful migration program. TDS designed TransitionManager specifically for the intelligent orchestration of data center moves and as such has enabled TDS clients to realize two very important benefits by leveraging this capability: 1) a reduction in human errors by 98% and 2) an acceleration of the overall migration process by more than 35% over industry standards.

8 TransitionManager TM for Data Center Migrations, Relocations and Consolidations End-to-end Integrated Solution for Data Center Migrations, Relocations, Consolidations Across industries and geographies, a dramatic increase in data center migrations, relocations and consolidations is underway. More and more organizations are finding that they ve run out of space, power or cooling in data centers bursting at the seams with high-density, high-capacity servers, storage, and other devices. Others are finding that corporate data centers built a generation ago are limited by single points of potential failure in their critical infrastructure (power & cooling) and retrofit is either too expensive or technically infeasible. In the end, more organizations than ever are deciding that their needs are best served by relocating or consolidating their data centers. These migrations are complex mission-critical projects that have the potential to cause major disruption if anything goes wrong, and using TDS TransitionManager has documented a 97+% reduction in human errors. Benefits Based on over a decade of data center relocation, migration and consolidation experience, TDS has created TDS TransitionManager, the industry s premier data center migration solution. TDS TransitionManager was built specifically to implement a complete set of best practices for planning and managing all aspects of both physical and virtual data center migrations. TransitionManager helps automate the tedious, resource-intensive and error-prone aspects of data center migration, including inventorying all IT assets, correctly developing move bundles of related applications and infrastructure, and creation of minute-byminute move-day runbooks for each relocation event. And, by providing all parties with realtime visibility into all relocation activities, TDS TransitionManager improves communications and collaboration across the team. Ultimately, TransitionManager accelerates migrations while also reducing the risk of unplanned outages. Customer Quote What a great partner! TDS brought the right people, tools and experience to assure a worry-free data center relocation. And with the help of Transition Manager, our complex data center move went off like clockwork with full visibility throughout the process. There is not a better partner we could have chosen for our data center relocation than TDS. George A. Parrot, Director, Systems Services, Beckman Coulter, Inc.

9 Technology Overview Based on over 12 years of relocation experience, TDS TransitionManager was developed to provide a set of data center relocation best practices. TDS and TransitionManager break relocation projects into three major components: 1. Discovery TDS begins each engagement with a complete inventory of all IT assets, beginning with applications and continuing through all of your physical and virtualized servers, databases, and network equipment. 2. Analysis and Planning A complete understanding of the dependencies between applications, servers, and other infrastructure is essential to ensuring that applications work properly after migration. TransitionManager s dependency analysis module helps project managers and subject matter experts visualize these interdependencies and develop migration bundles of assets that must be moved simultaneously. Bundles are further combined into optimized move events designed to accelerate the project. Automated Runbook Generation By carefully planning migration events to the most detailed level, human errors are minimized and downtime windows shortened. Step by step runbooks ensure that proper shutdown, relocation and startup procedures are followed. Traditionally, runbooks were created manually using tools like MS Excel and MS Project. This painstaking, error-prone, labor-intensive process risked missing essential steps or performing tasks out of order, potentially corrupting databases or worse. TransitionManager has revolutionized the creation of these runbooks; by combining knowledge about the assets, their interdependencies, and customized rules about how the various tasks are sequenced and performed, TransitionManager can automatically generate even the most complex runbooks in just seconds. 3. Execution TDS TransitionManager s origin was as a solution for managing the frenetic activity associated with major relocation events. For both physical and virtual migrations, project managers review workloads, recognize bottlenecks, and direct teams as needed without the delays inherent in manual processes. Simultaneously, management has a real-time view of the project s progress through TransitionManager s web-based executive dashboards. Physical & Virtual Migrations With TransitionManager, task assignment and relocation execution is easy. Physical equipment has been barcode labeled, and complete shutdown, un-rack, re-rack and startup procedures for every device are detailed in TransitionManager s runbook. As servers are shut down, technicians are alerted via handheld scanners and the servers are scanned, un-racked, cleaned and packed for shipment. Migration of virtualized devices follows a similar TransitionManager managed custom workflow, ensuring the integrity of the migration event. The end-to-end process is tracked in TransitionManager, with real-time visibility provided to the entire move team via executive dashboards, asset tracking, and workflow screens. Relocation project managers review workloads, recognize bottlenecks, and direct floor teams as needed without the delays inherent in manual processes. As engineers work throughout the data center, TransitionManager provides real-time command and control of every aspect of the migration. Event Reporting, Improvement, & Disaster Planning TransitionManager provides a variety of reports, including detailed timelines, task duration averages, task exceptions and incident summaries. These allow the team to learn from issues that arose and adjust plans for the next move cycle. Additionally, keeping TransitionManager up to date after the completion of the relocation project has many benefits. For example, TransitionManager can quickly generate complete runbooks from current configurations for disaster recovery planning and execution. Transitional Data Services (TDS) is a leader in professional services for the Virtual Data Center with offerings including cloud migrations, data center migration and consolidation, network and infrastructure design, and technical operations. TDS created proprietary software, TransitionManager, to empower our consultants and clients to inventory IT assets, visually display application dependencies, and create interactive run-books to execute transformation tasks collaboratively. Our clients realize minimized risk, improved project efficiency and increased speed of transformation, while facilitating more predictable, on-going technical operations. TDS s clients include Kayak.com, The University of Texas, Boston Red Sox, Cedars- Sinai Medical Center, and Liberty Mutual. Transitional Data Services 1700 West Park Drive Westborough, MA [email protected] transitionaldata.com

10 Media and Entertainment Company Case Study A mid-west based, multi-billion dollar media and entertainment company required a data center migration from an internal data center to a regional co-location facility, while transitioning between legacy and next generation hardware platforms. With nearly 100,000 customers and a 24/7 service model, this industry leader required unmatched expertise and flawless execution throughout a 100% virtual migration project, encompassing more than 1,400 server images. Why Choose Transitional Data Services? We were aware of the challenges inherent in a project of this size and complexity, but TDS put our concerns to rest time and time again. Their expertise and experience in this field was evident throughout the project. Customer Chief Information Officer The client s upfront exposure to TDS s TransitonManager software, purpose-built for data center migration projects was the overwhelming reason TDS was selected for the project. Minute-by-minute runbooks detailing every step of the project would be essential to the project s success as explained by the client: While we felt comfortable with our ability to perform day-to-day migrations, we knew a full scale data center migration project could quickly overwhelm our IT group. TransitionManager was an unanticipated surprise during our partner search, as we never expected to realize such efficiency and transparency throughout all phases of the project. Client VP of IT Transitional Data Services Approach After completion of the discovery phase on-site with the customer, interdependency maps between servers, applications and storage were developed with the use of TransitionManager. For example, one of the key priorities was to utilize TransitionManager to map the original source environment to the target Cisco UCS environment. From there, analysis of the dependencies enabled the move groups to be sized to fit the client s downtime windows. TransitionManager then generated runbooks from the same set of data and quickly re-generated those runbooks as bundles were pulled in and out of move groups, during interactive tabletop sessions with the client. Results TDS, with the use of its TransitionManager software, successfully migrated 1,400 server images and 300 applications with zero unplanned downtime, minimal risk and maximum efficiency. Beyond the runbooks that impressed the IT team so much, executive leadership appreciated the visibility with which TransitionManager enabled them to follow along throughout the project, especially during migration events.

11 Enterprise Software Developer Case Study A nearly billion dollar, west coast based, enterprise software developer required a relocation of their data center from San Diego to Las Vegas, inclusive of more than 200 applications across 1,100 virtual and physical server images. With more than 2,000 worldwide customers, unplanned downtime or data loss was not an option. Shutting down the entire data center and enduring a single migration would likely involve high risk and was therefore deemed unacceptable. Why Choose Transitional Data Services? We needed an experienced partner capable of delivering an end-to-end data center migration project to our new state-of-the-art data center, with no adverse impact to the business. TDS exceeded our expectations and then some. Customer AVP of IT Infrastructure TDS applied its expert knowledge and experience to outline a proven methodology and historically successful approach to data center migrations, which would meet the company s objectives, chief among them executive visibility into all phases of the project. Customer s AVP of IT Infrastructure stated: Most of the companies we met with, focused on the risks associated with a migration as well as methodologies that appeared remarkably similar from one company to the next. TDS was the only company that demonstrated to us HOW they proposed to execute all phases of the project through the use of their TransitionManager software. Once we saw TransitionManager, we were instantly convinced TDS was the right partner for our project. Transitional Data Services Approach After completing the initial discovery and analysis stage, the project team settled on an approach consisting of multiple migration events, spanning several weeks. TDS s TransitionManager software was utilized to manage the asset and application discovery process, map interdependencies, build move groups and develop run-books. As demonstrated in the upfront sales process, TransitionManager became the lifeblood of the project, providing real-time executive dashboard visibility throughout the engagement, ultimately serving as command center control during the execution events. Results TDS, with the use of its TransitionManager software, successfully migrated 1,100 servers and 200 applications with zero unplanned downtime, minimal risk and maximum efficiency. Executive-level dashboards provided visibility to senior management throughout every phase of the project. And the fixed fee nature of the engagement, assured budget constraints would be realized.