Estate Management

An IT estate is made up of computers, storage systems and networks, and its management involves the proper control and oversight of the parts so that the whole functions effectively. A simple analogy is a property estate; failing to proactively maintain and support buildings, facilities and land leads inevitably to trouble.

Organisations have seen their IT environments expand rapidly since the introduction of client/server or distributed systems over the last 20 years. In many sectors - financial services being a prime example - the procurement of dedicated equipment to support each business application has led to companies having vast populations of relatively commoditised server platforms. A common feature of IT organisations is the well-known 'silo' mentality, where application owners are only concerned with their equipment and don't see the bigger picture.

This is where problems start; hardware and software assets need to be viewed and treated as a collective whole or Estate, with characteristics including configuration, capacity, performance, scalability, availability and cost that change over their useful lifetime and need managing. Understanding these characteristics and dealing with them efficiently and effectively is the principal behind Estate Management.

We adopt a front to back model as shown above to leverage and aggregate disprate data sources and employ powerful visualisation tools for management reporting and presentation. This approach to developing a Business as Usual (BAU) function has benefited our clients by reducing operational risk, improving utilisation of equipment and reducing cost.

To find out more about 4sl's Estate Management capability, click here here to download our Advisory Guide.

Alternatively, review our case study library for a number of recent estate management engagements