Strategic Database Consulting
Make better data decisions with N4Stack’s ‘rethink’ strategy consulting offering.
Service Overview
N4{Rethink} is designed to deliver clients the very best independent strategic advice and guidance around their current database investment and strategy.
Historically businesses have invested heavily in database solutions which age rapidly and come with high levels of complexity and even higher maintenance costs. The increasing volumes of data and rapid growth in new database technologies also provides fresh opportunities.
N4{Rethink} provides a set of strategic review work packages to address everything from database discovery through to a wholesale re-platforming review.
Just wanted to say thanks for the proactive approach you have taken in delivering our database environment review.
Great customer service and exactly what we need from our expert DBA partner.
Why do customers use N4{Rethink}?
Meet changing demands
Reduce costs
Stop database sprawl
Take back control
Strategic Work Packages
N4{Rethink} is our tailored strategic database consulting offering, and we have a host of different work packages designed to help you get the most out of your databases.
Database Discovery
The sprawl and the proliferation of databases is a serious issue for companies. The first stage of the work package provides network-based discovery and full documentation of the database estate. The second stage involves client engagement to establish purpose, ownership and priority of the identified assets.
Licence Optimisation
The ease of using volume-based licenced keys and “spinning” up new database instances can create a very real headache and cause a significant licensing shortfall. N4Stack can provide a licence optimisation service in advance of a vendor software audit or commercial negotiation. This ensures that any investment made is kept to an absolute minimum and reflects the exact technical feature requirements of the solution. Database technology is a significant financial investment so ensuring licensing is optimised across the full estate is key to achieving a maximum ROI.
Consolidation
Consolidation of database instances drives increased benefits of reduced costs, lower maintenance overheads and provides improvements around data sharing, backup and recovery, and security. N4Stack will undertake a benchmarking and design exercise to review the opportunities, constraints and business requirements. The output will provide a detailed architecture design and consolidation execution plan.
Replatforming
Is your current technology choice still the right one? Could you take advantage of new open source technologies? What are the implications of moving the database to the cloud? The replatforming work package is designed to review both functional and non-functional constraints around the existing database environment. By engaging with the business and analysing the technical requirements N4Stack can provide independent recommendations which help support a business case for replatforming. Typically this work package also provides an execution plan for an exemplar build and test process aligned with the recommendations.
Database Assurance
Each day changes in configuration, releases, workloads, maintenance and infrastructure can introduce degradation and potential issues to the database. Insuring the database environment has an optimal setup and configuration is key to realising the best performance and retaining a best practice configuration. This work package delivers a comprehensive assessment of the database technology stack providing a easy to understand (RAG) set of recommendations focused on configuration, performance, and backup and recovery.
Operational Audit
The “rethink” operational audit consolidates over 15 years of experience in nurturing and coaching successful operational DBA teams. Analysing several key areas such as Agility, Backup, Patching, Security, DR, Maintenance, Performance Management and Configuration Management, the client will receive a valuable assessment report, a recommendations report and improvement plan.
Case study
Due to the nature of the PD Ports business, there are many business-critical applications that must be operational on a true 24*7 basis and as such, the database environments are designed with optimal high availability in mind.
Whilst employing a highly skilled internal technical team, PD Ports recognised that it needed DBA experts on a continuous basis to ensure ongoing environment optimisation and to allow the internal technical team to focus on the business-specific application work.
