Strategic Technology Management
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) (formerly Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES)) supports the funding of research, education and extension programs to enhance the productivity and sustainability of agriculture. NIFA’s mission is supported by the Research, Education, and Economic Information System (REEIS), designed to provide data on research, education and extension programs affiliated with USDA. To optimize NIFA’s REEIS application and IT operations, The Engle Group (TEG) performed strategic assessments of the processes, technologies and IT Infrastructure, and delivered recommendations to optimize NIFA’s integrated system operations.
TEG was contracted by NIFA to:
- Analyze the REEIS data warehouse application’s technical approach, methods, and processes to assess the effectiveness, efficiency, and cost-benefit value of the system
- Recommend changes and improvements to the data warehouse paradigm to increase resource and cost efficiencies
- Evaluate IT Operations Services focusing on change management, release management, and problem management
- Provide recommendations for change to the network infrastructure to increase operational and design efficiencies involving server consolidation, configuration, and virtualization
- Performed in-depth review and analysis of existing policies, procedures, workflows, and documentation of infrastructure against industry best practices identifying critical opportunities for service optimization
- Performed Process Assessment analysis for Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, and Organizational Management, including practical short-term, mid-term, and long-term recommendations
- Assessed operations services, policies, procedures, workflows, and documentation against ITIL v3 Best Practices recommending system and process improvements to enhance ITSM quality of service
- Performed Server Consolidation and Virtualization Assessment to reduce operational costs and complexity of server environment and datacenters, reducing IT costs and resources
- Developed a strategy plan for Server Consolidation and Virtualization
TEG’s recommendations detailed the planning and resource requirements needed to address NIFA’s data-center management, resulting in reduced total costs of ownership and risk of disruptions to business operations.