Infrastructure recovery

This client had just come out of a period of prolonged financial losses and extreme staff turnover. As a result, their IT infrastructure had been severely neglected for over four years—starved of funding and planning. Our job was to document what was actually running, form a coherent vision for the future, and streamline the processes and applications that still earned their keep.

The existing setup was a mish-mash of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, SQL Server, MongoDB, MySQL, 4D, WordPress, Salesforce, Nutshell, and numerous other COTS and custom applications. As the company contracted, infrastructure that failed was abandoned: the people who knew how to troubleshoot it were gone. What remained was a minefield of applications on aging hardware, with numerous single points of failure—and little certainty about which systems were critical or even still in use.

One main task was evaluating the company’s core business and deciding what IT infrastructure was required to carry them forward. Other work included migrating data off aging databases and standing up new infrastructure to hold that data. Cost and utility had to stay in balance: the company was profitable again, but every expense still had to be justified.

When we left, leadership had a written picture of the landscape, a practical target architecture, and fewer abandoned boxes waiting to surprise someone. Critical data sat on supported platforms, and day-to-day IT no longer depended on tribal knowledge that had already walked out the door.