IT and operations modernization
Modernize the systems your business already depends on.
Many established businesses run on systems that grew one fix at a time: a server in a closet, shared passwords, files in three places, and reports rebuilt by hand every month. We assess what you have, secure it, modernize what should change, connect your data, automate the routine work, and then look after it — in that order.
IRIS (Integrated Reasoning & Intelligence Steward) is our planning assistant. The scoping page saves your answers to your own computer as a file, then offers a link to email them to us.
Five phases
Assess, secure, modernize, automate, manage.
- 01
Assess
We document your systems, data, access and risks, and agree the priorities with you. You get a written assessment you keep whether or not you continue.
- 02
Stabilize and secure
Multi-factor sign-in, admin accounts separated, devices protected, backups you have tested by restoring them, and one copy kept apart from the rest.
- 03
Modernize
Move to the cloud what belongs there, keep on site what should stay, and connect the two where you need both.
- 04
Automate
Connect the systems that today need re-keying, and build reports that refresh themselves. A person approves any automation that changes data, money or access.
- 05
Manage
Ongoing support, monitoring, patching and backups, with a monthly summary of what changed.
You can stop after any phase.
Cloud, on site, or both
We do not assume everything belongs in the cloud.
Some things usually do: email, identity and sign-in, offsite backup, and document capture.
Some things often stay on site for good reasons: an accounting system that is licensed and customized to a local server, large design files that several people edit at once, or an office that cannot stop work when the internet does.
Where both are right, we connect them and manage them as one.
Example
A residential builder
Illustrative. Not a customer.
A residential builder has an office, several active jobsites, a project-management application, a separate accounting system on a server in the office, and drawings in shared folders. Field staff send photos and daily notes by text. Job costs are re-keyed from one system into the other each week. The cyber insurer has asked about multi-factor sign-in and backups.
What modernization could look like:
- Assess
- List every system, who uses it and where the data lives; ask the insurer's questions up front.
- Stabilize and secure
- Multi-factor sign-in for everyone, a tested backup of the accounting server with one copy kept separate, and protected laptops and phones.
- Modernize
- Keep the accounting server where it is if that is the right answer, with an offsite backup; give the drawing share a local copy for speed, a cloud copy, and a separate backup that a deletion or ransomware cannot reach.
- Automate
- Connect project costs to accounting through the connector the vendors support, and build a weekly job-cost report that refreshes itself.
- Manage
- Monthly patching, backup checks and a short report.
What changes the scope
We scope before we quote.
The number of locations and jobsites, users and devices, systems to connect, the volume of data and documents, and how much of the work you want us to manage afterwards.
A review for 25 locations is a different job from one for a single office, so we scope before we quote.
Start with an assessment.
Use the IRIS scoping page to describe your systems, documents and reporting. You keep a copy, and an engineer reads it before we talk.