Management Environment

Definition

A management environment is any environment that is used by a manager to manage a center or endeavor.

Objectives

The typical objectives of a management environment are to provide:

• Safe scalable network access to other networks (e.g., via firewall to client, contact center, and Internet).
• Efficient execution of applications.
• Efficient integration with database and legacy systems.
• Facilities support including cooling, fire suppression, physical security, and uninterruptable power supply.

Benefits

The typical benefits of a management environment include:

• An integrated management environment enables organizations to more efficiently manage and maintain corporate data resources.
• A separate management environment enables users to use the application independently of development, integration, and system testing.

Contents

The major contents of a management environment are:

• Hardware Components:
  • Client Tier:
    • Local Area Network
    • Work Station
    • Firewall
• Software Components:
  • Application software
  • Enterprise support software
    (e.g., accounting, marketing, inventory, order management, order fulfillment, etc.)
  • Web, WAP, and Voice server software
  • Presentation software
  • Personalization software
  • Application server software
  • Content management software
  • Search software
  • Security software
  • Database management systems
  • Legacy and external system adapters
  • Operating systems

Stakeholders

The typical stakeholders of a management environment are:

• Producers:
  • Environments Team
• Evaluator:
  • Environments Inspection Team
• Approvers:
  • Technical Leader
  • Project Manager
  • Customer Representative
• Maintainer:
  • Environments Team
• Users:
  • Management Team, which uses a management environment to manage a center or endeavor.

Phases

• Business Strategy: Not Applicable
• Business Optimization: Not Applicable
• Initiation: Not Applicable
• Construction: Completed
• Delivery: Maintained
• Usage: Maintained
• Retirement: Archived

Preconditions

A management environment can typically be started if the following preconditions hold:

• The initiation phase has started.
• The environments team is adequately staffed and trained.
• The data center environment section of the project environments description document is reasonably complete and stable.

Inputs

The typical inputs to a management environment include:

• Work products:
  • System Architecture Document, which documents the hardware architecture of the data center production environment including associated architectural mechanisms.
  • Project Environments Description Document, which documents the objectives, physical location, stakeholders, components, and estimated costs of the data center environment.
• Stakeholders:
  • Requirements Team, which ensures that the data center environment adequately implements the requirements.
  • Requirements Team, which ensures that the data center environment adequately implements the requirements.

Guidelines

• There may be multiple data center environments if multiple data centers are produced to minimize web traffic, provide global load balancing, and provide redundancy as part of disaster recovery planning.

Conventions

The data center environment is typically constrained by the following conventions:

• Inspection Checklist

Examples

• Workstation
• Laptop
• Smart phone
• Personal digital assistant