The Cisco® Proactive Automation of Change Execution (PACE) solution combines products and services that accelerate operational success by helping IT organizations to securely automate and control changes and configurations in their networks. The solution allows medium-sized and large enterprises to meet compliance requirements, accelerate growth, ensure business continuity, and increase user productivity.
Cisco Advanced Services for the PACE solution minimizes the time it takes to implement the solution and helps ensure that your staff is ready to manage it. The services help you maximize your investment by planning, designing, installing, and providing training for the operations of your Cisco PACE solution.
Cisco Advanced Services help enable the success of your Cisco PACE solution through a complete portfolio of lifecycle services, dedicated to helping you deploy and use the solution tools. Services are positioned in a three-tier approach:
• Operations consulting services: Assess, define, and optimize your network configuration and change-management processes
• Technical consulting services: Providing integration, custom compliance and policy rules development, and report generation
• Deployment services: Helping you to plan, design, implement, and operate the Cisco PACE solution
Cisco Advanced Services business and technical consultants are experts in operations and network management architectures. They have a deep understanding of problems associated with the deployment and operation of network-configuration and change-management systems and offer expertise based upon extensive design and deployment experiences.
Cisco Advanced Services: Operations consulting services for PACE
Operations consulting services for PACE are a portfolio of services aimed at helping you realize the benefits of the Cisco PACE solution though a better understanding of your organizational processes and their relation to network configuration and change management. Operations consulting services provide a means to benchmark your business operating processes against industry best practices.
This service component evaluates your network, service, and business management systems; identifies risks in your operational infrastructure including tools, processes, and skill sets; and makes recommendations to resolve or mitigate risks and optimize the business and network environment.
Operations consulting services provide a current analysis of the service delivery and support capabilities of your IP network infrastructure based on standard frameworks (such as IT Infrastructure Library [ITIL] and COBIT). To support the Cisco PACE solution, these services focus on the following functional areas:
• Operational processes
• Order management
• Workflow management
• Inventory management
• Configuration management
• Incident and problem management
• Best-practices model assessment (ITIL and COBIT)
• Staffing and expertise
Cisco Advanced Services for PACE can work with your team to identify gaps between your current operational process capabilities and leading industry practices and make recommendations for addressing those gaps.
Cisco Advanced Services: Technical consulting services for PACE
Technical consulting services for PACE provide you with the necessary customization of the Cisco PACE solution in order for you to realize its full benefits. These services help you to customize the solution components to meet your organization's specific needs.
Cisco Advanced Services consulting engineers will work with your network resources to become familiar with your existing change-management process, technology policies, and regulatory compliance models. With this knowledge Cisco Advanced Services help to design and develop your specific rule-set requirements, enable automation through custom script and application extension development, and develop integration points to support workflow with your existing operating and network management systems and processes.
Technical consulting services for PACE provide the following activities and services:
• Development of best-practices, policy, and regulatory compliance rules sets
• Configuring and customizing for analysis testing and compliance validation
• Application integration and extension development
• Customized and automated scripts (provision workflow and remediation action)
• Custom report generation
• Training-developing comprehensive curriculum for the Cisco PACE solution
Cisco Advanced Services: Deployment services for PACE
Cisco Advanced Services for the PACE solution provide comprehensive, customized planning, design, and implementation services to help ensure that the PACE solution supports your change-management and compliance requirements. Cisco Advanced Services take a methodical approach to assessing your current environment, deploying the PACE solution with basic configuration settings, and preparing for the ongoing operations.
Cisco Advanced Services Provide Lifecycle Support
The network lifecycle is an end-to-end view of the continuum of events that take place in the network lifespan. Through a broad portfolio of comprehensive services, Cisco Systems® and its partners can help you achieve your business goals throughout the six phases of the network lifecycle: prepare, plan, design, implement, operate, and optimize. Cisco engineers help ensure that the Cisco PACE solution delivers the expected features and functionalities.
Prepare & Plan Phase
Analyzing Operational, Business, and Technical Requirements
Cisco Advanced Services evaluate your business and technical objectives and analyze your operational and network management requirements. Consulting engineers work with you to understand your current and future requirements as they relate to the Cisco PACE solution.
Assessing Site Readiness
Cisco Advanced Services assess the readiness of your site to support the Cisco PACE solution. The end result is a recommendation report that identifies site modifications required to support the operations of the Cisco PACE solution. This information is also used to help develop the solution architecture design.
Providing Project Management Support
Cisco Advanced Services provide project management support offering a comprehensive set of methodologies and procedures that assure the successful deployment of your Cisco PACE solution. Cisco Advanced Services develop a comprehensive project plan that details the deployment tasks, roles and responsibilities, and a project schedule; identifies and mitigates risk factors; and defines procedures for managing documentation and status reporting. Cisco Project Management acts as the focal point for the control and monitoring of the PACE solution deployment.
Design Phase
Developing the Solution Architecture Design
The Cisco PACE solution architecture design is the blueprint for your change and configuration management system. The architecture addresses the appropriate solution features and functionalities that meet your business and technical objectives. Cisco PACE solution design engineers help produce an efficient design: one that considers critical architecture elements and avoids design errors. The end result is a highly functional Cisco PACE solution that provides you with secure, centralized control of configuration changes across a complex network with continuous consistency checks that validate network operational compliance. Throughout the design development process, the engineers can also provide informal mentoring, imparting leading practices that can help your engineers improve their skills and knowledge, work more productively, and avoid errors.
Developing the Implementation Plan
The Cisco PACE Solution Implementation Plan is a site-specific plan that defines the activities, configurations, and commissioning test plans required to implement a PACE solution. Cisco begins by gaining a comprehensive understanding of your operations and network management system requirements and analyzing the potential effect of the proposed PACE solution implementation on your existing infrastructure and operations. This approach considers all critical elements in order to proactively identify potential risks and avoid disruptions in service. Again, throughout the process of developing the Implementation Plan, informal mentoring opportunities occur.
Implement Phase
Performing Data Migration
In helping you plan for and conduct the migration of your former change and configuration management system to your new Cisco PACE solution, Cisco begins by assessing your requirements pertaining to the transition and analyzing the potential effect of the proposed migration on your overall operations support and network management systems. Migration and test plans are developed and the actual process of data migration is executed by Cisco operations engineers. This diligence contributes to a smooth migration and helps avoid disruptions in service.
Installation, Configuration, and Testing of Hardware and Software
A comprehensive set of methodologies and procedures are used to efficiently and effectively commission your Cisco PACE solution. Throughout the installation and configuration process, Cisco performs physical installation of hardware and software, logical customization and configuration of the PACE solution components, basic integration with other OSSs and NMSs, and user-acceptance testing. These efforts leave you with an operable Cisco PACE system that helps you more effectively manage changes and configurations in your IP network.
Providing Operations Training
Through both formal and informal training, Cisco transfers knowledge relating to the design, implementation, and operations of your Cisco PACE solution. This training addresses any gaps in the technical skills of your network operations staff and enhances their ability to support the new Cisco PACE solution environment.
BENEFITS OF CISCO ADVANCED SERVICES FOR PACE
Cisco Advanced Services:
• Help to assure that the Cisco PACE solution delivers all the expected features and functions, through involvement in all aspects of the Plan, Design, and Implementation activities.
• Reduce network operations costs by identifying the operational changes required to support the Cisco PACE solution.
• Increase system productivity and mitigate the risk in change and configuration management by minimizing the time to install the Cisco PACE solution.
• Improve business profitability through the timely implementation of the Cisco PACE solution, which supports revenue-generating services.
• Improve operation staff's productivity by preparing staff to support the Cisco PACE solution.
SUMMARY
Cisco Advanced Services assist enterprises worldwide with comprehensive and customized planning, design, and implementation support services. These services help ensure that your Cisco PACE solution meets your feature and functionality requirements, minimize the time it takes to implement the solution, and confirm when your staff is ready to support the ongoing operation of the PACE solution. These innovative service programs are delivered through a unique combination of people, processes, tools, and partners, resulting in high levels of customer satisfaction.
