Core Competencies

In today's information-centric world, an organization is only as good as its data. SQL databases store and serve much of the mission-critical information that powers today's e-businesses. SQL databases underpin such key enterprise applications as Business Intelligence (BI), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

One of the key benefits of a SQL database is that it allows views to be created. A view is a table derived by defining a filter over one or more tables to let users or programs view only certain data in the tables. The result is improved security and more granular user access. Unlike other applications, which tend to have all-in or all-out authentication, SQL views give users or groups of users restricted access to the database, providing them only with the data pertinent to their view.

Additionally, since the view is not actually a physical table, use of views does not result in redundant data. When data in a table is updated, all views that use the data are automatically updated.

SQL Server Consolidation Services

Even so, many organizations find that they have multiple SQL databases scattered throughout the distributed enterprise. Departments install their own SQL Servers, and most applications have dedicated servers, regardless of usage patterns. The net result is database sprawl, and with it comes high hardware costs, data isolation (since data is locked within narrow applications), data repetition (since locked data isn't available for cross-application sharing), and an IT staff that is saddled with excessive administration burdens.

Now, with 64-bit servers being widely available at a low cost, many organizations are seeking to consolidate their many SQL Servers to a small number of high-end servers that can be centrally maintained. Not only will consolidation result in reduced TCO, due to reduced hardware overhead and lower licensing fees, but it promises to unlock data, making it easier to manage, share, and store.

To ensure the success of the consolidation project, IIS helps you identify the key business drivers that favor consolidation, while also assessing current and future capacity requirements, collaboration opportunities, and methods for boosting utilization rates.

With SQL Server consolidation, your organization will reduce IT overhead, improve database performance, increase data availability, reduce the costs associated with various database licenses, and boost scalability.

Using proven HP and SQL reference architectures, IIS will help you:

• Eliminate multiple, stand-alone data silos
• Reduce database administration overhead
• Provide continuous backup and quick recovery
• Create a disaster-tolerant environment for data
• Create a platform that will scale to meet future capacity needs

Scalability Assessment Services

Before committing to new infrastructure investments, it's important to understand exactly what capacity your organization requires today, while also planning and designing for future capacity needs.

IIS will audit your infrastructure, measure usage patterns, and project future capacity needs. IIS professionals perform a scalability assessment during a two- or three-week engagement.

The scalability assessment involves data collection, hardware inspection, and an assessment of underlying databases and the applications that depend on them – all from a SQL perspective. Customer information remains confidential, since our technicians inspect only the meta-data and not the actual information.

Upon completion of the scalability assessment, IIS delivers a detailed report showing both short-term (0-6 months) and long-term (7-18 months) optimization suggestions. These suggestions range from simple upgrades to database tuning to server consolidation and more.

IIS professionals will also recommend the appropriate HP hardware to support your SQL databases and the applications that rely on them. HP provides a complete line of servers, storage, and software that meet the information needs of today's data-rich businesses.

As an exclusive HP Platinum-level partner, IIS delivers HP platforms that maintain high availability, stress security, and serve as the foundation for future scalability. Delivered with HP OpenView and HP storage management software, these solutions are tailored to match Microsoft SQL database software to your specific business needs.

SQL Upgrade and Migration Services

When Microsoft SQL Server 2008 debuts next year, many organizations intend to upgrade in order to take advantage of new features, such as enhanced security, easier key management, and policy-based management features.

Before upgrading, IIS will provide your organization with detailed migration plans to ensure business continuity and data integrity, while avoiding costly downtime. As part of the migration process, IIS will also audit your infrastructure, pointing out any opportunities for database consolidation. IIS can also tie migration plans to continuous backup and disaster recovery initiatives in order to further ensure business continuity.

With the new features provided in SQL 2008, such as better support for rich media, many organizations will standardize around this platform. IIS professionals will provide your organization with migration plans that help you not only upgrade to SQL 2008, but which will also help you move data from such platforms as Sybase, DB2, or Oracle to SQL.

For some organizations, SQL 2008 provides more features than are needed. Many customers will simply seek to upgrade from SQL 2000, since Microsoft is phasing out support and patches, to the more secure and flexible SQL 2005. IIS professionals will assess the business drivers that underpin any upgrade plan and provide you with the options that best match your business needs – be that an upgrade to SQL 2005, an upgrade to SQL 2008, server consolidation, server tuning, or standardization around and migration to SQL from other databases.

Capacity Planning Services

When planning for future needs, IIS professionals take the guesswork out of capacity planning. Our process starts with the important – and often overlooked – first step of scrutinizing your existing SQL server infrastructure. Underperforming SQL servers can drastically throw off future capacity projections.

IIS professionals work to maximize the performance of your existing infrastructure, tuning databases and getting the most out of your existing technology investments. Using tools like SQLscaler and LoadRunner, we then load test your infrastructure to determine maximum capacity. Seeing optimally performing servers stressed under peak loads, IIS professionals then have an accurate baseline from which to project future capacity needs.

Our capacity planning service goes beyond simply adding new users. User prediction alone is fairly simple. IIS professionals, on the other hand, look at the impact of rolling out new applications. We look at your storage infrastructure. We look at related initiatives for things like disaster recovery. We study how server consolidation could affect capacity needs, and how the underlying hardware helps determine performance.

With all of those factors in mind, IIS then delivers a detailed capacity planning assessment. Customers receive a report that specifies your various options for accommodating future capacity needs. These focus on both short-term adjustments, such as database tuning, and more involved efforts like consolidation and suggestions about future hardware purchases. We can also provide proof-of-concept testing for proposed changes, such as the addition of new applications.

SQL Management and Monitoring Services

IIS professionals can help you manage and maintain your SQL environments by deploying sophisticated SQL management and monitoring solutions. IIS can help you deploy and run HP Operations Smart Plug-in (SPI) for MS SQL, the HP Business Availability Center, and HP Operations Manager software – all of which deliver fine-grained management of SQL components to help you meet various Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

The HP Operations SPI for MS SQL Server helps you manage SQL Server environments that can range in size from a single database managed with local tools to a distributed environment of hundreds of databases managed from a central console.

The HP Operations Smart Plug-in helps you increase availability and performance, lets you visualize capacity shortages and trends and lower the costs of maintaining a SQL Server environment. With 30+ predefined threshold events and several log file conditions, SPI for MS SQL Server works to proactively identify database problems before they affect applications and end-users, helping you to ensure uninterrupted availability.

Another management tool that IIS can provide is the HP Business Availability Center (BAC) solution. HP BAC is a business service and application management solution that monitors the health of your business services and applications from the end-user's point of view.

HP BAC helps your organization manage business and operational service levels proactively, and when problems emerge, it helps you isolate them by automating standard operational processes. BAC can also help you manage complex business transactions across heterogeneous environments.

HP BAC works in concert with HP Operations Manager Software to give you control over and visibility into your SQL environment. HP Operations Manager software delivers a view of the health of your infrastructure, helping you to preempt anything that could have a negative impact on service.

Together, HP Operations Manager software and HP BAC give you fine-grained management of SQL components and synthetic transactions. The end result is that you can be confident that end-user experience meets defined SLAs.