A successful large-scale audit – without touching any devices or assets
The challenge
Royal Mail Group was planning a relocation and consolidation programme in preparation for switching to a new data centre supplier. As part of this, a full physical hardware audit of their main IT estate was required, spanning 10 data centre/computer room locations across the UK and thousands of devices.
However, all equipment was live and covered by incumbent SLAs. This meant the audit had to be completed without touching any equipment, without reaching into any racks, and with staff being escorted around sites at all times.
Our solution
JSC was commissioned by Sunspeed to jointly approach the audit. Sunspeed and JSC engineers used laptops and Bluetooth-enabled portable barcode scanners to capture all necessary Data Centre Infrastructure Management information. All information gathered was cross-checked twice to reduce any risk of human error, and full support service was provided to the client in case of any post-transfer issues (which, in this case, did not materialise).
The outcomes
Covering 2762 devices in 11 days, the end results of the completed audit for Royal Mail Group were:
- A highly detailed asset management tool allowing them to view their IT estate in fine detail
- The ability to plan their consolidation and data centre migration projects
- A working platform to which they could add and record new assets as required
