Technology Assessment Services

Umbian offers Technology Assessment Services designed to provide technical expertise to assess the security, stability, and sustainability of a company’s information technology products and infrastructure. Specifically, our Technology Assessment Services targets organizations Specifically, our Technology Assessment Service targets organizations that are looking to assess a company’s technological competence prior to an acquisition or investment.. We recognize that technology landscapes can be complex and somewhat unfamiliar, especially when evaluating an external business. Umbian is here to help.

Umbian’s subject matter expertise, years of applied experience, and proven methodology provides clients with a comprehensive understanding of both the risk and value of investments in and/or acquisitions of companies within the technology sector. We assist companies in answering questions such as:

Does the technology do what it claims to do?
Is it secure?
Can it support the level of up-time required?
Are there critical gaps and if so, where do they exist and more importantly, how can they be fixed?
Can this technology grow?

Our services assess technology from three perspectives; Infrastructure, Application, and Information Management. Each perspective is examined for degree of robustness of the IT architecture and design characteristics documented within the table below.

IT Architecture and Design Characteristics

Description

Possible Features Assessed

Security

The measures and techniques employed to ensure that only the properly permissioned people and systems can access the system.

Use and level of encryption; Authentication tools and methods; User Access management; Use of Intrusion Prevention and Detection systems; Audit and change logging; Incident response tracking; and Information management life cycle

Scalability

The ability to either handle growing amounts of work in an efficient manner or to be readily enlarged. For example, it can refer to the capability of a system to increase the total throughput under an increased load when resources (typically hardware) are added.

Type and age of hardware; Application Architecture; Capacity Planning; Load test plans and results; and Hardware and Server Configuration

Availability and Reliability

The proportion of time a system is in a functioning condition and the ability of that system or component to function under stated conditions for a specified period of time.

Performance Statistics (internal and published); Incident Reporting; Customer Performance Complaint metrics; Service Level Agreements of Vendors and assessed technology; Code Release process; Failover planning; Load Balancing; Redundancy Planning; and Disaster Recovery Plan (existence, location, test, etc.)

Maintainability and Supportability

The ease with which a product can be maintained in order to correct defects or meet new requirements and the ease with which technical support personnel can deploy and monitor the application and trouble-shoot problems.

Development Technologies used; Build Release Strategy; Client Boarding Process; Use of Support Ticketing Tools; and Staff Stability and Capability

Extensibility

A system design principle where the implementation takes into consideration future growth. It is a systemic measure of the ability to extend a system and the level of effort required to implement the extension. Extensions can be through the addition of new functionality or through modification of existing functionality. The central theme is to provide for change while minimizing impact to existing system functions.

Build-Release Plans and past schedules; Evaluation of past updates to add features; Database Design; Application Architecture; and Outstanding Enhancement list

Usability

The ease, elegance and clarity with which a person interacts with a computer system or a web site.

Learnability; Efficiency; Memorability; Accuracy/Error Rates; and User Complaint statistics

Maturity of Practices, Processes and Standards

The existence and completeness of general practices, processes and standards that are not specific to the Architecture and Design characteristics previously listed.

Testing Practices; Configuration Management Process; Development and Coding Standards; Promotion Process; and Peer Review Practices

Umbian also offers technology assessment services in association with Upstart Industries. Read more about our relationship with Upstart Industries, here.

To learn more about our Technology Assessment Services, please Contact Us.