Infrastructure, Application and
Data Discovery
We apply our Cloud consulting expertise to perform a comprehensive analysis
of the Information Technology (IT) environment to assist with optimising and
consolidating your business applications, and provide a starting point for your
journey to the Cloud.
Creating a map of the IT environment
Planning needs data and many organisations only have basic information about their IT environments.
Verizon’s Infrastructure, Application and Data Discovery (IADD) service discovers and quantifies the following
to provide a clear view of your IT environment:

Servers;

Network;

Applications;

Data Flows;

Databases;

File Shares;

Sensitive Data (Payment Card Industry
(PCI), Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act (HIPAA), etc.)

Intellectual Property/Trade Secrets.
With this data, Verizon creates a detailed model of your systems and services, which can be used to validate
your existing environment or as a starting point for further discussions about Cloud and data centre
transformation.
Review application inventory;
Conduct interviews;
Identify critical functions.
Discovery
Create future scenarios:
- Delivery Method;
- Migration Methodology.
Data
Collection
Future
State
3. Goals
Collect, analyse, and
document key information.
Figure 1: Verizon combines technical discovery within the context of
business and regulatory requirements to provide recommendations
for your Cloud journey.
Guiding Government organisations through the discovery
process
For successful execution of this engagement, Verizon consultants will conduct a number of pre-work activities
including resource and document identification/requests, interview preparation, and system and software preconfiguration.
The IADD engagement starts with a set of interviews with the organisation’s key stakeholders to define the
parameters of the discovery. Depending on the discovery, Verizon performs a combination of the following
efforts:

Install data gathering appliances on site for asset discovery. During the discovery process, Verizon
collects data for four to six weeks, or more, depending on the size of your data centre and the IT
lifecycle.

Technical scanning – Verizon runs data discovery tools for a first pass of the IT inventory. Verizon
refines the results, remove non-server discovered systems (laptops, workstations, and non-migrating
systems) and finalise the system list.

In parallel with the technical scanning services, Verizon conducts consultative tasks to contextualise the
discovery and understand the policies, procedures, protective controls, and environment in which the
information is stored and consumed.

Review all SAN devices, SAN switches, host connectivity and map out current SAN infrastructure. Our
consultants refine the results, remove non-production discovered devices and finalise the SAN
infrastructure list. This will include capturing architectural information, physical and logical diagrams
exhibiting an application’s deployment and geographical footprints.

Capture infrastructure support information – Microsoft® Active Directory®, DNS, NTP, monitoring and
management software, orchestration software, anti-virus and other infrastructure support systems.

Identify shared hosting and shared database environments, create a list of databases and discuss
possible consolidation efforts.

Spider the network discovery and documenting network devices. Perform manual discoveries on
devices that require a deeper dive. Document the following as needed/scoped:
 Firewall location, VLAN setup, security zones, firewall rules;
 Load balancer locations, shared/load balanced servers;
 WAN connectivity, including links size and utilisation;
 Switches, port density and future switch needs;
 Traffic flow between systems, for assistance in grouping relevant systems into application/service
groups.

Application discovery – number and type of applications and systems running the applications.
Mapping organisational context to the data discovery
Following data collation and consolidation, Verizon consultants work with the organisation’s nominated
business and technical stakeholders to augment our findings with information about your organisation,
through a series of interviews. This enables Verizon to map the mission-critical and business-critical
applications with downtime sensitivity.
Verizon also collects, collates, analyses and documents key network information. This process incorporates
your organisation’s site audit data to provide a comprehensive set of documentation that aligns with physical
and logical discovery information.
Providing recommendations for the future IT environment
Finally, the IADD engagement will provide possible future scenarios that meet both IT and business
requirements, including:

Delivery method (Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), or Software as a
Service (SaaS)).

Migration methodology (e.g. rebuild new; move as-is; forklift move; replace with service;
decommission/retire.)
Verizon will provide the following deliverables to enable your organisation to optimise and consolidate your
business applications for your move to the Cloud:

Server asset list, with chassis information, CPU/Memory installed, CPU/Memory utilisation, total and
used disc space, IOPS per system, and other hardware and utilisation characteristics;

Groupings of systems and other assets into application and service groups;

SAN asset list, disc space, LUN and NAS layout, software, replication and other aspects of the SAN
infrastructure;

Network asset list, VLAN mapping, WAN mapping as a Microsoft Visio® document, firewall and load
balancing rules, WAN link utilisation;

Back-up asset list, software, tape libraries, systems backed up, back-up windows and other properties
of the back-up infrastructure;

Application list and mappings of applications to systems and business units;

Traffic flow between systems as a Microsoft Excel® spreadsheet;

Data flows;

Database and file shares lists;

Sensitive data (PCI, HIPAA, etc.) list;

Intellectual Property/Trade Secrets list.