RNSolutions has established a reputation for first class service performed on-time, within budget solutions. It is our mission to continue this excellent track record. RNSolutions has adopted a rigorous, repeatable approach to corporate, program and project management that ensures an effective and efficient operation.
Our Operational Support methodology distinguishes between the technical and managerial approaches. We do so for three reasons.
First, by isolating these two approaches, we can address broader strategic issues while continuing to focus on tactical aspects. This affords us the capability to efficiently resolve surfacing issues as they relate to the client in the different technical disciplines: Systems Administration, Database Administration, Network Administration, Middle-Tier Administration and Data Administration. By recognizing and discussing our technical approach along these major functional areas, we achieve jointly developed and better-accepted recommendations and action plans. The result is smooth operations between all software and hardware components.
Secondly, our management approach is designed to achieve well defined and agreed upon criteria for evaluating success factors. We conduct strategy sessions to gain consensus on and establish the proper quantitative and qualitative criteria to define operational success. Quantitative criteria worth considering are Return-on-Investment (ROI), Service Levels of Agreement (SLA), system and application uptime and accessibility. Qualitative criteria includes interactions between operations and all system stakeholders, mechanisms for providing proper communications, visibility into all operational activities and regular progress reviews.
Finally, our approach is a result of our direct operational experience and reflects what we believe is the future of systems operations. Our tactics produce concrete results by increasing communication between operations and management. This provides increased visibility into all major milestones and activities within operations, with the direct result of more efficient transfer of the team technical knowledge and expertise to the customer.
As systems mature, there are continuing initiatives to improve the accessibility of data, to manage capacity planning, to add new features to the system by enhancing the application software, to upgrade system hardware and system software, and to identify, log and correct defects when they occur.
RNSolutions has proven the capability to enhance our services in the following manner:
- We are able to offer operational support as well as hardware and software support.
- We understand the need for effective project management.
- We support the multi-tier applications.
- We are subject matter experts with tools that enhance the reporting and operational accountability for the customer.
Disaster Recovery
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-130, Security of Federal Automated Information Resources, requires that, in the event of a disaster, federal agencies can recover and provide sufficient service to meet the minimal user needs of the systems they support, and that they take cost-effective steps to manage any disruption of service in that event. In addition, Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 200, Minimum Security Requirements for Federal Information and Information Systems, which was approved on March 9, 2006, assists federal agencies in conducting effective information security programs and in meeting the requirements of the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) of 2002.
eRA’s compliance with federal government regulations and its ability to respond to an interruption in services to restore its critical business functions requires the development of a disaster recover (DR) plan and regularly exercising it. RNSolutions has performed Disaster Recovery exercises for eRA every six months since the beginning of the current eRA Operations support contract. Exercises are executed on a schedule as required and no less than once a year.
OnCall
RNSolutions manages incident and error control with a controlled and scientific approach. The team follows distinct yet simple steps: escalation, identification, troubleshooting, resolution, lessons learned, and process improvement.
Monitoring
The goal is to develop a proactive monitoring plan, a well-defined issue response process for the production environment for Electronic Research Administration (eRA) applications system, gather metrics for tracking purposes, provide capacity planning and monitoring guidelines for applications in defining requirements, and consolidate the monitoring activities.
