This consulting service will review the current or proposed architecture of your Content Server-based solution and grade it according to the following criteria:

• Overall grade is the general opinion of the consultant of the architecture as compared to the consultant's view of the clients expectations for the architecture.
  
  • A = The consultant believes that the architecture exceeds the requirements and expectations of the client
  • B = The consultant believes that the architecture is able to meet the requirements and expectations of the client
  • C = The consultant believes that the architecture may occasionally fail to meet the requirements and expectations the client
  • D = The consultant believes that the architecture generally or significantly fails to meet the requirements and expectations the client
• Maintenance & Administration or the ability to perform system-level maintenance without service interruption
  • A = everything other than a Database schema-change can likely be performed without service interruption
  • B = most administrative activities, including most patches and hot-fixes, can likely be performed without service interruption
  • C = most application administration can likely be performed but some system administration likely to cause service interruption
  • D = some application administration and common system administration tasks likely to cause service interruption

• Fault tolerance (requires Service Level Agreement) or the ability to withstand system failures:
  
  • A = likely able to exceed defined SLA
  • B = likely able to meet defined SLA
  • C = rare and unlikely events will likely not meet SLA
  • D = normal/ordinary events will likely not meet SLA

• Force Majeure (requires Service Level Agreement) or the ability to restore from complete destruction:
  
  • A = likely able to exceed defined SLA
  • B = likely able to meet defined SLA
  • C = rare and unlikely events will likely not meet SLA
  • D = normal/ordinary events will likely not meet SLA

This service starts with a 1/2 hour virtual meeting whereby the client is provided with a questionnaire designed to allow the consultant to understand the overall parameters of the solution and the expectations of the client regarding the above points. Note that these grades are all not absolute values that can be compared between solutions, rather they are a relative measure of how well a chosen architecture meets a defined set of goals. Where any of these points have not yet been appropriately considered by the client, the consultant will work with the client to define reasonable metrics. This first meeting will also ensure that the client has enabled the summary timings logging and is able to gather the required data for analysis.

With a possible delay in place to allow time to complete the questionaire and gather data, the consultant will spend up to 16 hours doing analysis and report generation. The report will be provided to the customer for review with a follow up final Question and Answer meeting to allow the client to fully appreciate the consultant report.

While this service will provide the reasoning for each "grade", it does NOT provide the client with any necessary or sufficient steps to mitigate though some guidance will generally be provided. Though all attempts will be made to gather and analyse all of the pertinent information, this service is intended as a low-cost, high-level review and therefore cannot offer guarantee. The service is intended to allow a qualified senior technical consultant the ability to offer an opinion on the architecture of a content server-based solution.

This service will be performed and/or supervised by Dave Kinchlea, recognized world-wide as an expert in Open Text ECM Architecture, Security and Performance.