Internal Considerations
Topics to reflect on internally when considering a new product or solution.
Top Prerequisites – Technical
If your organization decides to transition from an on-premises deployment to a cloud-based approach, you will need to carefully assess the gap between the technical capabilities desired by your organization and those offered by the vendor. Thus, there are some technical prerequisites that should be considered before selecting a solution. These prerequisites are listed below:
Product Scalability
By carefully analyzing the product's scalability, your organization has the potential to grow and expand while being able to adapt to business changes in an agile and cost-efficient way. Along these lines, it is important to understand the architecture types of vendors to assess whether their solution will provide you with the ability to grow and meet your organization’s needs.
Support for Industry Standards
Success of an implementation depends on the flexibility of the vendor to support both access and provisioning related industry standards and protocols.
Integration and migration from legacy systems
A common issue with legacy systems is the inability to remain agile and adapt to the new business models in an ever-changing world. In order to transition to a more modern architecture, organizations require high flexibility, SaaS solutions, API support, the use of container-based deployments and microservices among other things.
Technical Knowledge and Skills
You should have sufficient technical knowledge and skills to deploy and manage solutions. If there is a lack of these skills, then the vendor should have a training program to grow them or identify technical partners to provide these skills in the short term. Also, consider how managed services can be used in the absence of these skills.
Top Prerequisites – Organizational
A successful vendor selection depends not only on the technology selected. There are also various organizational prerequisites that are important to consider. The following table lists the Top organizational prerequisites.
Defined Process
Who administers the solution? Who guides the internal roadmap? Who liaises with the vendor?
Managing Stakeholder’s Expectations
As part of your internal program management, it is essential to identify your key stakeholders and that their priorities are satisfactorily met with the solution adoption. Provide your key stakeholders with a program roadmap and information on how their primary requirements will benefit from adopting a solution in contrast to the current or traditional systems.
Incident Response Team
Each organization needs a group dedicated to handling breaches and other security incidents. Each team member should have specific roles and responsibilities. This team handles initial responses, investigations, containment, remediation, and communication.
Security Awareness Training
Train users to avoid suspicious emails and attachments. Train responders how to investigate incidents, contain damage from events, and restore to a fully operational state.
Costs and Sustained Investment
Whether the solution is charged on a subscription or usage basis, it is essential to have the required visibility in users' usage patterns to calculate the ROI and make any necessary updates to the service subscription. Ensure that you have gathered the required organizational support on the initial investment and then engage the provider regarding your requirements. It is vital to ensure that the supporting parties are committed to the solution's long-term success.