Building a Business Case

After you have done all your homework, you will likely need to make a presentation to management. Again, the Solution Matrix Web site is a great resource, providing sample business case templates, documents, and PowerPoint presentations that will get you started. My first experience with presenting a business case was during my employ at a small manufacturing company in Ogden, Utah. The Engineering Manager and I spent a couple of months gathering data to install a computer network in the plant, connecting Computer Numeric Controlled (CNC) machines and some Computer Aided Design (CAD) workstations. We absolutely knew that the project would have a payback period of a few months. We had prepared a detailed report for the business case, including a detailed ROI, a payback schedule, network maps, equipment lists, and a lengthy justification. When we went in to the office of the company president, we felt prepared for anything he would ask. After I completed the presentation, the company president leaned back in his chair , tapped his pencil on the table for a minute, and then looked at me and said, "If I give you the money for the network, how many people can I lay off?" Needless to say, we weren't prepared for that question. But I thought for a minute and told him the answer was "None." What this would do is increase our productivity and allow us to shorten manufacturing time for our products. He smiled and said that's what he wanted to hear. Business justification isn't only about saving cash; it's also about increasing productivity to generate more income. Don't get so focused on cutting costs that you forget about increasing income.

To present your business case, you should have

• Identified costs associated with the project: hardware, software (and licensing), consulting, IT staff labor, tool development, and so on.

• Identified benefits anticipated as a result of the migration: reduced downtime, lower support costs, reduced maintenance costs due to reduction of servers needed, and so on.

• Performed a cost analysis, complete with ROI, payback period, and Cash Flow analysis or other analysis showing the anticipated costs, benefits, and resultant savings. Use hard cost savings areas to identify savings benefits and list incidental savings as a bonus to the actual savings.

• Constructed a project timeline using a Gantt Chart or similar program. Even if it's just major milestones at this point, this will help in cost and resource estimates.

A Gantt Chart is a method of tracking a project's lifecycle showing project steps, timelines , people assigned to tasks , and other details to estimate completion dates, costs, and other results. Microsoft Project is one tool that will produce such a chart. A quick search on Google for "Gantt Chart" produced a number of Web sites offering products to develop these charts . The Web site at http://associate.com/gantt/ provides a free interactive tool that allows you to input the information for the chart in a form on the Web site and have it produce the chart. The Web site also offers a free download of the tool. Figure 3.5 shows a Gantt Chart I produced in a few minutes at this Web site. Note that I defined all the phases of the Windows Server 2003 migration in the "Project Assignment Key;" then each project can be broken down into tasks with a timeline. Of course, you get what you pay for, so the tool is limited by the inability to specify a task's timeline for less than a week or assign tasks to individuals, but for a small project, it will probably work just fine.

Figure 3.5. A sample GANTT Chart built on the http://associate.com/gantt Web site.

Technical Justification

Interestingly enough, I talked to several companies who had upgraded to Windows Server 2003 and asked if they could share their ROI or cost analysis for the migration with me. They all indicated that they did not do a cost analysis. The Georgia Department of Transportation did not do an ROI for its Windows NT 4.0 to Windows Server 2000 migration, nor for the 2000 to 2003 upgrade. The driving factor was a need to upgrade from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2000, and centralize the domain structure for easier management. Visanet, in Brazil, simply realized that Windows NT 4.0 was at end-of-life and that was the driving factor to upgrade. These benefits were perceived worthy of the cost of the migration without doing a cost-savings analysis.

HP justified the migration from Windows 2000 to Windows Server 2003 based on technical features, without ever doing any cost/benefit or ROI justification. The Windows Server 2003 features they listed included

• Migration from Exchange 2000 to Exchange 2003 required Windows Server 2003.

• DCPromo from media (also known as Install From Media) enabled rapid expansion of the forest and quick rebuild of GC servers (see Chapter 1).

• DC rename to help with site consolidations (see Chapter 1).

• Improved intrasite replication, with the delay reduced from 5 minutes to 15 seconds (see Chapter 5, "Active Directory Logical Design").

• Linked Value Replication (LVR) eliminates the 5,000-member limit to groups (see Chapter 5).

• Reduced size of the Active Directory (AD) database, NTDS.DIT, from 12GB down to 7.5GB due to single instance security descriptors.

• Support for primary Domain Name Server (DNS) suffix that is different from domain name . HP renamed the DNS suffix to hpqcorp.net, even though renaming the domain wasn't possible when HP implemented Windows Server 2003.

• Console mode Terminal Server (can replace PC Duo).

• Schema changes were made easier, such as changes to the partial attribute set (PAS) not requiring a full sync of the GC.

• Significant bug fixes:

  • Detect and fix broken foreign security principals.

  • Detect and remove "lingering" objects (see Chapter 5).

• Standard Network Time Protocol (NTP) support for time services (See Chapter 6, "The Physical Design and Developing the Pilot").

Each of these companies had technical justification for upgrading or migrating to Windows Server 2003 that they felt were so compelling, they did not do a formal ROI or cost/benefit analysis. However, if you are not fortunate enough to have a positive consensus from the start, you'll need to do your homework first.

Reasons to Postpone Migration

Unless you change the whole infrastructure to Linux or something, you are regularly forced to upgrade the OS by Microsoft's end-of-life practices. Windows NT reaches end-of-life in the summer of 2004. Ultimately, then, you really don't have a choice whether to migrate, but there are certainly reasons to postpone the migration. Analyze your situation carefully to ensure that you perform the migration under your terms and with as little risk as possible. Some of the issues that might cause you to delay migration to Windows Server 2003 include

• Applications not certified and tested : Just because a vendor claims their application is Windows Server 2003-compatible, you should test it in your environment, with your users, using the features they use.

• Incomplete namespace design : Perhaps the namespace will change or there is disagreement on what it should be. While Windows Server 2003 allows you to rename the namespace, it is not pretty or easy, so try to do it right the first time even if it takes some time.

• Network instability or upgrade required : If you are already having network problems or if you are anticipating a network upgrade, you might consider fixing it or waiting for the upgrade before engaging in a migration. A delay should be considered not only for technical reasons, because network connectivity and speed may affect your replication topology design (described in Chapter 5), but also for management reasons. It is difficult to manage a migration while a major project is also going on.

• Hardware support : many servers and components such as Network Interface Cards (NICs) have been dropped from Microsoft's Hardware Compatibility List (HCL), as noted in Chapter 1. Your company might have to upgrade hardware prior to the migration of the OS, which could delay the migration.

• Budgetary reasons : Just like your personal budget, you can't always do what you want when you want to do it. You should be aware of the financial climate and not make a migration proposal if the company is going through hard times. On the other hand, you might be able to make your case via ROI justification to show actual cost savings and thus help the financial status of the company by upgrading. Look for times to pitch requests , such as at the beginning of a fiscal quarter or fiscal year. (Funny how companies always have more money at the beginning of one quarter than they did at the end of the previous one, even though only a day has passed.)

• Lack of technical resources : If you are migrating from Windows NT, you have a big job ahead of you: designing the AD. You need to make sure you have the right resources to do the job.

• Training : Make sure your IT staff has adequate training even if you hire consultants to do the job. Your staff must maintain the environment, so they need to be trained on how to manage it after the consultants leave.

• Availability of key people : You need to assemble an elite design team. The migration might need to be postponed to meet those schedules.

Now that we have established the business requirements of a migration, including identifying areas where cost savings can accurately be measured to calculate ROI and TCO as well as other metrics, we turn our attention to the technical details of the migration. Let's first examine a new concept in compatibility for down-level versions of the OS, introduced by Windows Server 2003, called functional levels.