SUPPORT, OPERATIONS AND MAINTENANCE

We are in this business because we believe that no one should lose data. This is possible thanks to technology—and at a reduced cost— and we are here to ensure that this happens. We make sure data is always available through fast and secure access. We have talent and experience far above average and we want to share it to ensure the value that technology can bring to the final business.

We provide Support Services, Operation and Oracle, SQLServer, PostgreSQL and MySQL Database Maintenance. We have a 24×7 availability service, a 1-hour response time and predefined resolution times for incidents, problems and change requests.

A written SLA contract states our commitment and compromise.

Preventive, through proactive and ongoing monitoring that provide instant information on the quality of the service provided by the computer systems.

Corrective, through the management of incidents and problems following the ITIL Foundation recommendations.

Perfective, through continuously taking care of the systems’ excellent performance and working closely with the SQL Tuning development as well as the systems team in architecture and hardware performance-related issues.

Evolutionary, consisting of the application of patches and databases updates, which are uploaded on the new versions supported by the manufacturer; likewise, we solve change requests in the applications’ data schemas.

Adaptative, to adapt the database manager software to the changes derived from legal and evolutionary hardware and applications requirements.

We have tools to monitor the activity and performance of a server and database instances that allow us to instantly determine the quality of the service measured by availability and performance. We monitor more than 400 items per database server, including operating system events, cluster services, locks, jobs, and database statistics.

PROJECTS

We plan and implement projects for database deployment, data migration, replicas and updates. As engineers, we are very strict with the meaning of this word. Our proposals include very detailed planning that we then implement accurately and with strict rigour in scope, quality, time and cost.

We implement an average of 20 projects per year following the PMI methodology in which we have been trained. We deploy software; we create, configure, patch and replicate databases to ensure they work in a strong and secure way so that they reach the maximum performance the hardware allows for.

All our project proposals include a very detailed project plan: the tasks to be implemented grouped in phases; staff names and surnames in charge of implementing them; each person’s workload; project duration and phases; milestones delivery; project risk assessment, which includes a calculation of the probabilities, measuring the impact and planning a contingency plan; and of course, the cost, which will obviously always be fixed.

In our projects, shortcomings or delays in the delivery date simply do not exist. Even if the problems are due to external causes, such as delays in the delivery of hardware or software errors, we work with our client’s team in order to respond to these problems as members of the client’s team. All the project’s problems are our problems and we act accordingly to prevent and solve them.

We deploy and configure database management software: Oracle, SQLServer, PostgreSQL and MySQL; virtualisation software; operating systems; Oracle RAC cluster software; data replica software. We create databases with the precise configuration for a transactional use or Data Warehouse. We set up replicas for databases in manual or automatic standby with Oracle DataGuard or Oracle GoldenGate

We migrate data between hardware platforms and heterogeneous databases. In order to do so, we tackle it in two phases; firstly, we carry out a test to check the migration procedure (risks and intervention times) and the application tests (connectivity and performance); and then a second and final one, which is usually implemented outside normal working hours. In the case of critical systems where the business does not allow us a wide cutting time, we can implement the migration with a micro-cut of practically the reconnection of the applications. Our migration projects terminate with a post-migration support period, which is mainly aimed at offering support with regards to connectivity incidents and application performance.

We plan and implement updating and patching databases projects with the minimum service outage and service continuity guaranteed.

CONSULTING

We are consultants with decades-long database experience on multiple platforms. We know very well the different system architectures; the complex world of database licenses as well as the cloud services advantages and risks. With all that in mind, will your organisation miss our expertise?

We provide licensing and database audit services, analysing and diagnosing security issues, configuration and performance issues with Oracle, SQLServer, PostgreSQL and MySQL databases. We believe that the first step to improving something is knowing the problem.

Once the situation has been assessed, we make proposals for improvement through consulting projects proposing changes to the databases in order to consolidate them, provide them with high availability, security and improve their performance. Such proposals include the elaboration of a project or programme of projects detailed in scope, time and cost so that any experienced team of DBAs is able to execute it.

We provide advice on the organisation’s technological strategic decision-making process (systems, databases and application servers). For example, we participate in Cloud Services feasibility studies (IaaS, PaaS or SaaS) for the organisation as opposed to staying in their own data centres with proprietary licensing. We undertake economic studies in order to assess the available option and we then implement service movement projects to cloud.