[LINK] [OT] Recommendations for a tool to map an enterprise infrastructure?

[Anthony Hornby]

Thanks Bernard,
We all have Visio and everyone knows how to use it - so this might be
the simplest route.
I am not looking for over-the-top enterprise bells and whistles - just
ability to simply map the major systems, their purpose & interactions
and probably links from there to the relevant doco in our wiki.

80:20 reward:effort firmly in sight <grin>

Thanks for the link & candid response :-)

Regards Anthony


On 9 June 2010 10:28, Bernard Robertson-Dunn <brd at iimetro.com.au> wrote:
> If you want modelling overkill try:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Architect_(software)
>
> You'll spend forever putting information in and the system will document
> it all. You (or the people putting the information in) won't actually
> understand much but you'll be able to print lots of pretty pictures.
>
> I prefer to useVisio and construct the models so that I understand the
> environment and infrastructure. Visio is then just the vehicle for
> holding a representation of my models.
>
> Powerpoint can be just as good but takes more effort.
>
> To mangle the planning cliche - models are nothing - modelling is
> everything.
>
> On 9/06/2010 9:58 AM, anthony.w.hornby at gmail.com wrote:
>> Hi Everyone,
>> in our academic library our infrastructure is getting more and more complex.
>> This is driven by the need to provide increasingly seamless experiences for
>> clients across all of university services online (and the library services
>> are a key component of that).
>> However with a small administration team it is getting to the stage where
>> we need to find better ways to visualise all the interactions that are
>> happening to aid future planning and systems development, risk and impact
>> assessment of changes etc.
>>
>> So I really want to map out visually the technologies we use, their
>> purpose, data flows between them etc and am looking for recommendations for
>> a tool that will allow us to generate a high-level representation that can
>> be drilled down into for the detail and:
>>
>> 1) Doesn't cost the earth. Hosted cloud-based stuff is fine. Open source /
>> commercial is fine.
>> 2) Has a reasonable balance between features and complexity - just
>> recommend anything you think might be useful and we'll have to work this
>> one out.
>> 3) Has intuitive and context driven tools - eg you can change things
>> directly in the interface from where you are in the map
>> 4) Has good help and preferably a reasonable user community.
>> 5) Something that scales as our central IT area is looking for the same
>> sort of tool to map the university major systems as well, and it would be
>> good to use the same tool.
>>
>> All suggestions welcome !
>>
>> Regards Anthony
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Link at mailman.anu.edu.au
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>>
>>
>
>
> --
>
> Regards
> brd
>
> Bernard Robertson-Dunn
> Canberra Australia
> email:   brd at iimetro.com.au
> website: www.drbrd.com
>
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