"With just a few mouse clicks, Reporter generates plain- English reports accessible by non-technical clients." Craig Roberts, Chief Information Officer

Network Documentation Case Study Overview

Craig Roberts is chief information officer for IQubed, a Houston-based consulting firm specializing in maximizing business potential through inspired design and deployment of technology. He uses Enterprise Auditor with existing clients and in his own laboratory network to identify, track, and monitor changes to Windows servers during the application of service packs, hot fixes, or changes in networking parameters. He uses Auditor's Reporter subset when on-site with a new client to discover, assess, and audit critical configuration data for all of their Windows servers.

The Situation

IQubed specializes in network design and implementation for small to medium business environments. Given this target market, the firm frequently recommends Microsoft's Small Business Server® solution. Proper, detailed documentation of an SBS environment of ten to fifty client systems normally consumes 800 to 1,500 single-spaced, double-sided pages. It costs up to 50 hours of labor to produce a bound, hard-copy version of the documentation, depending on installation and configuration variances.

The Solution

Using Ecora Enterprise Auditor, IQubed reduced labor investment to between 2 and 10 hours.

Primary Benefits

Documenting system status enables quick security auditing, problem resolution, consistency checking, and proactive network administration. This leads to clear identification and illustration of system vulnerabilities or configuration errors. Using this information as a starting point, Roberts details the specific services IQubed provides to resolve the identified issues. Using Enterprise Auditor in combination with a tool like the Fluke OneTouch® Series II, Roberts walks into a business for the first time and has its network completely profiled and evaluated within thirty to forty-five minutes

Additional Benefits

• Well written, stable software that just plain works
• Extremely detailed analysis and documentation of the various platforms it analyzes
• Non-intrusive, Enterprise Auditor runs on a consultant's laptop or client's workstation instead of a production server
• Reasonably priced license options

The Future

There is no question, Roberts explains, that Enterprise Auditor is "must have" software for anyone serious about providing top flight IT consulting services with network documentation. Moreover, with just a few mouse clicks, Reporter generates plain-English reports accessible by the non-technical clients to whom IQubed markets its services.

"The ability to quickly collect and export hundreds of configuration settings into html, DOC, or delimited text files for a relational database or spreadsheet is indispensable," Craig Roberts, Chief Information Officer

The Problem Solver

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