Introduction
Got the green light to proceed with installing Incorta? The first thing to do is to sharpen the saw. According to Stephen Covey, this is the seventh habit of highly effective people.
From an Incorta implementation perspective, you sharpen the saw by being properly prepared from both the business and the technical perspectives. In this article, we’ll go through the main activities needed to make sure you are prepared to have a smooth Incorta implementation.
Applies to
This article applies for either on-premises or Incorta Cloud implementations. However, hardware sizing only applies for implementations that are on-premises or in your private cloud.
Let’s Go
Business Preparation
Well defined use cases
A use case is a business challenge that requires answering the right questions and in data analytics projects, Incorta is a key tool that will help you address these challenges and provide actionable answers.
As you define each use case, begin with the end in mind. What are you trying to accomplish? What is the expected outcome? How will you measure success? What is needed to implement the solution?
If you end up having multiple major use cases from different departments, we recommend that you strategize your plan with the stakeholders either by prioritizing the use case with the highest impact and the least disruption to the business process first or by prioritizing the fastest and least complex use cases to implement to get quick buy-in to Incorta as a solution.
Simply put, having well-defined use cases is a key success factor for any Incorta implementation.
Lined up and committed resources
Having a well-defined use case on one hand without having the right team assembled on the other hand won’t let you move an inch toward your end goal. It is important to assemble the right team so that you can succeed.
Here are the major roles you will need to identify and align to your initiative:
- Subject Matter Expert(s) (SME) with specific expertise and responsibility for each area that the use cases are addressing. The SME should take the lead role in the verification process and should always be available to answer questions about the business use case.
- Project Manager (PM) to remove the impediments and roadblocks in the course of the implementation project.
- IT personnel to get involved during environment design and deployment. Duties during the project include:
- Provision Incorta environments (not required for Incorta Cloud)
- Open Incorta required ports
- Configure firewall
- Facilitate connections to data sources
- Assist with SSO/LDAP configuration
Technical Preparation
As you’re working on business preparation, it is important to initiate the technical preparation activities as well. Defining the specifications and the topology of each environment based on the expected usage and future data expansion and user concurrency are kind of an art form that needs some focus before moving forward with project execution.
Hardware Sizing
The Incorta Customer Solutions (CSOL) team is always available to guide our partners and customers with their Incorta hardware sizing initiatives. CSOL has developed a hardware sizing questionnaire that collects the necessary inputs about the customer's environment and application which inform a proper sizing. Please contact your Incorta team to gain access to this sizing questionnaire.
Environment Readiness for an on-premises installation
Once the hardware is provided, make sure it meets the sizing requirements. All prerequisites in the hardware requirements document should also be met, the shared storage should be properly configured and all needed ports should be opened.
Upfront is the best time to perform your technical assessment because project overrun risk will be doubled or in some cases exponentially increased if the environment is complex or the wait time for IT requests tends to be long. Having this assessment as early as possible can save you pain and time later.
Team accessibility to the environments
Make sure that the implementation team has access to the Incorta environment as well as any systems, as needed, that provide data to Incorta - this may require VPN access. In the case of retiring an existing reporting system, gathering the information, such as report samples, the underlying generated SQL, or even access to the legacy system is helpful.
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