Axis Data Management Corp
web admc
Professional Services

Peace-of-mind for
Critical Initiatives
Key
Technologies 		Cost-effective
IT 		Professional
Services 		Axis Data
Management Corp.
Why Axis Professional Services?
Why would a company with hundreds or thousands of employees outsource critical work to Axis Data Management?
  • You need a critical task completed right, the first time. Your technicians could master the subject matter as-they-go, but (a) they would lack the insight and foresight of people who have done it many times before; and (b) learning time would detract from your project schedule. It's particularly important to have an experienced professional present at the design phase in order to prevent false starts, lay out the alternatives, and give accurate estimates.
  • The task does not fit into the responsibility set of any existing organizational group.
  • The required skill set is outside the capabilities of your own experts.
  • The workload of your qualified experts does not allow for this additional task.
See Axis's areas-of-expertise list below.

All Axis employees who perform Professional Services work are covered by General Liability insurance.

Typical Professional Services assignments
We label our requirements-based, contractual I.T. work as Professional Services, to differentiate it from both product development and service-based work.
  • Identify a problem in an existing system, which in-house personnel have been unable to identify.
  • Shared development system design + impl. (Subversion, Eclipse, Ant, etc.). Isolate and minimize env-specific settings.
  • Deployment system refactor. Make build system portable. Package deliverables properly. Make deployer-friendly runtime settings.
  • J2EE Vendor Switch (or addition). Iplanet to WebSphere. WebLogic to JBoss. Make existing webapp work with Tomcat for dev environments.
  • Implement a Unit Testing framework. (May or may not include adding individual tests).
  • EJB to Spring application refactor. Often includes developer education.
  • Struts to Spring MVC refactor. Often includes developer education.
  • Server upgrades.
  • Sun to Linux conversions.
  • Resource consolidation. Identify and eliminate unused resources. Consolidate apps and databases on many servers to the same apps on few servers.

13 minute Java Process video.

This video covers critical principals at a high level, not the technical methods to implement the principals.

Areas of Expertise
See the Key Technologies page for a list of the key technologies we use to work in these domains.
  • Vendor-independence. Refactor applications and development environments to leverage open source tools and to broaden your target platforms.
  • Database design, redesign, integration, embedding, vendor switch.
  • Distributed development and build environments.
  • Tool chain optimization.
  • Software deployment and distribution, including multimedia apps.
  • Real-world project life-cycle
  • J2EE. Project design and setup, refactor, vendor switch.
  • Standalone or C/S Java application design, refactor.
  • Unit testing
  • Automation (backups, automatic workstation and server installations, network management)
  • C to Java conversions
Tips for Outsourcing critical tasks
These tips apply regardless of what company is providing the Professional Services.
  • Understand your needs. Your provider, being a subject-matter expert, can help assemble written requirements and list your alternatives, but progress can't be achieved efficiently until you can communicate the end goal that you wish to achieve.
  • Allocate resources and time to provide access for all of the provider's workers. Badging, remote access setup, etc., can often be worked in parallel with requirements refinement.
  • Understand that the contractors will need support from your direct employees. Regardless of how well the contractors do their job, if the customer does not provide escorts, documentation, testing, etc., when they are needed, the schedule will suffer.