Executive Summary

After you have narrowed down your choices to a few possible systems, network configurations, and vendors, your next challenge involves soliciting proposals, evaluating specific solutions, selecting vendors, and deploying your chosen solution. Every project will require different tactics for moving from this point to completion. The following guidelines should help you separate the wheat from the chaff and assist you in making sure that the solution you deploy performs as advertised and as expected.

Pilot Project

Run a pilot project that will confirm that your solution will work with your users, in your environment, on your network, and with the level of support that you can afford. It is important that your pilot project be conducted over a sufficient period of time (one to three or more months) to allow any network or reliability issues to surface. Depending on the size of your network and current competitive vendor market conditions, you may need to pay for your pilot project. If so, be sure that the bulk of those payments can be applied to your purchase.

Request for Proposal (RFP)

Write a RFP that describes clearly and precisely what you want, when and where you want it, what you expect it to do, and what kind of support you expect. If you are not confident that you can write a bullet-proof RFP, get some help from an independent consulting company. Their fee will probably be balanced out by the resulting savings, not to mention the resulting peace of mind.