Day 15: Half Way Point

Starting our day with a meeting with the Director of IT for the Ministry of Agriculture.   He was accompanied by two key engineers on the IT team.

The Director of IT providing us a high level walkthrough of the architecture of their data center.

Getting a walkthrough of their data center.   We were impressed with how sophisticated it was.

Consolidating our notes and findings after spending our morning with the IT department.

It was Friday so that meant cous cous day.  We went make to our favorite lunch spot where our regular waiter had our table saved for us.   Here Rahul and Andrew are drinking their curdled buttermilk which is traditionally served with cous cous.

The vegetables that they serve with the cous cous are very good.   It consists of cabbage, pumpkin squash, zuccini, carrots, and yellow squash.   A combination raison and onion mixture is served over the meat.   It is served with a meat broth that you can pour over the cous cous.   I will miss this meal when I return home and may need to learn how to cook it.

It was our second Friday on our project and officially the half way point of our trip and project.    We started the morning with meeting with the Director of IT for the Ministry of Agriculture.  He brought two key engineers from his team and we have a very good discussion and tour about their overall IT priorities and data center strategy.    We were very impressed with what they showed us.... especially when we found out that most of the infrastructure had been set up in the last 12-18 months.   It was an exciting conversation for us because it helped to fit together the pieces of potential technical options for future phases of the pricing project.

For the first time in several days, we had several hours where we could start to focus heads down on documenting many of our findings for our final deliverable.    We have so much work ahead of us but it is amazing all of the information that we have learned in two short weeks.   The time is really going quickly.   Next week we still have a few remaining key interviews, but we hope to spend most of the week prioritizing recommendations, working on solution architectural options, and starting to work on our deliverable and final presentation.

We have this weekend off and six of us are taking a train to Fez in the morning and plan to spend the night in a Riad that a friend of Tracey's recommended.   I don't expect to be able to update my blog again until late Sunday or Monday.

Have a great weekend!