Hopefully many of you have carried out a RAP (risk assessment program) against your AD, Exchange or SQL etc. 
For those that are not familiar with RAP, it is a Microsoft Services Premier Support offering that helps prevent serious issues from occurring by analysing the health and risks present in your current environment (on a per product basis).
For example: if you haven’t done an ExRAP (Exchange server RAP) and your end-users are suffering slow performance, Outlook hangs etc, it could help! An Exchange RAP assesses your current environment and recommends changes which improve the user experience, along with verifying administrative tasks / best practices are also occurring.
Why do I mention this?
The whole RAP program is undergoing an overhaul and there are many great improvements. Not just in the rules and analysis that takes place, but also in the processes and procedures that accompany the RAP.
Q: What are the benefits of RaaS over a RAP?
A: The benefits are:
- Online delivery with a Microsoft accredited engineer.
- A modern best-practices toolset that allows you to assess your environment at any time and includes on-going updates for a full year.
- You get immediate on-line feedback on your environment. Just run the straightforward toolset and you’ll garner instant insight into your environment.
- Easily share results with your IT staff and others in your organization.
- You can reassess your environment to track remediation and improvement progress.
- Reduced resource overhead requirements. There’s no need to take your people away from their other work for multiple days, nor do they need to travel to the location where the work is being performed.
- Better scheduling flexibility. Due to the agile structure of the RaaS service offering, turnaround times to get a Microsoft accredited engineer to review your environment are much shorter.
- Better security. While both offerings are highly secure, RaaS has the added benefit of including no intermediary steps in the assessment process.
- RaaS includes remediation planning, which helps you understand what’s required to get your environment optimally healthy.
- A broader toolset that is continually enhanced. For example, RaaS for Active Directory includes assessment checks that were previously available as two separate service offerings: an Active Directory RAP and Active Directory Upgrade Assessment Health Check. These are combined in the Active Directory RaaS. RaaS also includes additional new tests such as support for Windows Server 2012.
For more information please see the write up over at the MSPFE Blog
If you are interested in a RAAS please contact your TAM to book one in today!
Mark Sewell – Premier Field Engineer