NOC Monitoring and What it Means for Your Business

What is NOC Monitoring?!

Have you ever laid awake at night, wondering: “What is NOC monitoring? Does my company need it? Is it really a necessity?!” If one of those 3 thoughts has ever crossed your mind, you’ve come to the right place. All of that (and more) will be explained to you here in this post.

OK, tell me more!

To put it simply: a network operations center, or NOC (pronounced: “knock”), is a centralized location (picture the heart of the human body!) where your trusty managed services provider is able to provide 24/7/365 supervision, monitoring and management to your system and infrastructure networks, top-layer management and user-management interfaces, computing, storage, network hardware capacity, performance… the list goes on, but you catch our drift!

NOC Monitoring and What it Means for Your Business

These superheroes (err, highly trained IT Engineers) are staffed to keep your system networks safe and ensure 24/7/365 uptime. They keep a constant and close eye on your systems, and because of this diligence, are able to swiftly detect (and subsequently work to resolve) issues that may arise at any time of day or night.

The function of a NOC remains the same regardless of its location – for example, it could be in-house, outsourced, or even exist as a hybrid solution. Generally, the functions and responsibilities remain the same.

What does this mean for you, the customer? For one thing, more peaceful slumber. Why? Most companies are not IT companies. Information Technology is a critical part of any organization as it supports the business and often extends an organization’s capabilities. It is much easier to enter into an uninterrupted REM sleep knowing your systems are being watched over for you by experts. And even more importantly: you are avoiding the horror of walking into work in the morning greeted by an IT disaster that will take time, money and your employees’ productivity to resolve.

OK, MDS – what is your differentiator? What makes you the best in the business?

MDS is a midsize company targeting small to mid-size clients. Why? Because customer service is #1 to us.

With Large Box providers, you deal with a large scale call center and their process is to call you back. With MDS, you get an assigned Engineer, so you know who you are calling or who is calling you. He or she is familiar with your environment and business.

We pride ourselves on our ability to be nimble and respond dynamically to your company’s unique needs. Our accessibility is key and allows us to respond immediately, versus an enormous enterprise provider that has layers of call centers and escalation procedures before you get a live human on the phone.  With us, you get an assigned engineer so you know who will be monitoring your systems and who will answer the phone when you call.

OK, my company needs help! I want to sleep soundly! Tell me a little more.

MDS’ 24/7/365 NOC is staffed by highly qualified technicians and engineers that provide system monitoring and risk mitigation.  To put it plainly: we handle the IT monitoring and support component, while your company can focus on what it does best! To ensure we provide the best support possible, all of our NOC staff are required to be proficient in all the relevant technologies, tools and processes that exist in our client environments. Our team will create or work from up-to-date documentation and diagrams that allow the NOC to effectively mitigate risks and resolve issues within your environment. Transition meetings are held at the end and beginning of every shift to make sure that any open issues are properly managed to the ITIL Standard.

What type of monitoring will MDS provide to me, the client?

  • Monitoring of your infrastructure, infrastructure networks, top-layer management and user-management interfaces, computing, storage, and network hardware for availability, capacity, and performance.
  • Monitoring the assets deployed or managed by MDS, including (but not limited to!) virtual machines, operating systems, applications, specific network configurations, operating systems or application vulnerabilities.
NOC Monitoring and What it Means for Your Business

What are the support services included?

  • No worries: MDS’s NOC can be reached by phone or email. MDS will provide incident and problem management services (e.g. detection, severity classification, recording, escalation, and return to service) pertaining to areas such as:
    • Infrastructure over which MDS has direct, administrative, and/or physical access and control, such as servers, storage, and network devices.
    • Service software over which MDS has direct administrative access and control, such as the vCenter, and SysAid, and other applications that MDS uses in the delivery of the Service Offering.
  • All infrastructure will be managed by following proven “Best Practices,” and all facets of the solution will be proactively managed.
  • Processes such as health checks, patching, security review, trend analysis, strategic analysis, and policy review need to happen on a regularly defined schedule: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. This is maintained in an automated system (calendar view) that feeds a work queue that the staff works in daily. The successful completion of these tasks is logged and tracked in a ticketing system that creates a workflow and an auditable trail.  This creates stability and informative reporting on every aspect of management! the

Ok, where do I go from here?

MDS will conduct a free introductory assessment and create a long term strategy, tailor-fit to your company, and focused on ROI. Start your journey… connect with an MDS expert today! http://microdatasys.com/contact-us/

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