Why Is It Important For Companies To Use A Network Operations Center (NOC)?

IT outsourcing. It is a "thing". It has also proven to be a great advantage for companies that need to access a wide range of talented people outside of the hassle of hiring. Outsourcing of applications / web development, business processes (BPO) and infrastructure maintenance has become "business as usual" for many companies. However, there is a new acronym, NOC outsourcing, in the field of outsourcing.

What is the NOC?

NOC is short for Network Operating Center. This is a normal internal IT function that consists of all activities aimed at maintaining smooth infrastructure, systems, and network operations.

Ensuring the best NOC performance is not an option for Managed IT Service Providers (MSPs). Otherwise, you run the risk of losing your business due to SLA breaches. But, as we all know, with Remote Monitoring Management (RMM) software, things can go wrong day or night. This often means putting team members "on call" during non-business hours. Not the best "privilege" for employees, is it? Also, ensuring the provision of noc support services without interruption 24x7 is costly.

Advantages Of Adopting NOCaaS

First, all companies, regardless of size, understand the important role NOCs play in all functions. Good operation means stability, robust and consistent functionality, and security through continuous monitoring and maintenance of your IT infrastructure.

However, if that infrastructure is moving to the cloud, then monitoring and maintenance will have to change, even in stages. We are not giving up control as much as we need to enter a NOC that supports the transition. And outsourcing that feature has a few distinct advantages:

1. Financial Considerations

There is a continuous flow of new monitoring tools developed in response to new threats and potential problems. Such tools can be a big budget expense, not to mention the training in-house technical staff must take to use them. These costs are often unpredictable and difficult to budget, especially for small businesses. The cost of establishing an internal initial NOC environment is also a great cost. On the other hand, a subcontracted NOC is a known expense that can be budgeted in advance.

Then hire a new employee for the NOC role and you will understand the costs. If we don't add staff, we train existing staff to remove them from other jobs. And of course, if something goes wrong and it's a big event, it's "all decks." And there really is no other option. If you want everyone in your organization to be able to perform tasks, your IT functions should run smoothly.

2. Improve Business Focus

Do you have a business. You want to grow and develop new products and services. In other words, there are projects that involve internal IT staff. If you need to spend time tracking down a problem, you should blur your business functions and solve the problem.

By using a managed service provider focused solely on NOCs, you will be provided with the tools, experience and processes to deliver what you need. That is the only thing they do, and it is a great advantage for you. Alerts, response times, and proactive support to serve users mean less downtime in case of problems.

3. Improved Security And Compliance

Engaging an experienced NOC as a service provider means that all security responsibilities are a major concern. That's good. They already have the talent, tools, and technology to maintain the highest safety standards. On the other hand, there is no need to allocate time and resources on a daily basis to the security “cleaning service”, and staff must be reassigned to more important issues.

The same can be said to ensure compliance with ever-changing regulations regarding customer privacy and data storage rules. You don't have to invest in staff training or infrastructure changes to check all the regulatory boxes.

4. High SLA Level With Less Downtime

Network monitoring is a complex and multifaceted process, often with many unknown loops. For companies, this means that their attention must always have different purposes. Failure to do so risks losing big problems, resulting in increased downtime and violating your service levels.

Choosing to outsource network infrastructure monitoring can offer several benefits at once.

• Scalable access to resources.
• On-demand access to a team of experts with NOC skill sets. You can automate and adjust your NOC settings.
• With 24-hour support, you can operate smoothly at any time.

Why Do Companies Choose NOCaaS Outsourcing?

For most companies, the success of a company largely depends on the proper functioning of its networks and IT systems. To ensure stability, functionality, and security, it is important to have highly available resources to continuously monitor your 24x7 system. Outsourcing network operations center (NOCs) help organizations of all sizes monitor, measure, protect and analyze. Support mission-critical data and micro services, network management, and more efficient execution of business applications.

Why Do Companies Choose Outsourcing?

Companies are experiencing the "cloud effect". More processes are being sent to the cloud exponentially. With this growth, fewer companies are considering implementing FTE in the field to manage IT operations as applications and production environments move to more hyperscale environments.

It is also difficult to secure qualified personnel to manage internal networks operations services. Employees who manage IT operations often spend most of their time tracking problems rather than solving problems for their organization. As a result, the cost of each reported problem is high, user satisfaction is low, and productivity is low.

Outsourcing NOCs can help you lower operating costs, free up valuable internal resources, and optimize strategic workflows and processes while addressing strategic efforts. The following are some of the benefits that companies experience with outsourced NOC or NOC-as-a-Services (NOCaaS).

NOCaaS Advantages:

• Level 1-3 support and escalation management teams assist in incident resolution and rapid communication
• Dedicated and knowledgeable staff reduce ticket volume without adding internal FTE staff
• Automated quality control tests, security / data penetration tests, documented compliance tests
• Reduces the administrative burden and costs associated with IT operations and support
• Greater reliability, greater efficiency and peace of mind for IT executives.
• Monitor and alert with key incident support on demand
• NOC build, operate, transfer (BOT) configuration
• Create NOC response playbook
• Create dashboards of health and business products as needed
• Incorporate AI-driven initiatives for incident response and remediation
• Create a change management process.
• Advise on new or current toolkits to augment the best practice framework

Here Are Some Key Questions To Ask Your NOCaas Provider.

Does the provider have application and infrastructure experience? You want a provider to do the deployment. Otherwise, they lose valuable time as they speed up and spend even more time stopping the fire service on the way. Find a proven provider of infrastructure and application type management, be it a Cisco Contact Center or a VMware Private Cloud.

Can You Grow And Grow To Support Your Business?

There are hundreds of providers out there, and not all of them are created equal. Before choosing a provider to manage outsourced NOC services, make sure they can effectively support your business forecasts for the next two to five years.

Do They Follow The Best Practices Of The ITIL Processes?

ITIL is more than an acronym. A proven way to significantly increase the visibility and control of your IT processes. In a NOC environment, ITIL Incident Management provides a formalized and structured framework for managing service issues. It offers a number of key benefits, including timely resolution of service interruptions, improved operational efficiency, improved visibility of business stakeholders, and consistent capture of incident information. Supports continuous process optimization.

How Quickly Can They Diagnose And Fix Service Problems?

The NOC's objective is to keep critical business services operational. Unless your NOC provider can guarantee service recovery within a well defined and acceptable time frame, you are putting your business at risk. Ask about the provider's NOC platform. If you are using a disconnected set of tools, restoring services can be time consuming.

5 Things Companies Should Know About NOC

The Network Operations Center (NOC) is a centralized location where IT technicians directly support Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) software efforts. A network operations center equipment is highly utilized in the managed IT service space and also serves as a tremendous driver for service delivery by many managed service providers (MSPs).

These trained and technical teams oversee the endpoints they monitor and manage, solve individual problems as they occur, and take precautions to avoid many problems. In addition to this NOC, the team also participates in advanced security actions. Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) efforts ensure 24x7 uptime for MSP customers.

What Are The Roles And Responsibilities Of NOC Engineers?

NOC engineers and technicians are responsible for monitoring the health, safety, and capacity of the infrastructure within the customer environment. They make decisions and adjustments to ensure optimal network performance and organizational productivity.

Whenever MSP action is required, networks operation technicians can create alerts to classify problems based on severity or other criteria. Depending on the relationship between NOC and MSP  technical teams can work together to solve the problem.

Additional NOC features include

• Install, troubleshoot and update application software
• Email management service
• Patch management and white listing
• Antivirus scanning and repair
• Voice and video traffic management.

Solve Skill Gaps And Scale With NOC

Given the skills gap, it is very difficult or simply impossible for many MSPs to have staff in a well-designed business, making it a profitable business. Implementing the right skills to help is also very difficult. And the high demand for these technicians makes it even more difficult for the right technicians to target proportionally grown wages and achieve margins when trying to deploy the scale.

However, the NOC closes the skills gap by providing MSP with all the resources that technical staff need. And as the MSP business grows, more resources are required to grow it.

NOC and Help Desk

The Network Operations Center has many functions, but one is not a help desk. What is the big difference? The help desk interacts with the end customer. noc team interacts with MSP.

NOCs provide backend maintenance, troubleshooting, and support so that MSPs can address issues as they occur and ensure customer uptime. Help desks, on the other hand, are call centers and are designed to answer front-line questions directly from end customers who are actively struggling. This means that if the end user has a problem, they can call the desktop. If you have a problem with your MSP, contact the NOC.

NOC vs SOC

An important common criterion for both NOCs and SOCs is to work with MSPs to resolve IT-related problems and never to work with end users. However, the NOC focuses on remote monitoring and maintenance of the customer's IT environment to comply with SLAs and ensure customer uptime without customer malfunction.

NOCs and SOCs perform many services (all critical to the mission of MSPs), but their missions or objectives have little overlap. In contrast, by encouraging these teams to provide a wide range of services, MSPs overcome attempts to merge the tasks associated with these groups.

An overview of NOC Services Technician’s levels

Network Operations Center NOC Services Properly managed outsourcing of NOC services is a wise decision compared to building an internal network operations department. To support advanced technology, all organizations will definitely integrate the latest technology and keep the promise of delivering high performance to their customers.

Updating or adopting new technologies also involves installing and maintaining the highly complex networks involved. Maintaining these complex networks by highly skilled people requires sophisticated tools and infrastructure that may be more expensive than you think. Here is the role of the NOC service provider.

The noc center normally sounds a "knock" service when pronounced. It is a centralized remote location that monitors, maintains and manages noc operations for any managed service provider (MSP).

NOC technicians directly supervise and manage the operation of the RMM software. Help MSP provide trouble-free, efficient service to customers.

NOC experts will carefully monitor the RMM and notify relevant MSP teams of any tickets raised and, if possible, resolve many issues individually. The noc team is also involved in high security, data backup and storage, damage control and administration activities.

Network Operations Center NOC Services: Technician’s levels

NOC's team of engineers is further grouped based on their experience. NOC services are offered on several levels. For example:

1     1)Level 1 monitoring services include online monitoring of noc network operations center. A level 1 technician will handle minor issues like hardware failure or minor issues. If the problem is not resolved here, or if it really belongs to the next level of categories. It is then handed over to the LEVEL 2 team.

2      2) Level 2 monitoring and administration services include monitoring and administration of general network operations. To work at these different levels, different NOC technicians are hired to provide the services that MSCs need.

      NOC technicians are constantly working on the R&D of various potential network problems and are finding solutions for them. Therefore, if you encounter such a problem in the future, you should be prepared to fix it. R&D for network operations requires significant investment, resources and time, which is generally not possible for all organizations. This provides an advantage to all managed NOC service providers.

The Skills Of A Normal NOC Technicians are:

• Continuous monitoring and network management service.
• Application setup, download and troubleshooting.
• Scheduled network performance report.
• Network recommendation sheet, if necessary.
• Discovery, diagnosis and evaluation of networks.
• Network patches management function.
• Backup, management and data storage.
• Antivirus, firewall and other scans and security resolution.
• If possible, we will provide customer support directly.
• Bandwidth management and reporting.
• Handling of alarms / tickets. Make sure you communicate properly until each problem is resolved.

What is Network Operation Center Outsourcing & Its Benefits?

Outsourced NOCs operate from a centralized location, have dedicated professional teams, and provide continuous IT monitoring, management and support services for any number of IT system networks and infrastructures. 365

The main function of the noc outsourcing is to ensure that the network runs smoothly and to identify and resolve problems as soon as they become apparent.

Why Network Operation Center outsource?

Outsourced NOCs provide you with the support you need, flexibly expand your internal IT resources, and help you overcome challenges faster to achieve broader business goals.

Benefits Of Network Operation Center outsource

1. 24 hour support

A common and often unavoidable problem for internal monitoring teams is the delay in finding and solving problems. In particular, it occurs outside normal business hours (or on weekends).

Unfortunately, the problem seems to occur with the greatest inconvenience!

A team of qualified engineers is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to monitor outsourcing NOCs and resolve problems. Everything is for the sole purpose of maintaining uptime and building resilience. You shouldn't even know there is a problem.

2. Access to experience.

Its internal team is expert in many areas and knows inside and outside your business.

On the other hand, NOC engineers have developed highly focused skill sets and have managed and maintained their IT infrastructure in many complex (and different) organizations. Really understand how to apply the experience and provide a comprehensive state of all critical systems.

3. Focus on business priorities

Even though maintaining network operations is an important part of your business, it is often not considered your core business. As a result, infrastructure monitoring may be less than internal priority.

Removing the burden of daily IT management means monitoring and service delivery is the sole focus of NOC partners. That is your job! This high-level, dedicated approach improves system reliability and service quality, and benefits both IT staff, stakeholders, and customers. This allows you to focus on more important projects that drive business growth.

 4. Elimination of monitoring noise.

A common complaint about organizations implementing network monitoring solutions is that, despite their sophisticated capabilities, they generate too many alerts and quickly overwhelm the organization. The alarm can be ignored and the interrupt can be ignored because the tree cannot be seen from the group.

By hiring expert partners, you can configure and adjust alerts to the unique requirements of your organization. Internal IT staff only needs to be notified of REAL problems.

5. Reduce costs / better manage IT costs

Costs and expenses determine the operation of any business. One of the main benefits of outsourcing NOC functionality is cost.

In all areas, including IT, smart outsourcing is aligned with business priorities, addressing skill / resource gaps or expanding / reducing as needed without the fixed overhead of additional human resources Provides flexibility to go down.

First, you can understand skills and resource constraints by identifying and prioritizing key business and IT functions.

And it can be selectively outsourced, but prioritizes the additional capacity needed to achieve broader business goals. This allows you to flexibly expand your ICT environment without the cost of staff and full utilization of network operations centers.

This reduces risk and enables more consistent spending forecasts. By using a "virtual" NOC approach, you can fully operate with the "on-tap" support of the latest experience and technology, at a fraction of the cost of building your own NOC.

6. Flexible and scalable collaboration outsourcing

As for network operations, the requirements vary from company to company. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.

What’s the Difference between NOC and Help Desk?

This question is frequently asked because it is not uncommon for both references to be in the same direction.

The Network Operations Center (NOC, Pronounced Knock) is often mistaken for the help desk, and many people cannot distinguish between the two. First, they are quite different from each other in functionality and scope. These two differences can be identified using a single statement. The noc center interacts with the MSP and the help desk interacts with the end customer. Explain the differences in more detail to make them easier to understand.

It is not uncommon for NOC and Help Desk to be used interchangeably, but they are not. Although there is a difference between operating a help desk and a network, we work with in-house technical staff to provide a customized solution to end users. The easiest way to distinguish the two is as follows:

NOC: focus on networks and systems

It acts as a kind of mission control center that monitors and manages the network, including security, performance, and system backup processes.

Help desk: focus on end users

Helpdesks work directly with end users or their representatives to resolve any technical problem that may arise. In most cases, communication can be initiated by clicking the support icon, sending an email, or calling.

NOC: Most of the work done by the noc operation center focuses on networks and systems. The NOC can be considered almost as a mission control center. Monitor and manage your IT network. A 24x7 NOC generally monitors network and system security, performance, and backup processes.

Help Desk: Help desks are more customer oriented. The help desk interacts with the end user or end user delegate to directly address and resolve any technical issue. Typically, a customer or employee can access the help desk by clicking the support icon, sending an email, or dialing a toll-free number.

NOCs and help desks are different, but they work in conjunction with internal technical support to provide consistent technical solutions to end users. Help desks generally have three levels of support and may need to escalate the ticket to the NOC for resolution.

A help desk is like a call center designed specifically to directly answer questions from end customers who have trouble in the field. NOCs, on the other hand, treat MSPs (managed service providers) rather than end customers. If a problem occurs, the MSP can contact the NOC to obtain a solution to the problem or to answer a question.