itbydesign07 NOC Services

A Guide to choosing the right 24×7 NOC Services Provider

Every so often, small to medium-sized MSP businesses cannot afford to maintain their IT infrastructure around the clock. However, by working with a 24×7 NOC Services Providers, they can have the luxury of such IT Infrastructure Management. This blog offers a step by step guide to choosing the right NOC services provider. 

1. Do your research 

Once you are done with shortlisting a few NOC service providers, check their websites and lookup for client testimonials. Application installations and troubleshooting, email management services, backup management, network assessments, intrusion prevention, patch management, and policy enforcement are crucial to making IT infrastructure run smoother – a major and important benefit of availing 24×7 NOC Services from a provider. Check if that is reflected in listed client testimonials. As a thumb rule, ignore all testimonials that don’t have the client’s picture on it.  

2. Fix an interview with one of their engineers

When you partner with a NOC Services provider, you are directly working with qualified engineers who detect potential network threats, vulnerabilities, or potential disturbances. Issues are easily troubleshot and remediated at Network Operations Center before they are ever a concern to your client’s business. Hence, consider having an interaction with one of the NOC engineers. This will help you match the skill sets your clients are looking for. 

3. Partner with a compliant partner 

There are so many plugged-in devices, including tablets, operating systems, servers, smartphones, and laptops that store and transmit data in a NOC service environment. A Network Operations Center can make your businesses aware of these security breaches, highlighting how data and compliance practices are compromised during each scenario.

For some of your clients that particularly belong to health care and law industries, compliance is a major concern. A NOC services provider of repute can help your clients’ businesses address concerns around compliance. To ensure that you partner with the right service provider, study shortlisted providers’ HIPAA compliance status, managed security protocol, policies, and procedures. 

itbydesign07 NOC Services

Can MSPs rely on NOC services providers? – The Final Verdict

Best described as a network operations center, NOC provides MSPs access to technicians who directly support the efforts of remote monitoring, backup – disaster recovery and security actions. By better understanding what their clients are looking for, NOC services providers can help MSPs tailor their offerings. Let’s understand HOW in this blog. 

Cost-effectiveness 

The cost savings associated with NOC services are considerable. This fact has an incredible amount of business value, but many small businesses are unaware of just how significant this is. When a Network Operations Center monitors your network remotely, you get to optimize your business capital that otherwise would have been consumed in hardware, software, and network infrastructure.

Freeing up internal IT staff 

It doesn’t make sense to have your team handling things they have little expertise or experience with. Tasks like application software installations, backup management, storage management, network discovery, network assessments, intrusion prevention system monitoring, antivirus remediation, shared threat analysis, voice/video traffic management, and policy enforcement can be expertly handled by NOC engineers instead while your technician can commit their time to something they excel at. NOC services enable in-house staff to spend their time on what they are best at, with the NOC experts filling in the gaps and taking the pressure off.

Enhanced ROI 

When MSPs work with NOC services providers, they increase their productivity by allowing strategic planning to get the time and attention it deserves. This, in turn, optimizes the business’s IT budget and MSPs get the most out of their investment.

Better scalability 

Using an outdated approach to network monitoring can have detrimental effects on ROI, and this can be avoided when you have access to highly skilled NOC engineers. A Network Operations Center provides small businesses an ability to grow or scale back, something small to medium-sized businesses can’t afford on their own.  

itbydesign07 Staffing Services

A Quick Introduction to IT Staffing Services

Hiring an IT staffing services provider is a great way to allow your business to focus on what’s important to you other than running ‘Recruitment and Selection’. If you wish to take a closer look at some of the more persistent reasons why IT staffing services providers are becoming the obvious choice for small businesses, read this blog. 

How do staffing services providers offer IT staffing? 

Clients choose a model by which IT staffing is provided on an “as-needed” basis. Just as you are recommended to share all the details with your doctor about your health, you need to share everything about your talent requirements with the service provider. 

To give staffing services providers overview of your business, give answers to questions like: 

  • Which IT industry verticals you belong to? 
  • If you have any, what are the peak seasons for your business? 
  • What are the regulatory frameworks your prospective employees need to adhere to, based on the industries you work for?
  • What are your short-term and long-term business expansion plans? 

Based on your feedback, IT staffing services providers can start researching their existing pool of talent. Outsourcing IT staffing ensures that you have an extra team of IT experts working for you. Needless to mention, you also benefit from having access to engineers who are updated on the latest technology and innovative business-grade solutions.

Making the most of availed staffing services

Since a growing IT business’ talent needs may change over time, you and your service partner should set some time aside every month or at least every quarter to discuss ongoing talent requirements. This will allow you to have predictable costs and a talent roadmap to stick with.

This is one of the reasons why, in today’s fast-paced business environment, most small businesses describe their relationship with their staffing service providers as a collaborative arrangement with their human resource department. 

itbydesign07 Helpdesk

3 ways to find the right Helpdesk Solution

Ever since the Internet came into the picture, businesses have embraced multiple channels of customer support. Today, customers demand consistent service experiences across these channels – a reasonable expectation that’s almost impossible to adapt when your business is using different tools for different channels. So how can you unify your support processes and create a more coherent customer support experience? A helpdesk consolidates all your support, letting you drill down into issues. It helps you deliver contextual customer support without your agents getting in each other’s way.

But, with so many options out there, how would you choose a helpdesk that will work well for your unique business challenges? Here are the questions you’ll need to answer, to find a Ticketing System that’s right for your business.

1. Internal vs external?

Decide what you’re going to use the helpdesk for. Who are your end-users, and what are the tasks you want to perform with your IT helpdesk? Depending on the answers, you can determine whether you want a customer support helpdesk or an internal IT service desk. Although there are similarities, these two are not interchangeable.

2. What do your customers expect?

The key to providing good customer support is understanding what they want from you. Some customers expect speedy answers while others are willing to give you second chances provided they do not face similar challenges in the future. You should be actively researching ways to improve. The best way to do so is simply asking them via a service survey. 

3. What features does my business need?

It’s important to not only look for features you need but also ensuring that you aren’t getting what you don’t need. You don’t want to get a feature that is going to overwhelm your support staff and needlessly complicate things. There’s a fine line between getting extra value and just wasting your CapEx. Also, it’s better to think ahead and see if you could potentially use extra features in the future. 

Read Next: The Significance of NOC as a Service for Small Businesses

itbydesign07 NOC Services

The Significance of NOC as a Service for Small Businesses

Maintaining networks can be an expensive affair. This is one of the reasons why many small businesses are outsourcing to a NOC today, to ensure their networks are being monitored, analyzed, secured constantly. 

Outsourcing your NOC can help you to free up valuable internal resources that, otherwise, are forced to devote their time and efforts in monitoring your network. The entire exercise can ultimately help you optimize your processes and workflow. Not to mention, you will end up reducing your overall operational costs and running business applications more efficiently.

1. Uninterrupted Performance Monitoring

A NOC operates 24x7x365, which means the performance of your network will always be monitored to ensure that all devices on your network are functioning properly, at their optimum performance levels.

2. Unlimited Onsite/Remote Support

Since their resources are strictly devoted to monitoring and maintaining networks, a managed NOC can provide support remotely and onsite. A managed services provider can cover a wide range of network issues, right from workstation issues to server-side concerns.

3. Real-time Optimization

A Network Operations Center is equipped with enterprise-class technology that most small businesses don’t have the money to get. 24×7 NOC services are meant to help identify, report, and resolve any critical issues at any given time, and the optimization is performed in real-time that can report back on the entire infrastructure of your network.

4. Disaster Recovery

Recovering after a network disaster can be a nightmare for any small to medium-sized business. But a NOC can help you with designing, implementing, and managing a backup strategy. After all, you can always rely on an expert’s recovery plan if something critical does occur to your network.

5. Cost Savings

There are hundreds of software and tools that you are required to maintain your network. Not only you need to reserve a huge CapEx for the setup, but you also must have someone that understands each tool. This is where a Network Operations Center can help you reduce investment costs.

itbydesign07 Network Operations Center

Components of a Network Operations Center

NOCs are an integral aspect of modern IT Infrastructure. A Network Operations Center can transform the dynamics of business when the right engineers and all the necessary equipment are in place.

In this blog, we will figure out how end-to-end Managed, 24X7 NOC Services help small-medium sized businesses tackle all the network challenges, listing all components of the Center.

Engineers

A NOC engineer’s responsibilities include responding to security alerts, supporting calls, and communicating with the technicians to ensure all incidents are resolved. Each NOC technician must maintain documentation for all queries and solutions, being responsible for the management and maintenance of the client’s IT infrastructure.

Email hosting services, voice and video data management, backup-data recovery, data storage management, anti-virus management, hardware configuration, identification and prevention of any potential network issues, power failure monitoring, vendor ticket management, network analysis and routine troubleshooting are some of the tasks that require each NOC engineer to be a skilled, subject matter expert. Hence, all NOC engineers should be at least be bachelor’s in Computer Science. They should have studied network security, information technology, programming, network administration, and computer algorithms during their engineering.

Equipment

NOC engineers should have direct access to Video Wall Displays to monitor all aspects of the network. Workstations with additional displays allow engineers to monitor the network with greater efficiency, to deliver faster response time. Similarly, Audio Input and Output facilities help technicians to communicate with each other.

Wireless Networks and Backup Systems exist within the system to allow the NOC to maintain 100% uptime. On the other hand, Control Interfaces manage the integrated A/V technologies in a smooth manner. Large Data Storage should also be part of the NOC to handle all issues that the administrator and on-site technicians may face.

In addition to this, on-site experts need high-speed computers while the internal networking facilities should have maximum coverage and capacity.

itbydesign07 Managed IT Services

Centralizing your Recruiting Efforts with Staffing Services

Managing hiring efforts for an organization can be costly as well as a time-consuming endeavor. Today, many IT staffing services providers alleviate this burden by taking on responsibility for hiring and managing the company’s contingent staffing processes. Let’s understand how these experts can help you centralize your recruiting efforts.  

1. Faster Hiring

Most of the IT staffing services providers already possess a database of potential employees that are segregated into different categories and business roles. So naturally, availing Staffing Services significantly reduces your hiring time and helps you quickly get the new talent on board. Right from sourcing the resumes to shortlisting the right candidate, US IT staffing providers do it all, on your behalf. In addition to this, conducting interviews and negotiating offers will no longer tax your internal resources. 

2. Streamlined Recruitment

One of the most frequent problems small businesses experience is an uncoordinated and disjointed multitude of practices across the organizational functions, divisions, and locations. 

When you partner with IT staffing services providers, the entire recruitment process becomes quite streamlined, eliminating the unnecessary use of the organization’s internal resources. All the staffing phases are performed strategically, helping you save considerable costs and time which you would have otherwise spent on the recruitment.

3. Single point of contact

Whether you are doing all your recruitment in-house or working with multiple staffing partners, keeping track of the process and the costs associated with each hire can be a tiring exercise. 

You have multiple contracts to keep track of, with each of them having their own employment terms and pricing structures. When you work with staffing services provider, you eliminate these administrative and communication hassles of hiring top-notch talent. Not only this, by partnering with an expert, your business will have a single point of contact for inquiries and grievance resolutions.