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. 

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.  

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.