What is a NOC?

A Network Operations Center (NOC), is a centralized location from where IT engineers provide support services for remote monitoring and management of customer network. This primarily includes network devices, servers, storage, backup etc.

Many MSPs have a NOC which plays a significant role in ensuring customers have a 24/7 up time. The monitoring team monitors the endpoints across the infrastructure through specialized monitoring tools which alerts the team through a dashboard on any failure in the customer network. These tools can also be configured to send automated mails and SMS for critical alerts. The monitoring team does the primary troubleshooting to resolve the issues and in case of any specialized help, contact the next level of engineers to help remediate the issue. They also help in monitoring and ensuring security vulnerabilities are being mitigated through respective security controls driven by the security team.

NOC monitoring services are essential for the smooth operation of many companies especially in today’s world where the services have to be available 24/7 for most companies and any prolonged failure of critical services will lead to a significant business loss. The NOC monitoring team work behind the scenes day and night to ensure critical systems are running as required and are available immediately to detect and resolve any disruptions at the earliest. This ensures minimum disruptions and increased availability to critical services contributing to company growth.

There is a question on most CIOs minds on whether to have an NOC in house or outsource the NOC services. A cost benefit analysis has to be done taking into account many factors like cost, operational control, security control, sensitivity of data etc.

The benefits for outsourcing NOC services far outweigh the ones for In-house NOC. It’s the responsibility of managing and maintaining it which shifts the focus of the IT team from the core area of the company business.

The main reasons why Outsourcing NOC is better is follows:

• Cost of resources

This includes the salary and other company benefits. Increments, attrition and replacement of resources is a major cause of worry in an In-house model. For outsourced NOC, the MSP vendors will have more resources for multiple projects and will be able to manage attrition and replacement much faster and better than others.

• Cost of Technology

The technology required to buy and maintain the monitoring tools are very costly and require periodic upgrades and specialized resources in managing these tools. Not to mention the support cost spent on the monitoring tool vendor. For Outsourced NOC, the MSP vendor will be using the monitoring tool across multiple vendors thereby having better support costs and specialized resources to manage the technology.

• Flexibility and Scalability

If companies want to monitor the services for only a specific period of time, they still have to onboard resources for the same. Similarly for on demand monitoring and scalability. MSP vendors will be able to provide a flexible and scalable model based on the needs of the companies

• Business priority Management

For most companies, the IT team will have a lot of IT management activities focused on the core business areas of the companies. Managing a NOC team can be quite demanding with respect to time, skills and technical management. In an outsourced model, the business priority of the MSP vendor is keeping the lights on for the company that they service and since NOC operations is a primary focus , the right management is done to ensure the company IT team can focus on their business priorities.

An Effective and Valuable Partnership

Intertec NOC services can provide companies with all the services mentioned above with a team of dedicated, highly-skilled NOC engineers using their resources to provide 24/7 network monitoring, proactive solutions, problem resolution and world-class support. Intertec has a NOC in Dubai, UAE as well as out of Mumbai, India. Intertec NOC is ISO 20000 and ISO 27001 Certified.

By outsourcing their NOC services, everyday NOC IT maintenance tasks are carried out by a team of specialists working on the company behalf. For a lesser monthly cost, companies have all the NOC resources they need without the responsibility of having to manage them.

Some of the services being provided from the Intertec NOC to customers are as follows:

• 24×7 Monitoring & Management of IT infrastructure
• Backup monitoring & management
• Patch and Antivirus management
• On call L2 & L3 support
• Local NOC services for regulatory requirements

Intertec NOC services can be an effective and valuable partner to the success of the companies by letting them prioritize their business needs while we run the backend NOC services silently and efficiently thereby keeping the lights on and increasing business growth.