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In order to weigh the importance of 24×7 network monitoring, it’s worthwhile to step back and understand why monitoring is critically necessary in the first place. Monitoring looks at three key aspects of your network’s operation:
- First, it looks at faults that may be occurring. Are devices on the network throwing errors or warning messages? Is a storage device nearing its capacity? Is a server’s CPU utilization regularly exceeding 95 percent?
- Second, it looks at the network’s overall capacity. Is there more traffic than the network can handle efficiently? Is packet loss on certain segments the result of more data being transmitted than the path can handle? If so, what’s the source of that excessive data stream?
- Third, monitoring looks at overall performance (health). Are all network devices up and running? Are some signaling they’re about to fail? Are key applications healthy and running as they should?
Knowing the status of these three parameters allows you to anticipate problems that can affect your user base before they manifest. However, if you’re only checking your monitoring system periodically, or only when a problem arises, that simply is not enough. Your network monitoring system must provide fault, capacity, and performance data continuously. It requires around the clock monitoring if you intend to prevent outages and other unpredictable issues. In short, 24×7 monitoring keeps you prepared and in control.
Why Every Company Should Be Monitoring their Network Around the Clock
You’ll Minimize Downtime
Unscheduled downtime is the number one cause of lost revenue. According to a Ponemon Institute study, the cost of one minute of downtime reached as high as $17,244 in 2016, assuming a 40-employee company. IBM, IDC, Gartner and others have each offered their estimates, but no matter which you accept, it’s clear that downtime is expensive —both from the standpoint of lost sales opportunities, but also due to the cost of idle time among your employees who are unable to do their work.
The best way to avoid unexpected downtime is to prevent it from happening in the first place. Outages don’t stick to a 9-to-5 schedule. Simply checking your monitoring software when you get to the office each day isn’t enough. An anomaly that occurred last night might well have taken your network or some segments of it out of service.
24×7 network monitoring automatically detects potential problems and sends alerts so that your NOC can take action. You may not have the staff to cover all 24 hours each day, and that’s where outsourcing to a professional NOC gives you an SLA-guaranteed network operation.
24×7 Network Monitoring is an Early Warning System
First, take note that not every alert means a node or a segment is out of service. Oftentimes, an alert signals a symptom that points to a larger problem. For instance, if the hard drive on an email server is signaling that it’s nearing its capacity, that alert gives you the information you need to upgrade the hard drive before it fails, brings down the company’s entire email system, and creates a major disruption to employees, customers, vendors, and other stakeholders.
Potential issues or performance bottlenecks are revealed as soon as they occur. You get an early warning when network engineers monitor your network continuously, as well as the potential for the NOC engineers to solve the problem before it does damage . Simply put: With 24×7 monitoring, your network maintains peak performance even while your team is at home and asleep.
Greater Efficiency Levels
Receiving alerts as they’re issued allows a network engineer to act immediately and prevent disruption to your work force so they can maintain their high levels of productivity and customer service.
Every network occasionally needs to be taken out of service so that updates and patches can be installed. Continuous monitoring allows you to plan for such scheduled downtime, thus avoiding unnecessary disruption during peak hours.
Scale with Demand
Your business has likely grown in the past year, and you’ll want it to grow more over the next year—whether the cause is seasonality or simply the solid, organic growth every business strives for. Continuous monitoring shows you where demands on the network spike, giving you the data you need to make sure your infrastructure can keep pace with that growth.
Perhaps best of all, outsourcing your network monitoring gives you the intelligence you need to scale your network almost without limit, and without adding more employees.
Outsourcing your 24×7 network monitoring means you get all of these added benefits without the time and expense of having to research and select the best network monitoring software, then installing and maintaining it yourself. And yes, without the cost of having to hire new employees.
Contact iGLASS to see how we can help you improve visibility into the health of your infrastructure around the clock.
Why Your Organization Needs NOC as a Service The NOC as a Service support model assists enterprises and broadband service providers (BSPs) in eliminating the overall operational costs and complexities of establishing and maintaining a 24x7 Network Operations Center (NOC). By doing so, the organization can better allocate their resources to projects that generate more revenue or value to the organization. For reference, the Software as a Service (SaaS) model commonly refers to a method of software delivery and licensing in which software is accessed centrally online via a subscription, rather than being bought and installed on individual computers. By contrast, NOC as a Service (NOCaaS) is commonly used to describe one of two situations: 1) Outsourced NOC services (hiring third-party NOC service providers); and 2) a managed service. We'll dive into the differences between the two a bit later in this article. What are Outsourced NOC Services? A Network Operations Center (NOC) handles problems related to managing, proactively monitoring, and controlling the systems within your IT infrastructure. That includes your network devices, servers, applications, websites and databases. These IT assets are the backbone of your organization and an Outsourced NOC ensures your systems are always available and operational for your employees and customers. When your network, website, servers, or applications go down or experience an impairment, the NOC is responsible for identifying the source of the problem, and getting everything fully functional again. The NOC is not only making sure your IT systems stay up and running, they're also optimizing network infrastructure, developing methods to better detect outages and devising methods to restore system operations quickly and efficiently. A NOC monitors the health and availability of your organization's networks, routers and switches, servers, applications, websites, firewalls ,VPN tunnels, wireless access points, and power and facility systems. Other functions of the NOC may include network performance reporting and improvement recommendations, outage response, capacity planning, phone-based alerting following defined escalation procedures, and facilitating communications between departments, partners, vendors and other stakeholders. An Outsourced NOC Services provider like iGLASS Networks, offers all of these benefits as a service to their customers. Their services are very focused on the availability and operability of your IT infrastructure and applications. This is typically their sole area of focus. How is this different from Managed Services? Managed services usually refer to a simplified and standardized set of services to manage devices, computers, applications, and other infrastructure components of an organization. They tend not to be focused on a single function and are often offered by Managed Service Providers (MSPs). An MSP may offer you any number of services, including design and engineering, help desk, technical support, support of back office applications, cybersecurity services, PEN testing, and hosted software licenses for platforms like Office365 or Salesforce. Many MSPs also offer equipment and software sales, and localized installation and support. While some MSPs offer NOC Services, often these services are limited to what their chosen software platform supports, with limited customization or subject matter expertise. This tends not to be the best solution for organizations looking for a more comprehensive, flexible and customized NOC solution, but can be more cost effective than standing up an internal NOC team. Internal NOC Team vs. Outsourced NOC Service Provider As iGLASS details in their " Beginner's Guide to Outsourced NOC Monitoring Services ," Network Operations Centers need at least two people working at all times. When you add in a NOC Manager, that works out to a staff of at least eleven people for 24x7 coverage. While the salary of NOC technicians varies depending on experience and geographic location, the national average salary of an in-house NOC technician is around $70,000, with managers earning around $80,000. In salaries alone, this becomes a $780,000 annual operating expense, or $65,000 a month (not including benefits). An organization must also consider the necessary hardware and software needed. Enterprise IT networks often consist of hundreds of pieces of equipment. Collectively, the cost of staffing, providing hardware, software, and the housing of the actual NOC center in an appropriate facility to protect the equipment (with proper cooling, power redundancy, immediate fire suppression, etc.) can easily cost an organization hundreds of thousands, to millions of dollars annually. Since maintaining an internal team can be extremely expensive, working with an Outsourced NOC Service Provider is often the best decision for organizations looking to maximize the value derived from their limited IT resources. While MSPs usually offer limited options, some Outsourced NOC Service Providers offer turn-key solutions, with low up-front investments, necessary monitoring hardware and software, a trouble-ticketing platform, and human-driven alerts and escalations by phone (not just emails or SMS messages). These providers usually include platform maintenance and upgrades, and 24x7 monitoring plans can start as low as $3,000 per month for 100 infrastructure assets. To learn more about outsourcing NOC services and how they compare to SOC services, please check out our recent blog, " NOC vs. SOC: Comparing Outsourced Services ." For more insights and assistance, get in touch with our team .
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