Network Operation Center
Loosely defined, a network operations center is a centralized location where IT support technicians:
- Supervise networks
- Monitor networks
- Maintain networks
Managed service providers (like TSAChoice) use the centers to ensure 24/7 uptime for their customers. Upon walking into this area at 108 Asheville Commerce Parkway, one would notice an open floor plan with lots of technicians working side-by-side, colorful monitors on the walls, and soft, ambient lighting in the space.
A few years ago, TSAChoice built a network operations center, or NOC, at our Asheville office. With the rapid emergence of managed IT service opportunities, and seeking a way to better serve our existing contract customers, we knocked down some walls and rearranged the floor plan to provide improved support.
What Exactly Happens in the TSAChoice NOC?
What is harder to discern is what’s going on behind the scenes. Hundreds of customer networks in Western North Carolina and the Upstate of South Carolina are accessible from this room. Inside those networks, TSAChoice can see individual servers, workstations, email clients, firewalls, and more.
Email alarms and flashing red lights, visible on wall-mounted monitors, alert technicians to issues all over the region for various items, such as:
- a hard drive becoming close to full
- a DHCP conflict
- a server error
- an Internet outage at the firewall
- a variety of other issues
TSAChoice dispatchers are immediately alerted.
From there, TSAChoice has developed several triage teams, responsible for efficiently diagnosing and resolving issues. In most cases, this can be done remotely, right from the NOC. Additional teams are standing by at a moment’s notice should a technician need to be dispatched in a vehicle to a customer site. Dispatchers can see via GPS where all available TSAChoice employees are located, allowing them to even more quickly get to customers with down or troubled systems.
Managed Service Support
TSAChoice’s Complete IT contract (or CIT) gives customers even more peace of mind. CIT customers receive priority response times. Emails from these customers immediately generate service tickets that flow quickly through TSA’s internal systems.
And after 5:00, after TSAChoice offices are closed, the NOC center is still completely virtually available to on-call technicians. Issues that arise after-hours are diagnosed and resolved with the same speed and efficiency as during regular business hours.
Overall, the NOC center has increased TSAChoice’s ability to manage existing customers and provide the headroom to continue to onboard new customers. When area businesses decide to hand over the keys to their IT networks to TSA’s team, they can rest assured that they are in very capable hands.
