The Network Operations Centre (NOC) is in charge of network monitoring, incident response, and other network operations tasks, and you wish to improve its performance.
To do this, your Network Operations Centre staff analyzes data and looks for methods to enhance regular operations. The team may also use NOC best practices or develop its own.
What Is a NOC and Why Is It Important?
Teams working in network operations centers process network performance and availability as well as servers, databases, firewalls, devices, and associated external services. They also confront technological and commercial obstacles that might make maintaining networks at peak performance challenging. Among these difficulties are:
- Ineffective team communication and collaboration
- Using several tools from various providers
- knowledge gaps about NOC technology and their use
Regardless of your company’s issues, your network operations team does its share to assist it and its stakeholders. However, your team may require substantial time and resources to handle numerous difficulties, taking advantage of opportunities to increase network availability and performance.
Your NOC staff may apply industry-proven methods, strategies, and tactics to get the most out of your network management using network operations centre best practices. Best practices have been thoroughly tested and demonstrated to assist NOC teams in achieving the best possible outcomes. As a result, if your NOC team follows best practices, your company can maximize network uptime and performance. Your NOC team may polish best practices and establish new ones over time.
Best NOC Practices to Follow
The NOC team examines existing NOC activities and looks for methods to enhance day-to-day operations to assure availability and avoid downtime. The team can additionally employ NOC best practices or develop its own. Here are a few recommended IT best practices that NOC professionals may use to improve business network operations.
Prioritise incident response and resolution.
Your NOC staff must identify techniques to detect and address events as soon and effectively as feasible. Your NOC staff must have established policies, methods, and procedures to address any outages as they happen and lessen their effects. Additionally, your NOC staff must keep in touch with essential stakeholders throughout an issue and keep them informed until the situation is handled.
Maintain continuous monitoring of information and network systems
Taking a proactive approach to monitoring information and network systems is critical. A network operations centre staff that continually monitors network activity can spot problems before they become serious. Furthermore, the team can prevent IT breakdowns and downtime, harming your company’s brand name and earnings.
Identify and manage incidents using specific criteria
The classification of incidents should consider SLAs, the effects they have on stakeholders, and other factors. ONCE A CATEGORIZATION SYSTEM IS IN PLACE, your NOC team can assess how events affect your company and its stakeholders. A categorization system can also assist your NOC team in determining which problems have the most effect on your network operations.
Incidents should be Escalated Based on Group
Depending on how serious they are, incidents need to be escalated. Your network management centre staff can utilize incident management software to create progression groups and add on-call schedules for automated escalation. This platform will allow your NOC staff to create bespoke escalations that are also to the demands of your organization.
Keep a record of incident response activities.
Make sure you track and record all incident response efforts. NOC team members must record when an issue happens and any measures taken to remedy it. In addition, they must examine incident reports to assess their strengths and shortcomings. With this information, NOC team members may identify methods to improve your organization’s incident response.
Gather Performance Data and Create Reports
Your NOC team must collect and analyze performance data regularly. This data may be used to generate reports and detect performance trends and patterns by the team. It may also use data and reports to enhance its performance continually.
Maintain available NOC team.
The NOC team’s support must be accessible round-the-clock from several personnel. Schedules must be developed to guarantee that NOC team members can respond to incidents as soon as they occur. NOC team schedules should be updated regularly to ensure that the most up-to-date availability information is provided. Additionally, systems must be in place to guarantee that the appropriate NOC team members are notified of an occurrence in a timely and pertinent manner.
Conduct regular NOC System Testing.
NOC systems should be tested regularly, with the results monitored and analyzed. If any system problems are discovered, they must be addressed quickly. NOC system testing can give insights into possible availability and performance issues for NOC team members. It also enables NOC team members to select the best restoring method for services during outages.
How do you choose the finest tools for your NOC?
Your company needs will essentially decide the tool you use, but your NOC management requires a tool—or set of tools—that delivers the following:
- Ticket management: To ensure that internal and external issues are treated quickly, you may obtain information about open tickets, such as the priority task and the assigned technician.
- Comprehensive perspective of your infrastructure: It doesn’t matter if it’s real, virtual, or cloud-based.
- Incident reporting: It is easier to analyze and document issues using technology for visual analysis and graphical representations of thresholds, alerts, indicators, and trends.
- Automation: Reducing the number of repeated tasks, allowing Level 1 staff to focus on higher-priority issues and reducing alert fatigue.
- Scalability: As your business grows, you want to ensure that the NOC can keep up.
- An easy interface and setup: You want to see results immediately rather than dealing with a lengthy, complicated deployment and a high learning curve.
Final Thoughts
The network operations centre processes are one of the most critical functional teams in IT. Your IT services are used daily by both internal and external customers. SLAs (service level agreements) must be met, as well as essential business efficiency and the overall digital experience of your clients.
A NOC capable of preventing catastrophic failures and maximizing the availability of all IT services is crucial. Many firms have an NOC, but keeping it fully staffed, adequately educated, and well-equipped with cutting-edge technology and automation may take time and effort. Third-party service providers sometimes managed service providers, may be more efficient for organizations that cannot operate a functional NOC.
Our NOC services bridge the data-to-action gap, allowing observability, IT, and security teams to ensure their enterprises’ security, resilience, and innovation. All teams within an organization may have end-to-end visibility, with context, for every contact and business activity thanks to our open, extensible data platform, which enables shared data in any environment. It can assist you with creating a robust data foundation.
