Managed IT solutions near Naples, Florida
Service Management can be understood as the delivery of automated, continuous, and timely remote management of computing resources and business applications, whose responsibility has been delegated through an Outsourcing contract to a provider, called MSP for its acronym in English Management Service Provider. It is responsible for maintaining the operational and available systems of their contractors or customers, and so that they can focus on their business, as well as take advantage of internal staff to deal with strategic activities that generate value from the knowledge they have of the organization. The MSP must ensure availability, optimal performance, maintenance reduction, and security proactively for multivendor platforms, software applications, and its customers' network infrastructure, under the agreed service levels with a monthly fee, seeking to improve the quality of service.
Proper service management requires the integration of three fundamental components: people, technology, and processes. People, their skills and competencies, technology and management systems, procedures, roles, and service delivery activities.
The proactive management offered by MSPs requires tools that allow real-time monitoring of their clients' Information Technology (IT) environments, making use of:
Hardware utilization level monitoring systems for network and computing devices.
Performance management tools
Automatic software distribution tools are mainly associated with security application updates.
Remote diagnostic and software analysis tools that allow self-recovery.
Security protection and anti-malware tools.
Backup and restore tools.
The technical requirements at the level of expert personnel, capable of timely and continuously operating the technological tools, are high, this allows customers to have specialized skills to manage the IT environment without incurring cost overruns that can be generated from the internal hiring of expert personnel or constant training for existing staff. MSPs, supported by their experience and the skills of their team, develop and implement processes that, based on best practices, mitigate risks and guarantee the availability and performance of the clients' operations, and also allow them to offer advice on the required growth of the IT infrastructure, the implementation of service improvements and new systems adapted to the clients' demands and needs.
Monitoring systems
Service Management bases its operation on monitoring tools that guarantee a proactive identification of events occurring in the IT infrastructure that the MSP monitors. A correct definition of the type of tools used must be accompanied or better related to the type of services offered. MSPs can bet on the use of different tools that work independently, which could imply in the long term a decrease in productivity due to the lack of integration in the information provided, or find in integrated platforms, which offer remote management functionalities from a single user interface, a better alternative to guarantee customers the efficient and timely provision of the service.
Comparison between the traditional it incident management system and service management
The traditional focus of IT departments in small and medium-sized organizations is based on taking care of the day-to-day operation, leaving aside the strategic aspects that could add value to the business. The budget for investment in technological tools that facilitate or collaborate in their services' efficiency is limited. Although some can invest in these, their potential may be wasted because they do not have the time and experience necessary for their operation.
The supply of IT services under this model is reactive; the intention is to provide solutions to failures that have materialized and have affected the operation, without the possibility of executing an early detection to avoid or mitigate the unavailability. This response mode characterizes it as a combination of factors such as lack of technological resources, formal processes of care, qualified personnel and time, factors that limit the planning and quality of service delivery and negatively impact the business.
This approach is gradually replaced by a dynamic, proactive, secure, and cost-effective service management model. Under this scheme, MSPs offer monitoring, maintenance, troubleshooting, and optimization of their clients' IT operations through the timely identification of what is happening with their infrastructure, leading to increased productivity and availability of services for the company that hires them, with whom they share a common goal of improving operational efficiency to ensure increased profit margins for both parties.
Managed devices
Remote monitoring systems allow organizations to manage multivendor devices in an automated and real-time manner, using agent theory and remote management protocols such as Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). Devices Managed by Remote Monitoring Systems, a general management scheme is presented. MSPs are looking for the highest degree of automation in technological tools, as well as the ability to perform online monitoring of IT infrastructure and customer applications, in addition to event notification functionalities for early error detection, to guarantee the agreed service level agreements.
Service Lifecycle
The life cycle of the service is based on five (5) phases that go from the conception of the strategy for the delivery of the service from the knowledge of the needs and requirements of the business, passing through the design of the benefits having in mind the appropriate management of the technological resources, expertise, and people, to, These services will be put into production through the transition phase, which will be monitored and managed for the delivery of value in the operational phase, reaching its analysis and evaluation for the identification of improvement opportunities that will benefit both customers and suppliers, see Figure 10. Service life cycle.
The objective of these phases is to design new IT services, as well as to propose improvements or changes to existing ones, including their architectures, processes, policies, and documentation, to meet current and future business requirements with the required functionality and quality, considering aspects such as service management systems and tools, technological architectures, processes, roles, and capabilities, as well as measurement methods and metrics.
Operations management
The need to satisfy the vast demand for services and the rapid growth of IT systems that support critical business applications requires ongoing operations management that guarantees high availability and translates into productivity for organizations, becoming a differentiating element among service management providers, who rely on a wide variety of tools and applications for the monitoring, control, and maintenance of systems.
