Congratulations! You’ve decided to seek expert guidance and support in managing and maintaining your network and are writing a NOC services RFP. While it often takes network outages or service troubles to precipitate a fresh look at your network’s performance, operations, processes, and procedures, any time is a great time to investigate what can be done better.
To help you decide what to include in your NOC RFP, there are several factors to consider. These will ensure you’re making thoughtful decisions about what to monitor and what influences the cost of services compared to the cost of downtime.
- Start with the basics – What needs to be managed? A wide-range of variables influence the scope and time of a network operations contract. They range from product, physical environment, quality and age of the installation, and more. Create an inventory that identifies the type of devices (routers, switches, etc.) and model numbers, the total number of devices, the location information (where the network elements reside and their geographical range), the network capacity and circuit count, and more.
- If this is an existing network, provide details about how many incidents or change requests have occurred on a monthly or quarterly basis. This establishes accurate trends that are true to your network versus anticipated based on other’s trends.
- How involved do you need a partner to be? Think about how you manage or need support on things such as break/fixes. Do you need a partner that just tells you what’s wrong or additionally provides technical and operational support to resolve the issue from start to finish? Knowing you need consultative or operational services will influence who you choose to do business with. Not all NOC providers offer skilled engineering services from experts on your network devices.
- How do you propose managing change in your network? Consider this example. You have a new 400G backbone on campus. Not all the circuits are turned-up on day one. Eventually when you do need to add or reroute a circuit, will that be done by your team, your partner, or another way?It’s important to discuss provisioning, day-to-day tier 4 service needs, and all the nuances based on your network at the outset. For example, we often seek clarity straight away about who is responsible for patching equipment firmware, managing software upgrades, etc.
There are many variables ranging from product, environment, quality of installation, and more that influence how complex your network operations (and remote engineering or front-line maintenance) support needs to be. Always considering “what happens next” will save you time and money versus looking for support in a moment of crisis.
As they say, there’s no better time than today! If you’re looking for support analyzing your current network operations and engineering services risks, reach out. We’d be happy to help you identify all the variables to consider as you assess the value of outside expertise and support.
Learn more about our NOC services by visiting our webpage.