Can you effectively outsource a NOC?

Over the past 10 years, there has been significant growth of two types of outsourced NOC services – I think of these pure-play infrastructure services and targeted application services.   Do they answer the question, “Can you effectively outsource a NOC?”  I believe that these service offerings provide an answer topart of the question and at the same time can create a financial obstacle to solving the whole problem.   But there is another approach.

Pure-play Infrastructure Services

These services include support for network, server operating systems, management of databases, backups and execution of scheduled tasks.   To optimize this service offering, vendors focus on recruiting employees that are knowledgeable in specific horizontal technologies – Cisco, F5, Windows, Linux, Oracle, SQLServer, etc.   They implement good ITIL process and supporting technology.   What is lacking is an understanding of the applications that deliver the business value.   This limits their ability to predict business impact from infrastructure issues and their ability to react to alarms on breaches of transaction and process availability and performance thresholds that directly affect the business.

Targeted Application Services

Outsourced services for SAP, Lawson, Oracle Fusion, Warehouse Management Systems, Content Management Systems, and other similar applications get closer to alignment with business value.   However, many organizations have integrated multiple customized off-the-shelf systems and they have some homegrown systems.   The challenge of this reality is that the integration and interdependencies of these systems has created a single overall lovable Frankenstein of a system for the organization.   Solving the support question of any of the component systems is not sufficient to providing overall coverage for the business.  

The financial obstacle of partial outsourcing

Sometimes I think about Pure-play Infrastructure Services and Targeted Application Services as skimming the cream from milk.   If one is not trying to solve the whole support problem, it is the least expensive approach to get value for the outsourced dollar.   This is why there is a clear business case for outsourcing vendors.   They do provide economies of scale for the hired resources.   The challenge for the buyer is that the dollars that pay for these services are not available to put into the pot to solve the whole problem.  

So, can you effectively outsource a NOC?

Yes.   There is an alternative approach that leverages outsourced resources focused vertically rather than horizontally.   And, if an organization implements a monitoring system that crosses the infrastructure (data centers and cloud) and includes monitoring of the applications and their interdependencies, you can answer the whole question.   A key advantage of implementing the monitoring (and a ticketing system) within the organization is that it provides some additional independence from outsouring vendors.  

T3 Dynamics delivers professional services on monitoring and offers a SaaS offering for end-to-end monitoring.