Own the Lan? MSP...

[Canuckvoip]

About 2 years ago we started to realize that controlling a customers' LAN was becoming increasingly important.
That being said we recently signed up to be a MSP (managed service provider).
The idea being that we would install a NOC server at our facility and sell monthly managed services starting with our thousands of existing customers.
We will then install monitoring software on the customer site and give them reports on the LAN health and also start providing remote and on-site "break/fix" services to their computing environment.

"If you own the LAN, thou shalt by default get the voice business" is the idea here.

My question is, how many of you guys are either doing this or are thinking about it?
If you are doing it now, what NOC are you using?
In for a penny, in for a pound!
(I used to be a phone guy).
We will be installing our NOC on Tuesday next week.
Like Mitelguy said in a related post it is inevitable.
How many of us have been beaten up by Cisco lately? Guess why?
Although we haven't been beaten up by Avaya yet, it is obvious that they have been "drinking the Kool-aid" as well.

What do you say?

Dave


You can't believe anything you read... unless of course it's this.

 

[Mitelpassion]

Funny you should say this. We're a little way off but looking at something similar although not really into the PC support business. Want to 'own' the lan and the voice.

managed services - early days but the way to go, especially then upselling the other apps like presence, collaboration -all hosted. Don't think the time is ripe yet - we are moving toward that though.
included in managed services, hosted telephony! a reality with the new Mitel vm stuff happening.

exiting times ahead, timing is critical though - too soon and you'll regret it though. Too late and you'll miss out on the cream all still pie in the sky but this is our train of thought...

 

[Canuckvoip]

Yes... The break/fix PC support is boring...
We all do that at work already!

In many cases, we own the LAN anyway.
Any of us that install a 200ICP/3300/CXI and have PCs plugged into phones knows what it's like to need to do a reboot.
I would say that only 10-15% of IT guys I've met know how to spell VLAN.
The need to route between networks needs explanation too.

So, we do already know... to a good degree.


You can't believe anything you read... unless of course it's this.

 

[Mitelpassion]

just to add: isn't it scary how little IT professionals know about networking (your comment about vlans). they'll easily say they're qualified for networking if they can connect a patchlead to a switch and rackmount it but the truth is they know jack diddly squat!

frustrating..

 

[Canuckvoip]

Not to be a IT guy basher but...
The other day we went to a customer site (200ICP with YA) to discover that they were replacing many computers and a server.
They went through a pile of grief because they did not understand the L2/gig/poe switch that we installed for the phones.
Of course it smashed the YA.
Unbelievably though, they wanted us to turn the "management" on the POE switch OFF!!!
Thereby creating a "flat" network with no vlan.
Oh dear...
After much explanation and sharing the guy said "I have another customer with VOIP phones and they have nothing but voice quality problems".
Well DUH!
At least he is educated now and maybe can help recommend a fix for his other customer (poor sod).
We refuse to let any of our customers go through this.

Dave

You can't believe anything you read... unless of course it's this.

 

[Canuckvoip]

We are going to have 2 test customers up and running in the next two weeks on our NOC.
Actually 3 cuz we will do ourselves first.
I am expecting a veritable cornucopia of alarms/notifications and will learn quickly which ones to ignore/retain.
I can hardly wait to see what this beast comes up with!
:>)
I think we have decided to stick with the monitoring piece without the PC break/fix for now.
Both the customers we offered this to said yes to the test in less than 20 mins of conversation.
Didn't expect that. One conversation was with a Pres/bean counter, and the other one was wit 2 IT guys!!!

Dave

You can't believe anything you read... unless of course it's this.

 

[Mitelpassion]

good luck with that.
let us know how you get on

 

[Canuckvoip]

Thanks passion,
Installed the NOC today. Put it on a quad proc xeon with 1.8 terabyte raid drives. Dual nic.
Installed it on our domain (mistake) had to revert back to workgroup.
Installed our own monitoring software co-located on our Prairiefyre server (2003). Had to change that to being on our domain.
Will need another IP (outside) for this NOC. Our 3 addresses are heavily used for AWC/Esna/Teleworker etc.
Will end up on a separate ISP for this soon as bandwith will become an issue with the addition of multiple customers.
Got a bunch of alerts/alarms. One from our DHCP/DNS/SQL server with drive C: less than 25% capacity left.
Will know more tomorrow after tweaking.

Dave




You can't believe anything you read... unless of course it's this.

 

[slapin]

We are the worst customer ever We do everything in house and when we come for support usually it IS a problem. We built our network from the ground up, we manage all Mitel controllers, we do all upgrades and just buy equipment from VAR. Unfortunately MITEL doesn't allow to buy direct even through major resellers.

 

[Canuckvoip]

Hi slapin,
From our perspective (VAR) customers like you are no problem at all!
For 25 years we have held the knowledge that it's your phone system not ours. We always help the user to do as much or as little as they feel comfortable with.
Every customer is different.
Anyway, people like you are MUCH easier to talk to about new features/services/upgrades etc than most...
So, good on ya!

Dave

You can't believe anything you read... unless of course it's this.

 

[Canuckvoip]

Very interesting.
Most popular things seen:

Servers low on memory
Servers low on hard drive space
L2 switches dropping packets (crappy patch cords/nics)
Data backup failures
IP address conflicts
3300 alarms
Servers up/down
Software installs
Websites down

There's more but you get the pic.
Highly addictive. This will help us.

Dave

You can't believe anything you read... unless of course it's this sentence.

 

[slapin]

Low memory is a questionable subject. OS is tending to hold a lot of stuff which is not being used at the moment, but counts as used. Plus some applications reserve a lot of memory and not use it, so OS can actually allocate physical unused memory to other applications, but it all is reflected in counters. Plus OS can use memory for file system cache, which can expand and contract based on usage of file system. I would be more concerning about swap file usage.

We as a company do wiring for living, so didn't see L2 problems for a while
IP address conflicts is a problem. There are ways to prevent it by using L3 switches and separating all servers and 3300 to a separate broadcast domain which is not reachable from access segment.

 

[Mitelpassion]

canuckvoip, what are you using to monitor 3300 alarms?
I know the 3300 support SNMP but have yet to use it.
I'm looking for something that will support the SNMP traps being sent to it and can then notify me via email or the like.

thanks

what software are you using for networking monitoring and server monitoring?

i'm looking at doing pre voip roll out assemsment tests and also monitoring afterwards.
Have looked at a couple of products to do this but there's one that stands out because if it's ease of deployemnt.