Uptime Services Benefits of Online Services

WHITE PAPER

Today’s challenges in IT Another concern for organizations is lack of 24x7 support required to continuously With the rise of digital business, IT monitor the health of infrastructure and is struggling to keep pace with fast- be available in the case of user incidents changing business requirements. or service requests. Aligning IT objectives to business objectives has become imperative for Organizations are spending millions of every IT leader. But there are many dollars in procuring, implementing and factors which hinder these initiatives, like maintaining network monitoring systems escalating operating costs, instability and IT service management platforms. of the infrastructure, resource and skill A large amount of effort is required to gaps. IT staff are not able to dedicate integrate multiple platforms to provide time for innovation or transformation a seamless experience and this involves projects because most of their time is projects that run over several months. spent on incidents and service requests. The cost of maintaining a separate staff There is insufficient visibility into the to maintain these management systems status of infrastructure assets to support is big concern. troubleshooting and issue identification. Complex and manual integration systems along with unskilled support structures prevent organizations from delivering a better end user experience. Almost every organization is moving to a multivendor strategy and this warrants that staff be skilled in multiple technologies. Since the technology is changing almost instantaneously, it’s very hard to keep up with the challenge of training and maintaining the skills within the organization. Staff retention is another pain point which every organization faces.

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Table of Contents Drive towards IT optimization 03 Our Support Services 03 Online Services 04 Connectivity for Online Services 04 Delivery model 05 Compliance to industry standards 05 Global services oriented architecture (GSOA) 05 Benefits of Online Services 06 Summary 08

List of Figures Figure 1: Online services simplify your operations management 04 Figure 2: Flexible connectivity 04 Figure 3: GSOA architecture 05 Figure 4: Typical scenario 06 Figure 5: Our Online Services approach 06 Figure 6: Improving MTTR with an effective approach 07 Figure 7: Sample availability report 08 Figure 8: Sample real-time CPU utilization graph for a device 08

List of Tables Table 1: Uptime Service Plans 04

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Drive towards IT optimization The portfolio is designed to allow you to Our Uptime Service Plans: choose the best-fit service level on a per To address these challenges, operating • Remote – designed primarily for the asset basis from each of the four service models need to change, and IT needs support of software products for plans ranging from Remote to Mission to improve and become more efficient which incidents are handled remotely. Critical and a set of additional Proactive and agile. Optimization of infrastructure Remote support is provided on a 24x7 Support Services options to help you as well as operational processes will be basis. manage your estate more effectively table stakes for success. • Parts Only – for organizations who in terms of cost, and where a fully have sufficient skills to perform an IT optimization requires proactive managed service is not an option for your onsite repair when needed, but don’t and preventative support to improve organization. availability and reduce the number have the scale to stock their own We can help you simplify your vendor of service incidents. Optimization spares or the logistics capabilities to management by integrating ITSM requires more automation to achieve get parts to the right location at the processes across technologies and both real time remediation of service right time. Remote support is provided vendors. Our Services provide a scalable incidents and lowering the mean-time on a 24x7 basis and when delivery of operational model, worldwide operational to resolve when there is a problem. parts to site is required you’re able consistency, as well as, a predictable This requires the deployment and use to select from a set of service target operating cost. of all the data streams available and options. leveraging analytics to continuously Our Uptime Service Plans will increase • Onsite – for organizations who require improve performance and take corrective your infrastructure uptime while a combination onsite labour and/or actions before problems surface. controlling costs. Our Uptime Service parts in addition to remote support, Optimization also requires better Plans are asset-based, providing the providing a complete onsite solution process integration across technologies, flexibility required to deliver the right for either hardware or software assets. vendors and services to not only speed level of support by device and location. This is suited to organizations who up the resolution but also to simplify We can proactively identify problems do not have local teams, parts, and/ management and administration freeing to reduce the number of incidents and or engineering expertise to perform up time to spend on innovation and new improve repair time. We give you around- onsite repairs. projects. the-clock access to skilled engineering • Mission Critical – this plan is for both across multiple technologies. hardware and software assets in your Our Support Services Our Proactive Support Services improve network that must have minimum Our Support Services can accelerate operational efficiency and simplify downtime and, when down, represent your IT optimization, increasing your management. We offer a consistent, a significant impact on your business overall operational effectiveness and simplified operational support model operations. This service plan provides improve your infrastructure availability. across multiple geographies and an elevated level of support intimacy But you remain in control, all the way, vendors. You get one global contract with fast track access to senior end-to-end. With over 6,000 clients, our and a single point of contact. It frees up technical resources saving critical time Support Services is the most trusted IT your technical resources from routine when incidents occur. support and maintenance service in the maintenance and automate standard Our Uptime Service Plans can be further world. Uptime is a portfolio of worldwide processes. The different Uptime Service enhanced with a set of additional support and proactive service options for Plans, as shown in Table 1, can be Proactive Support Services to help you information technology (IT), networking, chosen based on your business needs. manage your estate more effectively. security, collaboration, and telephony Our portfolio is designed to give you the infrastructure that improves uptime flexibility of service levels per asset from and enables your organization to better each of the four service plans. These balance the cost of supporting your plans range from Remote, our entry infrastructure with minimum downtime. offering, right through to Mission Critical for your most critical systems.

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Two of our services, namely Onsite Uptime Service Plans and Mission Critical, are termed as ‘Online Services’ which provides proactive monitoring services to your Remote Parts only Onsite Mission critical infrastructure and thereby helps you to Online Services Onsite Availability and optimize your IT operations. alerting capacity monitoring The scope of this white paper is to and reporting provide you with an overview of the Configuration benefits of these ‘Online services’ which archiving will help you gain a better understanding Labour to site of these services and realise the SLA options: Parts to site SLA options: 24x7 x 4 hour business value being delivered by them. 24x7 x 4 hour SLA 2 hour SLA SLA BH x 4 hour BH x 4 hour SLA Online Services SLA BH x NBD BH x NBD With connectivity to your infrastructure, our Online Services enable faster Incident response 30 mins 30 mins 15 mins Fast track response and repair. These services Remote support 24x7 24x7 24x7 24x7 provide warnings of a failure or imminent Table 1: Uptime Service Plans failure or hardware components enabling us to proactively initiate fault resolution. On average, this accelerates incident Connectivity for Online Services response by 69% and repair time by 32%. Our proactive services will ensure your network is available 24x7 by continuously It saves you time by eliminating the tasks monitoring your devices via our GSOA platform. IP reachability is required between normally required to identify the failure your network and ours. We have the flexibility to achieve this using one of the three and submit a ticket. methods in Figure 2. These services help to simplify your operations management, save Internet IPsec VPN administration time, and proactively reduce the number of service incidents, Client shown in Figure 1. P2P leased line

MPLS cloud GSOA Shorter incident to call placement times Figure 2: Flexible connectivity

Configuration files Accurate diagnosis available Option one: IPsec virtual private network (VPN) over internet Our recommended option is to establish Cost - Existing infrastructure is used for a secure encrypted VPN connection this and there is no need for additional

Shorter onsite No transcription over internet based on IPSec which investment in terms of a new physical repair times errors gives advantage over the below three circuit or terminating device. parameters: The connection is encrypted using No remote Correct symptoms Time – It is quick to establish a VPN. the following parameters to ensure diagnostic delays Accurate According to our experience, the confidentiality, integrity and availability descriptions configuration for setting up the VPN (CIA) for all communication between NTT generally gets completed in less than and your network. Figure 1: Online Services simplify your operations management two hours. Since the SNMP is a lightweight protocol, Flexibility – There is no dependency the bandwidth requirement through this on the underlying internet media type VPN connection is minimal. for this VPN. The only requirement is to have your network able to reach our public IP address and identify as a VPN termination point.

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Option two: Point to point leased line Global services oriented Our standard product offerings combined If a VPN connection is not suitable, we architecture (GSOA) with the global operating model delivers can provision a dedicated point to point the below six key capabilities which will GSOA is comprised of the foundational private leased line between your location continue to deliver transformation and toolsets and platforms we use to support and NTT. maximize growth for your business and our processes and people in delivering improve your service experience with us. Option three: MPLS cloud services to your business. It provides We can also connect to your network by a global, multi-tenanted solution that Key capabilities: being part of your existing MPLS cloud (if supports our services offerings – from • Faster time to value through improved any). In this scenario, we will be treated support to outsourcing – on a common end to end journey. as the branch location in your private platform, as well as supporting local cloud. delivery requirements with global delivery • Accelerated go-live and better capability. worldwide operational management with a single ITSM system. Delivery model The automation platform, which is part We use a global operating model of GSOA, will ensure maximum events • Improved interactive experience allowing us to apply specialized are handled by a virtual engineer and will by enabling an omnichannel resources centrally, providing the ensure only business impacting events approach that allows you to raise quickest response, and deploying local are converted to incidents. Figure 3 service incidents through different resources to give you the best possible depicts the high-level architecture of our mechanisms like voice, email, chat, service experience. GSOA which is used for monitoring your portal, etc. infrastructure. • Commitment to meeting our SLAs, This 24x7 model centers proactive and with knowledge base and field mobility support services quickly with the deepest At a high level, GSOA has three tools our engineers are able to deliver level of expertise and is also responsible components: speedy resolution. for service activation. Using state-of- • Remote infrastructure management • Continuous development of new and the-art capabilities like omnichannel, we (RIM) is the layer where the network improved automations that control can respond to your issues much faster management function is carried costs and speed resolution. to ensure minimal downtime for your out. We use EMC smarts assurance business. manager for this function which • Manage Centre Portal provides the With an onsite presence around 147 receives the SNMP traps from your ability to view the performance of your countries, we can dispatch engineers devices. Configuration backup infrastructure from one place. You or hardware parts to your premises at functionality is performed by Smarts can log incidents, service requests, the earliest and are able to track them NCM. track progress towards resolution, and receive comprehensive and actionable using advanced field mobility tools. Our • IT service management (ITSM) is the reports. client service delivery management will layer used for managing ITIL processes conduct regular service review sessions for all client interactions. ServiceNow • Simplified collaboration with NTT. to ensure you are on the right path on is the platform used for this. your journey to digital transformation. • Enterprise messaging routing (EMR) is the service integration layer through Compliance to industry which the RIM and ITSM communicate standards with each other. Our global delivery centers are industry certified inISO:20000, ISO:27001 and ISO:9000 to adhere to industry best Automation practices on service management, ICMP security and quality standards and are subject to annual audits keep them that Client SNMP GET and RESPONSE way. SNMP TRAPS

IPSec VPN GSOA

Internet

Figure 3: GSOA architecture

Benefits of Online Services Your end-user Your IT team logs Proactive monitoring logs a case with case with vendor With a reactive monitoring setup, you are your IT team exposing your backend infrastructure to your end users which will result in Event occurs Your end-user finds Your IT team Vendor/OEM late detection of business impacting his application is not identifies problem engineer starts events thereby causing huge employee working with device diagnosis satisfaction issues. In a typical scenario, shown in Figure 4, Figure 4: Typical scenario without the presence of an integrated monitoring system, an event goes unnoticed until an end-user faces an VPN application issue. The IT user will be Ticket created Proactive event notification automatically and intimated after which the respective through VPN assigned to engineer vendor or OEM is engaged for diagnosis and restoration. In some instances, the event will remain unnoticed for Event occurs GSOA with automation NTT engineer starts diagnosis long periods which results in end-users working with degraded performance. Figure 5: NTT’s Online services approach With our proactive services, the events are identified before an end user does with the help of industry standard Automation Easy access to your devices network management protocols, as One of the values that NTT’s GSOA During the event of an incident and shown in Figure 5. platform offers is its automation in the absense of connectivity, our Our GSOA is a tightly integrated platform capabilities. We use automation which engineers have to rely on means like where the monitoring system and the will analyse the events generated out of webconferencing to get access to your IT Service Management system works SNMP traps and take action without the devices for initiating the diagnosis and hand in hand. As and when an event is need of human intervention. This helps subsequent troubleshooting. This will identified by the monitoring platform, it eliminate false events as well as avoiding add significant delay in restoring your is automatically converted to an incident any potential human error. services due to the time and difficulty ticket and assigned to an engineer. With Our automation is proven to run at of setting up these remote sessions our proactive notification, you will be scale with more than 1,600 automation and this will require efforts from your notified of this incident within 15 minutes executions running every day across 450 engineers as well. of actual detection of the event by our clients. With these we are able to auto With the appropiate connectivity in monitoring systems. resolve or auto close 73% of the events place, it makes it easy forour engineers Since our tools and processes are ITIL from our client’s infrastructure. to access your infrastructure devices compliant, the Incident ticket will have Some high-level functions that our over this already established connection. respective service level agreements automation performs: This allows our engineers to login to (SLA) and operational level agreements your infrastructure devices without any (OLA) by which the engineer diagnoses • Events are enriched (analysis, on-demand remote sessions with your the incident according to its severity. correlation, and suppression). engineer and the troubleshooting can be This will ensure your business is back to • Events are auto validated and closed or initiated instanstaneously. normal as early as possible. promoted to incidents. We will monitor the availability of • Repeatable tasks are automated configuration items to include identified which increases the productivity of the capacity thresholds. We have a carefully support personnel. developed monitoring plan for each Automating the repeatable tasks will asset type that allows us to ensure that enable our engineers to focus on more we are notified by events that matter critical tasks which needs greater and we don’t distract you with ones that attention and also provides a quicker don’t. In some cases, we can avoid future turnaround to your events without downtimes by ensuring that intermittent human error. events which can result in incidents are not ignored.

Improve mean-time-to-repair (MTTR) As mentioned in the above sections, by detecting the events or incidents as early as possible with our monitoring Proactive monitoring platforms, automating almost all of the events and getting easy access to your infrastructure devices, the business impacting incidents are restored at the earliest. This leads to a better mean- Automation Improved MTTR Improved network time-to-repair (MTTR) which will improve availability your overall network availability.

Configuration Archiving Our Configuration Archiving service allows you to plan for unplanned Easy access to devices outages. On an ongoing basis we will archive the configuration of your Figure 6: Improving MTTR with an effective approach covered assets saving both the current configuration and previous version. Most supported devices have the capability Improve device stability Asset Tracking and Analytics to inform our monitoring systems that Availability and Capacity Monitoring One of the proactive service elements the configuration has been changed, helps to ensure that the configuration which can complement our Uptime initiating a fresh configuration download. items supported are available and Online Service plan is the Asset Tracking operating at acceptable levels. and Analytics service plan. We will Configurations are archived monthly and Availability and Capacity Monitoring provide automated discovery of the compared to the last stored configuration will help enable your organization to Cisco hardware and embedded software to ensure the latest version is saved. sustain the service availability required products in your network via our global This will ensure latest configuration is to support your organization’s needs service operating architecture (GSOA) available for restoration during hardware and predict your future needs. We will at a frequency mutually agreed between failures or any failed changes. You proactively monitor the availability your team and NTT. It needs to be an will be able to restore your business and performance of your covered ongoing and regular discovery that keeps to normal at the earliest possible time infrastructure on a real-time basis by track of the changes in your dynamic with our configuration archiving service configuring a set of asset-applicable environment. Discoveries are run once a by providing easy and quick access to thresholds. This will include such key month. stored configuration files. performance indicators as central Through the asset discovery the You will be able to restore your business processing unit (CPU) utilization, information like hardware model, serial to normal at the earliest possible time memory, key processes, physical and number, IP address, and hostname are with our configuration archiving service virtual network interfaces, and the captured. Industry network management by providing easy and quick access to performance of carrier services, to name protocols like SSH/Telnet and SNMP are stored configuration files. a few. used for this discovery. With our Asset It also reduces the risks associated with Our monitoring services also improve Tracking and Analytics service, you will configuration errors by enabling the identification of assets requiring be notified of vendor notifications like return to known good versions which upgrade (i.e. more memory, faster end of support or end of life, software improves your overall security posture. storage devices, faster processors, updates, field notices, known bugs and greater bandwidth) and allows you to security vulnerability issues. take necessary hardware upgrades at Asset Tracking and Analytics leverages right time without risking any business the data collected and enables you to performance. better plan technology refreshes and Our services also ensure the devices standardization. are running the supported versions of software and not any deferred or end-of- life (EoL) software versions.

The interactive reporting dashboards make information retrieval easier, supports contract rationalization and reduces renewal efforts. The risks and cost of downtime caused by unknown and unsupported assets and security vulnerabilities are reduced with this service.

Actionable insights through Manage Centre Portal Our proactive services monitor your infrastructure 24x7 and shows the Figure 7: Sample availability report availability and capacity data on Manage Centre. We can view the real-time status of the device availability and health statistics like CPU, memory and interface utilization, and the historical trend over a period. This helps us to manage your capacity well and perform timely upgrades. It also shows a health score where we can view whether the device is healthy or not depending on its availability, number of severity one or severity two incidents, etc. Figure 8: Sample real-time CPU utilization graph for a device The colour coded doughnuts in the home page reflects the overall health of our IT infrastructure in red, amber or green. The geographical maps help us identify Summary business impact by location. Our Online Services, which are part • faster repair and restoration of of the Uptime Service Plans portfolio, incidents thereby improving the MTTR The availability reports on Manage provide proactive monitoring for your and overall network availability Centre covers both a real-time and infrastructure which increases the overall historical view of the availability of your • improve the overall health of individual availability of your network resulting in infrastructure. This provides a monthly devices by tracking its real-time and increased business uptime. availability summary with a percentage historical performance thereby taking of availability of each device, top It directly influences your users’ preventive actions availability problems and any exceptions. satisfaction and the reputation of your • ability to auto-discover and track your A sample real-time availability snapshot organization by helping to provide your assets and proactively take measures is displayed in Figure 7. users with a consistent experience that in case of any unsupported hardware will increase their productivity and a Capacity related information like or software versions reduction in user complaints. interface utilization, CPU or processor • better visibility and insights to adopt utilization, and memory utilization are Some of the benefits of Online Services technology and services effectively captured and displayed in Manage are: through Manage Centre by providing Centre. By having the ability to view • early detection and quick response transparency to your infrastructure these metrics in real-time, our support through proactive monitoring team can partner with you to quickly • zero-touch automation to auto validate eliminate or confirm performance issues and remediate events, improving being experienced. These charts are also resolution time for continual service easily exportable for reference purposes. improvement The report can be interactively adjusted for the reporting period (e.g. one day, one • smooth access to your infrastructure week, etc.). devices for our engineers to initiate diagnosis and restoration