Mike Runda, Senior VP and President, Avaya Client Services, gives his take on how businesses can maximise the value of their support services investment.
In the world of support services, everyone is always striving to reach that nirvana state where everything is perfect. That requires keeping networks running at peak performance while contending with the onslaught of new technologies.
For every support services organisation, the aim is to reach this stable state for our customers. Here are five actions that IT departments can take to gain the most value from their communications support services coverage:
Take full advantage of automation. Automating remote diagnostics, alarm monitoring, and issue isolation and resolution can reduce preventable outages dramatically. In my experiences, such tools can auto-resolve 90 percent of alarms requiring service requests without human intervention, while lowering outage risk by nearly three-quarters. If the systems are unable to resolve a problem, they automatically forward relevant information to a technician. By taking advantage of these advanced diagnostic capabilities, your organisation can equip itself for proactive prevention, rapid resolution and continual optimisation of communications systems.
Establish healthy connectivity. Realising automation’s substantial benefits requires reliable access to remotely provided tools and services. Solid connectivity is vital to ongoing monitoring, accurate measurement and fast issue resolution. Adopting a standard remote connectivity methodology can help enhance security and enable more effective use of end-user and administrative controls, make for smoother and more reliable alarm validation and clearing functionality, and allow for more detailed logging and audit trails.
Prevent and predict network issues onsite. User-controllable diagnostic tools can speed diagnostics while reducing costs and equipment requirements. Intelligent software agents continually collect relevant data and detect potential problems before they impact service. The tools equip system operators and their vendors to better diagnose, analyse and address incidents remotely without compromising system stability. Diagnostic tools can help resolve issues up to 50 percent faster.
Tackle the outage top five. The major causes of communications outages are no surprise. The surprise comes in not knowing which one will pop up, and when. According to research, depending on the specific cause, one-third to three-quarters of reported outages could have been avoided by using the outage prevention practices:
- Power outages – regularly scheduled audits can help determine if facilities and uninterruptible power supply systems are capable of meeting power demands and ward off problems, with particular attention given to hardware that is approaching the end of manufacturer support (EoMS).
- Lack of routine maintenance— proactive health checks, disciplined system monitoring, and observed maintenance schedules can help IT departments catch the telltale signals equipment emits when a problem is approaching.
- Software bugs—a sound patching strategy and proactive approach to patching to eliminate known issues can help maintain software performance and avoid software-related outages.
- Hardware failures—proactive upgrades of equipment approaching EoMS, audits to verify system redundancy, system health checks, and failover strategies for critical systems can help reduce hardware-based outages.
- Confirm that your records are accurate. Support services providers can address issues faster if they know what systems they are dealing with and whether those solutions are up to date. If you have a disciplined process for accurately registering equipment, you can facilitate ongoing remote maintenance support, improve the accuracy of contract renewal price quotes, and help your support vendor update hardware inventory records and test device connectivity and alarming.
Achieving nirvana in the chaotic world of IT with its many moving parts, increasing productivity goals, and the ever-growing world of cloud applications requires a continuous commitment to these top five practices. But once achieved, it can lead to happier customers, more productive employees who are able to focus on initiatives that will move the business forward, and for IT managers, peace and stability.
