It was a very clever commercial. Four masked men enter a bank with baseball bats yelling “on the floor, on the floor”. A woman patron laying on the floor looks up to a man dressed as a security guard and whispers, “do something” and the man replies, “Oh, I’m not a security guard, I’m a security monitor. I only notify people if there’s a robbery” then after a long pause he says, “there’s a robbery.” It’s a funny commercial and I think most people actually remember that it’s a spot for LifeLock.
Unfortunately, when selecting a Managed Service Plan (MSP) from an IT services Provider, you must understand what their definition of 24 x 7 network monitoring is. Oftentimes it’s just that. Monitoring. If an incident happens at 2:00 in the morning, many IT support firms will not become aware of it until they arrive at the office at 8 or 9AM. Sometimes, it’s after you or your employees have arrived only to find they can’t begin work.
This is another feature of an MSP area that needs to be clearly defined when vetting an IT services firm. You have to find out exactly what 24 x 7 monitoring means to them. The thing to ask is “does your monitoring include ‘real-time’ remediation”. If so, ask the tough questions and perhaps lay out some likely scenarios and find out how they would be handled.
When comparing services offered by a Managed Service Provider, you need to be aware of each component and discern exactly what you’ll get once you’ve signed on. It’s tempting to try to reduce the selection task to a checklist, but as you can see, the devil is in the details and in order to truly compare service firms, you owe it to yourself and your organization to dig deeper. This selection process is important and taking the extra time on the front-end, will reduce your post decision dissonance on the back end.
Check out my previous blogs and watch for future contributions for a look at each MSP offering with tips on how to evaluate them.
Authored by Donald Nokes
Nick Eckman joined NetCenergy in 2016 from an international gaming company. Nick’s experience with supervising and implementing secure, fiber and copper wire infrastructure services provides our clients with a team of highly trained and experienced technicians. In addition to the skills required to manage our infrastructure services department, Nick brings a very experienced and focused approach to project management and is a stickler for accurate documentation for every project designed and built by his team.
Peter Lachapelle joined NetCenergy in 2015 and is responsible for leading all of NetCenergy’s operations and accounting functions. Each department within NetCenergy reports through Lachapelle. He brings his years of experience to maintain a pragmatic, efficient, client-focused team at NetCenergy. Lachapelle joined NetCenergy after completing a 27-year career with a Rhode Island, federally-charted bank which culminated in his senior management position as COO and CFO for the bank.
Peter Nelson has 25+ years of technology and management experience and has been with NetCenergy since inception. Peter serves as the VP of Engineering at NetCenergy. His role consists of managing the engineering staff, driving the companies technology strategy, and ensuring NetCenergy keeps up to date on new technologies and solutions.
As a Founding Partner, Dan is a result oriented individual who is always focusing on what is best for his client. He understands that business applications empower an organization and that technology must support those critical business applications. Dan’s technology career started in 1990 at EMC Corporation. Through the years, he has represented technology and consulting services for several organizations until 2003, when he and Don Nokes founded NetCenergy.
As President of NetCenergy, Don is responsible for ensuring client satisfaction, overseeing overall performance, and for providing direction to the organization. Prior to co-founding the firm with Dan Charland, Don held senior leadership positions with IT service firms ranging in size from $3 Billion to $10 Million in annual sales.
With decades of hands-on HR experience, Margery Ahearn is our Director of Human Resources, overseeing all hiring of new positions for NetCenergy with a careful eye on sourcing technology savvy engineers and skilled office-based professionals who fit our company culture, understand our commitment to our clients, and bring their time and talents to our team. Margery has both a BA and MBA in Business Administration from Southern New Hampshire University.