ICT Network Operations

Center – NOC By

Muhannad Kalbouneh Technology Services Management

Network Operation Center • NOCs are implemented by business organizations, public utilities, ICT Companies, and

government agencies that oversee complex networking environments that require high availability. NOC personnel are responsible for monitoring services with criteria that may require attention to avoid degraded service. Organizations may operate more than one NOC, either to manage different networks or to provide geographic redundancy in the event of one site becoming unavailable.• Nowadays, there are NOC, SOC, GNOC, iNOC , NOC as Services, Managed Services

NOC • Usually the NOC will be customized per business and organization

In NOC Scope • Service Monitoring and Surveillance• First Level Troubleshooting and Resolution• Service Verification and User Experience Testing • Services Incident SPOC with Internal and External Unites• Proactive and Reactive Actions to Assure the Service

NOC Applications Considerations Unified Application to simplify the NOC work

Centralized Application to reduce the cost

Applications Automation to improve the time to service recovery

Filters and Correlation will support the focus on real impact

Dashboards playing vital role to quickly identify incident

Near Real Time Trends will support traffic issues identification

Simplicity will improve the efficiency

NOC Main Applications Alarms and Logs Management

Service Trends Repository

Knowledge Base

CRM

Active Service Testing

Dashboards

Process Management

Incident Management Ticketing System

Interactions • NOC to have visibility on all service and network changes• NOC can be the Single Point of Contact for incident management • NOC to have regular and weekly meetings with other units for

alignments• Establish agreed communication channels for business promotions

and new projects • NOC to be part of general notifications• NOC to cascade notifications with other unites as needed

Knowledge Management • NOC Resource should be on top of business and technology services and

solutions , updates and changes • NOC should have a knowledge team who should be part of all training

programs and to share the knowledge with all NOC resource• Allow NOC resources to attend any new training if possible • New NOC resource should have an orientation with the technical experts,

commercial, visit the centers where the monitored services installed, get organizational orientation, get knowledge of all NOC services before they start the standard shift • Training materials should be available to all resources in the knowledge base

Dashboards The message, format, visuals, comments and context for ease understanding

Simple

The dashboard must adapt to its users , generic KPI for managementMultiple Profiles

Unified format will help better KPIs understandingUnified Format

For smart decision making in the most efficient way, real time or near real time will support to take immediate actions

Near Real Time

Each indicator should tell a story and to provide the exact impact and what behind it

Show Value

Fitting multiple interfaces for a screen or rotating interfaces will give more space and better dashboard design

Maximize Screen Use

Services Criticality Service criticality should be defined and agreed by internal and external parties considering below main factors • Customer Demand, Preferences and Requirements • Commercial and Technical Objectives • Service Cost and Priority • Value to the Internal / External Customers• Service Usability and Volume of Customers• Top Services and Service Nature • Stake holders to decide the services criticality matrix• Service SLA should be defined and agreed by internal and external parties • Criticality and SLA should be mapped with all involved parties, venders and unites as End to

End

Incident / Event Management • Incident identification verification by available applications• Incident impact measurement, volume and details • Mapping the failure to any ongoing activity, promotion or change• Incident communications to internal and external involved parties • Initiate formalities according to the process • Escalate to next technical support or service supplier• Follow-up, track and records till service resolution• Export service trends and impact details for reports • Service testing and validation and closure of the Incident • Generate outage report for analysis

Daily Shift • NOC should record all Incidents, issues, complaints in NOC repository • For 24/7 team, resources should upload shift reports, Incidents,

notifications, activities to NOC centralized repository for next resource knowledge

Communication Channels • NOC should have centralized number as part of IVR to support multiple

calls concurrently • Auto Ticketing Systems will support the tracking and issues management

one email received on NOC support email • Centralized – Shared Email address can be used if no Auto Ticking System

available, sure Email auto reply is recommended with necessary information • WhatsApp integration is an advantage • Publish NOC Portal and publish events details as per process • The usage of SMS, MMS and Mobile Applications will be advantage

Escalation Management For efficient Incident management process its recommended to define and agree on:• Build Escalation Matrix Contacts for internal and external customers –

update regularly• Publish Incidents Details on NOC Portal• Escalate as Per Criticality Matrix Definitions• Notify the Internal/ External Customer as per The Defined Process• Escalate to 3rd Party Supplier Support as Per the Defined Process

Incidents / Events Analysis • Weekly/ Monthly / Quarterly and Annual reports are required to

represent TT trends and give an input for continual service improvements process • As part of continual service improvements, repetitive Incident s needs

to be reviewed, categorized and take necessary actions for improvements

Service Management As part of service management • Define and publish service catalogue • Map the agreed SLA and service KPI to incident management • Track and Record All 3rd Party service requests, incidents and suppliers

performance, record any violation if any• Internal and external customer cervices and packages details, primary

and secondary contacts, customer ID, emails, service requests and incident history should be recorded

NOC KPI• NOC KPIs Should be Define to Measure the NOC Performance• Number of Incidents, Resolution Average and Resolution Duration • Time to Acknowledgement / Time to Response• Percentage of Incidents Resolved by NOC before Escalation • Volume of Alerts

User Experience Active Testing Application • The active testing application is Vital for NOC, as in some situations no

alarms will be raised and no traffic trends will be changed, dashboards are normal however the service having partial impact, so it can be slowness, one component failure or any other reason, having the application that will keep testing the service will support quick identification of any impact • User Experience testing is important part of the dashboard

NOC Disaster Recovery Plan • NOC Resources, Applications, Process, Access Material and Site should

be ready for any disaster depends on the organization business nature and services criticality• DR simulation is needed regularly• Applications access should be available anywhere

NOC Resources • In NOC its required to have skilled resources who can learn quickly,

able to understand network and services, take ownership, understand the relations between components, services, devices, sites service end to end dependencies, with strong analytical and troubleshooting skills • If the NOC is 24/7 function the resources shift rotation is required

Process Management • For any action or note mentioned in this report, it should be mapped

to organizational process where its clearly defined, documented, signed and agreed• The notes mentioned in high level however the organization to decide

on the process details, RACI and actions

Thank you

Muhannad Kalbouneh Technology Services Management