Category: MSP | Page 2

opEvents Prevents Event Storms During A Snowstorm

by Craig Nelson | May 26, 2021 | Automation, Blog Post, MSP, opEvents

I dropped into a quarterly business review that one of the Account Managers was doing with one of our customers last week. I like to do this from time to time to hear it for myself directly from the customer. It helps me understand the customers and gives me an opportunity to discuss our platform post sale and integration.

This particular customer is a Telecommunications Carrier out of North America who runs a lot of wireless and fibre and are rapidly expanding.

The Head of Network Operations was on the call, and for the purposes of keeping the identity private, let’s call him Joe.

Joe talked about the snowstorms and how it impacts their network and field services team. The way it works is that the NOC team gets an alert, does some diagnosis and decides what process needs to occur. To send field service staff means that the problem is something that cannot be remotely fixed. Sending the team out in bad weather to work on wireless equipment is hard on the people who do the work, but at the end of the day, to quote Joe, “we pride ourselves on great customer service.”

Before this customer had opEvents installed, they would have a high rate of field service calls that would result in no fault found during snowstorms. This means that the field services team were not being sent to fix real field related problems. For any company with a field services team, you know how important it is to send these guys to real problems.

The impact for the customer was that to clear all the events would take days, with over 50% being false reports.

During recent snowstorms, opEvents would handle the alert and find the source problem. The NOC team then could send the field services team out in the snow to investigate and fix the problems. Joe said that the level of accuracy in the alerts was fantastic and the NOC and Field Services Team rebuilt their trust and had confidence that they were being sent to a real fault.

When Joe studied the impact that the Opmantek Platform brought to the table, opEvents reduced event storms to zero, deduplication was no longer a problem and only pushed real events to the team. Field service calls were reduced and the network was brought back to normal in half the time.

“We had a lot of competitors’ customers switch to us during the snowstorms. The amount of downtime we suffered was minimal as we were right on top of any faults, we knew where they were and their severity and deployed our field services team accurately. It puts us ahead of the market.”

3-Steps To Increase Your Automated Event Management

by Adam Leeflang | Apr 7, 2021 | Automation, Blog Post, MSP, NMIS, opEvents

Recent advances in Operational Process Automation at Opmantek means that our MSP customers can deliver exceptional value to their clients; exceeding their SLAs whilst becoming incredibly sticky.

Are you facing any of the challenges below?

Cost pressures as clients try to drive down prices.
Ability to meet your SLAs due to overworked technical teams.
Absolute reliance on one or two technicians to keep your clients happy.
Challenges in retaining level 3-4 technical resources.
Significant burdens in maintaining accreditation.
Managing increasingly complex client networks.
Retaining skills associated with client legacy networks.

Resolve these challenges with incredibly rapid ROI and amazingly low TCO

Opmantek has long believed that Operational Process Automation is one of the foundational pillars for a successful network management strategy. A key piece to this is ensuring that actions are undertaken in a consistent manner each time, with no variation from what is outlined as the standard protocol.

This will help you to:

Simplify the procedure
Reduce cost
Deliver consistent outcomes with your agreed SLAs

Through the use of “context sensitive event actions”, you may now replicate troubleshooting actions and escalation procedures, dynamically.

Example Use Case

1. Issue with Cisco Interface Identified

Here’s the event log for the entire network. Our event management system automatically parses incidents on your client’s networks into Events.

2. Context sensitive action bar initiated

Once a specific event has been identified “Context Sensitive Actions” are displayed against the event either automatically or by guiding your NOC team through the steps to remediate.

3. Cisco remediation commands executed

The system automatically creates a ticket in the system, pings the affected nodes and Troubleshoots (TS) the Cisco Interface. Once those actions conclude, the results are displayed on the event itself! The operator may now take further action or simply close out the Ticket.

All of this can happen without the NOC or your client knowing there was ever an issue. Save time, save money and increase your clients’ satisfaction. If you’re interested in taking advantage of these incredible capabilities, please fill in the form below;

Book a Demo

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Changes in the Wind at Opmantek

by Craig Nelson | Mar 15, 2021 | Automation, Blog Post, Company Culture, MSP, NMIS, opConfig, opEvents

Like every CEO, I was anxious at the beginning of COVID-19. How would that affect the business and staff? So we were expecting the worst and like many companies, we prepared the business and the team for change.

Fortunately, for us, just like many businesses, it afforded the team time to think about what they are doing, where they are heading, and what is and isn’t working for them. Just like us, many businesses revaluated their direction and operation. Out of that exploration came improvements to their processes and ways to reduce waste. Everyone got a bit smarter.

During 2020, we had a higher engagement than we expected from organisations that saw the importance of their networks and infrastructure. With more people relying on the business’s digital side to get work done and with IT staff working from home, network management became a primary focus for CEOs, CIOs, and CTOs. Heads of IT for all verticals had to ensure that their applications and supporting infrastructure were robust and no surprises. They had to now more than ever support their customers and provide the same level of support to their staff.

Network Management and Network Management improvements were no longer on the back burner. They are now front and centre.

More and more people were reaching out to us and talking to our teams around the world. Some of the largest organisations joined our family. They chose us as they trusted our team and software to deliver outstanding visibility of their networks and infrastructure, flexibility to fit their business process and great value. Organisations such as NextLink Internet out of Texas signed a 10-year agreement with us. NASA is using us for their next moon mission, Artemis. Only three members of Opmantek were born – yes, they were babies at the time – when Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon. Now we all get to do a little bit to get the first Woman and next Man on the Moon, a great honour for all of us.

We are proud that we have built great software that our customers recognise as the best. However, what makes us all pleased is that our customers believe in our team.

[White Paper] NMS Security Architecture Considerations and Approaches

by Tony Kirkham | Mar 5, 2021 | MSP, NMIS, White Papers

This whitepaper by Principal Consultant of Neon Knight Consulting Anthony Kirkham covers how organizations can increasing the probability of detecting breaches using actionable guidance that will strengthen their Network Management’s security posture. Download the asset below.

Key Points:

- How quick detection may be the difference between being able to respond quickly and effectively, or, incurring a severe business and reputational impact.
- Practical guidance & solutions on securing Network Management systems and associated infrastructure
- Mitigation Strategies to Prevent Malware Delivery and Execution
- Mitigation Strategies to Limit the Extent of Cyber Security Incidents
- Mitigation Strategies to Recover Data and System Availability
- Tools & techniques can be used to provide high value in improving the security posture through Visibility.
- Why Align with Zero Trust Architectures
- & more!

Get the E-Book

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SD-WAN la nueva tendencia en gestión de MSP´s

by Jose Ivan Anguiano | Feb 24, 2021 | Español, MSP

SD-WAN ha sido tendencia este 2021, en organizaciones que implementan ampliamente la tecnología, principalmente los proveedores de servicios gestionados (MSP’s), ya que permite resolver las limitaciones de ancho de banda que en la actualidad comienzan a ser un problema, cabe mencionar que, esta tecnología mejora la experiencia de los usuarios al utilizar servicios de internet que proporcionan velocidades de descarga superiores a las actuales. “Durante 2020, Doyle Research espera que varios proveedores marginales de SD-WAN salgan del mercado o sean adquiridos”. Por lo que, es de suma importancia que los ejecutivos de TI evalúen cuidadosamente la viabilidad al adquirir una marca de SDWAN, ya que en la actualidad existen varias opciones disponibles y cada una de ellas proporcionara ventajas y desventajas que podría marcar el éxito o fracaso en su operación.

“SDWAN ha aumentado su uso en múltiples plataformas de infraestructura, como lo son (IaaS), Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud y Oracle”. La mayoría de los proveedores de SD-WAN aprovechan el punto de acceso local más cercano que permite a los usuarios conectarse a internet con su proveedor de servicios contratado(ISP), esto ayuda a que se pueda transferir mas rápido la información al punto de presencia mas cercano reduciendo significativamente la latencia, lo cual es de suma importancia para negocios como, tiendas de autoservicio, farmacéuticas, restaurantes, agencias automotrices, entre otras.

Ya que SDWAN esta comenzando a utilizarse de manera gradual, es importante que los proveedores de servicios de internet puedan monitorear lo que pasa dentro de dichas nubes, por lo que deben evaluar la capacidad que tienen para integrarse sin problemas con gestores/administradores de TI líderes en el mercado, incluida la conectividad desde el gestor hacia el CPE, para observar el desempeño de la sucursal, APIs personalizables, optimización del rendimiento, mapas georreferenciados y visibilidad de eventos de extremo a extremo, es aquí donde Opmantek ayuda a potenciar dichas características para el monitoreo de los CPEs de clientes, así mismo hace posible el monitoreo de los dispositivos que viven en la nube, inclusive si no tienen conectividad a través de ICMP. ¿Esta usted interesado en este tema?, de ser así no dude en contactarnos en latam@opmantek.com, en donde tenemos una solución hecha a la medida de sus necesidades.

4 important Open-Source Network Management Statements Addressed

by Adam Leeflang | Jan 22, 2021 | Automation, Blog Post, MSP, NMIS, Testing Category

To Open-Source or to not Open-Source, that is the question.

Does your company use Apache, Tomcat or Linux? Do you use Wireshark? If you do, you are already using open-source software.

Open-Source software is cost-effective assuming that you have IT staff, good training, documentation and access to quality support.

Yes, that’s true. But that can be true for any software product that your technical team is responsible for. However, you will blow out costs if you choose the wrong software, lack commitment, have skill set issues, or you suffer from implementation problems or other long term problems.
At Opmantek, we never want this for our customers. Before COVID-19, we offered on site training, which we’ve now switched to remote. (We look forward to meeting our customers again face-to-face.) We have a complete key-turn implementation service (sometimes referred to as white glove). We offer further development and customization to suit your business, advice and recommendations through our consulting services. And most importantly we offer complete support for all our Open-Source and Commercial products.

Open source isn’t counterculture anymore. It’s the establishment.

Klint Finley – Wired.

Open-Source software that comes with commercial modules will provide you access to enterprise features.

True. At Opmantek, our business was initially providing commercial support for the Open-Source products and due to demand for enterprise and MSP features, additional commercial modules were developed to fill customer requests. Our Enterprise Support customers also help guide our product roadmap.

Open-Source software is continually evolving through community activity.
At Opmantek, our community is made up of the Open-Source users, Customers and our staff. We pay our development staff to maintain and continue the development of the open-source products and to support the community as well as improving and maintaining our commercial modules.

Open-Source software support is commercially available for the product.
Opmantek offers commercial support for the Open-Source software. Rather than repeat ourselves you can read all about our support here.

Even Microsoft went from “Linux is a cancer” to “We love Linux”.

They now use and release open-source software such as it’s popular .NET programming framework and they even use Linux to run parts of its cloud service Azure and have shared their own Linux tools within the community.

Open-source software is not a dirty fork, it’s the way of the future.

Background:
Opmantek provides Open-Source software NMIS and Open-AudIT community and continues to provide commercial support for these products for almost 10 years. Opmantek has further developed these products over the years, while keeping them open-source and offering commercial enhancements (Enterprise features, MSP features, huge scaling capabilities and automation) via additional modules that make up Opmantek’s Automated Network Management Software. It can be used on any network and monitor any device.