How good is your NOC?

If you have stumbled into this blog and would like to know more about the subject, let me clarify what is a NOC and what it stands for; Network Operations Center which is pronounced as; "nock" - it is one or more locations from which control is exercised over a computer, television broadcast, or telecommunications network.

Large organizations may operate more than one NOC, either to manage different networks or to provide geographic redundancy in the event of one site being unavailable or offline.

• NOCs are responsible for monitoring the network for alarms or certain conditions that may require special attention to avoid impact on the networks performance. For example, in a telecommunications environment, NOCs are responsible for monitoring for power failures, communication line alarms (such as bit errors, framing errors, line coding errors, and circuits down) and other performance issues that may affect the network. NOCs analyze problems, perform troubleshooting, communicate with site technicians and other NOCs, and track problems through resolution. If necessary, NOCs escalate problems to the appropriate personnel. For severe conditions that are impossible to anticipate – such as a power failure or optical fiber cable cut – NOCs have procedures in place to immediately contact technicians to remedy the problem. There are two types of NOC that I am familiar with; NOC that is local to a company or an organization or NOC that manages networks for different customers In either case NOC should be secure and process well defined for Incident, Problem, Change, Release, Configuration Management at times Capacity, Availability and Continuity are part of NOC operations.
  
  
  How good your NOC is depends upon what kind of metrics are reported on your NOC dashboard.
  
  
  Few Key ones by each discipline would be:

Incident Management:
- Total number of incident recorded
- Reported by individual/customer
- System generated alerts
- SLA violations/Total number of SLAs committed
- Availability
- Number of FTE / Total number of cases handled

Problem Management:
- Number of Problems reported
- Number of root cause identified and resolved
- Number of problems requiring changes

Other Metrics:

- Workload per FTE

- Operational Expenses vs Revenue Generated

- Customer satisfaction index

For more information on the topic please contact Azim > itilsme@gmail.com

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contact Azim > itilsme@gmail.com