Sometimes, managed service providers (MSPs) struggle to scale their business while fulfilling service level agreements (SLAs) with customers. With that challenge in mind, Kaseya has launched Network Operations Center (NOC) Assist, which allows MSPs to leverage Kaseya’s talent pool without hiring more full-time employees.
From where I sit, NOC Assist is part of a bigger trend in the managed services market. From Autotask to ConnectWise, OnForce and Kaseya, many MSP platform providers and IT market places are striving to help MSPs find more talent (through partnerships or vendor relationships) without increasing full-time payroll.
Kaseya’s NOC Assist, for instance, will “enable IT solution providers to leverage the expertise of the global Kaseya team to expand their services without adding additional staff or overhead,” according to a Kaseya statement. The NOC Assist effort is part of Kaseya’s larger emPower Program.
Ultimately, Kaseya says, NOC Assist gives MSPs:
“the ability to extend their staff by bundling private labeled NOC services for basic remediation, routine preventive maintenance and pro-active monitoring of servers. These services are provided transparently by Kaseya so that the MSP is able to maintain complete control over usage, data collection and all end user interaction.”
Through NOC Assist, Kaseya provides 24/7:
- Basic troubleshooting and remediation of common server problems
- Escalation of issues to customer via Kaseya ticketing system and/or via phone, email, pagers
- Suggested resolution to ticketed issues
- Application of Microsoft Security Updates for Operating Systems and Applications, as well as application of numerous Microsoft patches.
Basically, Kaseya NOC Assist and some of the rival industry offerings sound like a safety net to help MSPs provide better customer service without recruiting more employees.
Posted In: Platforms | Service Level Agreements
Tags: Autotask | ConnectWise | Kaseya | Network Operations Center Assist | NOC Assist | OnForce
Interact: Add a Comment | Trackback Link | Permalink
Share: digg | del.icio.us | Technorati | StumbleUpon
Subscribe: RSS Feed
Questions for Kaseya: Is NOC Assist a “help line” that I can turn to when my company needs some help supporting customers? How does pricing work for NOC Assist? Monthly fee? Incident-based pricing? Thanks for your anticipated thoughts.
NOC Assist isn’t a “help line” in the traditional concept. It is more of a packaged service that has defined deliverables. The deliverables include 24/7/365 monitoring, triage & review of alerts, basic remediation, suggested resolution, and escalation. It also includes patch management. So, if your company does need assistance in providing these services in a scalable fashion, then this service would be for you. It is a monthly fee service priced per endpoint. For more information, please refer to http://www.kaseya.com, or send inquiries to sales@kaseya.com. Thank you!
Neal: Thanks for the perspectives.
Nick D: Let us know if you have additional questions.
I have one question for this topic. Why would you go to your software vendor for NOC services? Of course I am a bit biased here but it would seem to me that software vendors should stick to what they do best and that is software development. Let the Master MSPs out there provide managed services for the MSP and VAR community, that is what we do best.
Lane: I’m not qualified to say whether one model is better than another. But I do believe the MSP market is starting to mirror the traditional software market, where developers now host apps in their own NOCs even as they parter with solutions providers.
Prime examples include Salesforce.com, NetSuite and SugarCRM all providing SaaS from their NOCs. In the case of SugarCRM, I’m seeing healthy competition between the software provider and its own SaaS partners…