Client Background
With innovative medical technologies and the right products for monitoring health, the client is a global leader in the healthcare space. They offer products and services offered to empower their customers you with all the information they need for taking charge of their health.
Project Overview
Since the client offers products and services that are being used by their customers globally across multiple regions, this requires 24*7 network support to support their AWS infrastructure.
Business Requirements
The client wanted FIRMINIQ to help them with the following requirements:
Improved Monitoring Capabilities
Improve the monitoring and altering capabilities to ensure efficient performance of the services, disaster risk reduction, and control infrastructure cost. It offers all the valuable metrics, helps troubleshoot all the issues while offering more security.
Define Escalation Matrix
The client wanted us to define the escalation matrix so that all the incidents get early attention, and the team is assigned for the issue resolution without any delay or losses. They also wanted us to update with regular feedback on issues and the action taken by our team.
Automate Processes
Have a built-in mechanism to automate and improve the services processes and procedures based on constantly evolving infrastructure, user load, additional features, etc.
Reduced Response Time
A reduced response time during the outage is the most crucial attribute of customer satisfaction and the client wanted a 24/7 available DevOps team that could respond to customer service requests and monitor infrastructure thoroughly. The client wanted response standardization to common incidents through playbooks.
Tracking and Visibility
Build a mechanism to track resolution time, for infra-related issues, application downtime, and infrastructure performance and get visibility on the infrastructure cost management and tracking.
Challenges
The main challenge was to set up an offshore network operation center from the grounds up that can work 24/7 for 365 days and addresses all the client requirements. This included hiring resources, building processes and establishing communication channels for a successful implementation.Solution
FIRMINIQ helped the client with the establishment of the Network Operation Center for 24/7 that could help meet all the client requirements and the objectives. With expert and skilled resources, we helped them handle all their DevOps activities and monitor their infrastructure.
Here is the delivery outline for the project.
- Project Planning- 1 Month
- Project Initiation-1 Month
- Project Execution- 3 Months
- Project Monitoring and Controlling- Ongoing
01. Project Planning (1 month)
The entire project was planned and finalized during this duration. Right from the documentation to the resources required, resource allocation, training requirement, listing of resources to be monitored, critical alerts to be monitored, and the deliverables, everything was planned. Here is what the end deliverables were expected to be
- A 24/7 network operation center to seamlessly monitor the infrastructure
- JIRA board was set up to report the monitoring activities
- RCA process was defined to facilitate blameless RCAs for every P1 issue
- Enlisted all the SOPs for all the known alarms to be used in processing the alerts
02. Project Initiation (1 Month)
During this phase all the activities outlined during the planning phase were carried out in a time bound manner. From the training processes, procedures, standard operating procedures, reporting process, training to documentation templates we did it all. During the phase we established a strong foundation for the other phases and supported 24/7 activities before going live.
03. Project Execution (3 Months)
Finally, the Go-Live phase! The phase was led by following of implemented SOPs, usage of escalation matrix for establishing a robust communication channel. This phase also involved culture change for the L1 support team as well as for the teams down the escalation path.
04. Project Monitoring and Controlling (Ongoing)
The teams are fully operational with the Network Operations Center vision fully realized. In this phase we apply the laid down processes for routine activities, reporting as well as utilizing the routine retrospective meetings to further improve communication channels, processes and contribute requirements and feedback towards product, processes, and DevOps based on observations.
Results
By partnering with us for this project our client was able to get the following results.
Reduction in Outages
Our Network Operation Centre team helped in the reduction of time it took to resolve the outages issues, disaster risk reduction and the infrastructure warnings while offering a secure infrastructure. As a result of being able to engage the right teams in a short time, it was made possible to handle the issues proactively leading to improvement in user experience.
Cost Optimization
Our Network operation center managed the costs on a weekly basis and implemented all the changes to cost analysis and reporting that resulted in more transparency of cost. The team reacted to cost deviation before they started impacting the platform’s bottom line.
Product Services Optimization
As the product development team had better insights into the utilization of the infrastructure by the services with the network operation center teams, they could optimize the services with ease of products.
Risk Management and Security
As our Network Operation Center Team could easily monitor the infrastructure for new and existing vulnerabilities, we reduced the risks while addressing the industry recommendations offering more security.
Communication
With a predefined escalation matrix, we outlined the point of contact, organized it in hierarchy, and established proper channels for the interface to ensure improved and streamlined communication.
