Managed Service Case Study

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Customer Brief:

In mid 2009 the existing managed service provider, covering network and infrastructure security, ceased trading with little or no notice to the customer. This customer did not possess the required skills in house to manage the network, they required a service provider who could take over the service at short notice, hit the ground running and deliver a number of projects were only mid-way through to completion. The requirements from the new service provider included management of the following:

Shield IT's Managed Service Solution:

We quickly agreed the scope of managed service contract which covered all of the above support requirements. We assessed the status of the outstanding projects, agreed a number of additional projects to be delivered during the first year and incorporated these into a new contract.

Once the service scope was finalised and the SLA was agreed, this was then to be supported by a monthly service level report and on-site meeting to discuss and monitor progress.

With the contract in place the next task was to review the existing maintenance contracts and arrange for any outstanding contracts to be taken out on behalf of customer. All of the other contracts would be renewed as and when required throughout the year. A schedule of suppliers and maintenance agreements was then provided to the customer for review.

The outstanding projects were prioritised and plans put in place to complete these. The projects included proxy server replacement, and upgrades to both the remote access and end point protection solutions.

In addition to the agreed project work Shield IT Solutions also delivered a number of additional projects throughout the first year.

As part of the managed services contract Shield IT Solutions were responsible for the day to day management of the network and security infrastructure. This service was provided remotely through the customer's existing remote access solution, supplemented by a dedicated remote management solution at each site. The customer already used a helpdesk call management service for the rest of their IT team so we were integrated into that system to allow for calls to be easily passed between teams and to facilitate centralised reporting. This was supplemented via automated alerting from the Network Management platforms, with urgent messages delivered by SMS. As a number of the sites didn’t have a permanent IT resource, console servers were deployed to all sites to allow direct remote access to the serial ports of network equipment to help reduce the impact of any problem and allow for quick identification of hardware issues. Where a problem warranted an on-site engineer Shield IT Solutions were able to provide an engineer to site within the agreed SLA.

This managed service also included software upgrades in accordance with existing policies. Additional documents were produced for services where missing and existing documents updated as required.

As part of the managed services contract Shield IT Solutions also made various recommendations for service improvements, which included decommissioning out of support hardware, network consolidation and enhancements to improve infrastructure manageability, business continuity and performance.

The first year of the service was a success for both parties and the contract was subsequently renewed with only minor alterations being required. Helpdesk call levels involving network incidents have reduced significantly as improvements have been made to the service.