Managed service providers, or MSPs, provide multi-faceted services that include monitoring network devices, servers, applications, bandwidth, and traffic. They also maintain customer-specific views and associated role-based access controls as well as provide restricted access to views.
However, MSPs can’t afford to run NOC operations on a per customer basis. Instead, MSPs may have to group devices or servers in individual business or customer groups and assign them to a technician or an administrator. This basically means MSPs must be flexible as well as rigid to ensure exceptional customer service. Let’s see how ManageEngine can help achieve just that.
ManageEngine IT360 MSP Edition is a network and applications monitoring tool designed specifically for MSPs. This tool comes packaged with an ITIL-based help desk that lets your customers log tickets and incident requests. IT360 MSP Edition provides:
- Network device monitoring
- Server and application monitoring
- Bandwidth and traffic monitoring
Customer-centric Model
IT360 MSP Edition works in a distributed architecture model, the Central Server-Probes model. The central server resides in the MSP’s NOC while the probes reside on the client’s premises. Each client LAN can have one or more dedicated probes.
Depending on scalability requirements, you can install up to 40 probes for a central server. You can also use one probe to manage several clients’ LANs (Shared Probe model), in which case you can install shared probes in the MSP’s NOC and monitor the client LANs remotely.
As for probe access rights, the NOC administrator can provide role-based access to client administrators and the NOC personnel. When serving customers with several LANs, sites, or locations, you can use IT360 MSP Edition to provide customer-site segmentation.
Customer-level Rebranding
Some customers might want to rebrand your services, using a central server to configure the changes. IT360 MSP Edition fully supports this important aspect of your business. You can simply associate a customer site with a probe to update the customer-level rebranding data. And all subsequent updates to the information in the central server will be propagated to all the probes associated with that customer. The IT360 MSP Edition supports the following customer-level rebranding points:
- Customer name
- Company name
- Product name
- Copyright text
- Login URL
- Login image
- Header image
- Favicon image
NOC Operations–centric Model
MSPs need to consider the cost implications of the various services they provide. As a best practice, then, you may have to provide access across customer devices to a NOC technician. You may need to assign all customer servers to the technician or only a certain set of devices, servers, or applications. You may do this by creating individual business service groups according to customers and assign them role-based access to the NOC technician. You can easily perform all these functions with IT360 MSP Edition.
Similar to the customer-level rebranding noted above, IT360 MSP comes with MSP-level rebranding features that include:
- Product name
- Company name
- Favicon image
- Login image
- Header image
- Copyright text
- Login URL
All the above take effect and are reflected in web console views, PDFs, and emails. The changes are also viewed for various roles-based access, including:
- Administrator
- Power user
- Operator
MSP Partners
MSP partners must be accommodated within the MSP tool. This often involves rebranding for partners, so IT360 MSP Edition supports the following partner rebranding points:
- Partner name
- Email ID
- Company name
- Product name
- Copyright text
- Login URL
- Login image
- Header image
- Favicon image
The partner-level rebranding data configured in the central server will be automatically applied to a probe. The changes are implemented immediately after the partner’s site is associated with the probe. Subsequent updates to partner information in the central server propagate to all the associated probes of the partner.
To see all that you can accomplish with IT360 MSP Edition, watch the demo at https://it360mspdemo.manageengine.com/
K.Lakshmi Shankar
You Can Learn More About the ManageEngine Product Line By Going to manageengine.optrics.com
The original article/video can be found at Meeting MSP Demands with IT360 MSP Edition