SLAs & NOCs
The opinions expressed are solely my own and do not represent the views or opinions of my employer.
One thing to keep in mind is that the network will have to be monitored. I am not sure if you would use your own NOC or work with a partner. This is something the customer will need help with because P5G is a major undertaking. It is going to have a lot of moving pieces and most smaller businesses want to farm this out like they do the Cloud or Edge.?
This is where you can get ongoing OpEx money for supporting your customer over the long term.
Use this not only to maintain their network, but to do updates, upgrades, and add new applications. Take this as an opportunity to bond with your customer over the next 5 years or so. You should be their shoulder to lean on and if necessary, cry on.
You will also learn that SLA (Service Level Agreements) matter. If you catch a problem, you may have to troubleshoot something within the first 24 hours, then you have to do it or suffer penalties. Suddenly, business hours versus after hours matter. If you’re writing the scope, then you need to be clear about calendar days and business days.
It would help to define BAU, (business as usual), in the agreement. While you may have a contract, chances are good that the scope will be part of the contract. It will be the defining point of your relationship going forward.?
The scope will outline the way you have to monitor and respond. If you’re responsible for repairs, then keep that in mind as well.
All the words matter about how you respond. For example:
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These are all things to consider. I hate to break it to you, but you can’t cover everything in the SOW (Scope of Work) contract. You think you have thought of everything, but until you have a few customers and learn how they think, not what you think, but actually how they think, then you write the next one better.?
We often look at the SLA thinking we are protecting while giving the best service to the customer. You always find loopholes, which generally work in the customer’s favor.?
Here is how you react to a loophole;
Eating a cost now may help you build new services in the future. Your first 3 to 5 customers are always a learning experience, so don’t beat yourself up.
See the full article here: https://wade4wireless.com/2023/12/17/slas-nocs/
Executive Committee
11 个月Wade Sarver Having spent much of my career on the enterprise buying side of table, there is a tough reality of winning budget money. When I wanted to build/refresh infrastructure, most of the time the system got stripped to basic functional delivery (no EMS, reporting, config mgmt, etc). I’d have to patiently wait for a major outage and then pull the quote for what was deleted from original project and ask “shall we buy this now so this doesn’t happen again?” So, my personal bias is to acquire a managed service with all the necessary operational wrappers around the basic functions. For mission-critical services where it will be done internally, the IT posture has to be all or nothing, including hiring the right people. We all know that cellular is a foreign country compared to what the enterprise IT teams normally handle and, where there is a serious use of 5G, like on a large manufacturing line it will be vital to have correct skills to operate the system day to day. Anyhow, just an opinion from your peanut gallery. ??