Managing Remote Operation Teams
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Advances in technology and ubiquitous connectivity worldwide have made the utilization of a dispersed workforce more common. Whether that remote team is located across the street, city, state or country, management styles and approaches will have to be adjusted to accommodate this imminent, new dynamic. Corporate leadership will need to motivate and manage these virtual teams very differently than on-site personnel, whether they are hired internally or outsourced to a third-party support company. This presenat
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Managing Remote Operation Teams
- 1. 1 Managing Remote Operation Teams Sagi Brody, CTO! @webairsagi! sagi@webair.com
- 2. 2 Definitions • Mixed in-house and remote employees! • Full time remote employees! • Remote office with remote employees! • Remote contractors! • Dedicated employees via 3rd party support vendor! • Shared employees via 3rd party support vendor • 24/7 Technical Support & Operations (L1/L2)! • Infrastructure Management(Network/Cloud/ Storage/Backups/DR)! • Provisioning & On-boarding! • Development! • Management Who? Doing What?
- 3. 3 Why Consider Remote Operation Teams? • Larger talent pool! • Enables Strategic Placement: ! • Infrastructure/Colocation (Boots on the ground)! • Customer-base or language! • Emerging markets! • 24/7 Coverage ! • Sets up company for scale & growth! • Employee Flexibility:! • Full or Partial remote work! • Select from available locations! • Start a new location strategically! • Lower Costs! • Built in management layer and accountability (3rd party)
- 4. 4 The Challenges • Language & Culture Differences! • Time Zones! • Creating an Inclusive Environment! • Real-time Communication! • Monitoring! • Response Time & SLAs! • Customer Interaction! • Rewards & Compensation! • Long Term Employee Engagement ! • Technical Knowledge, Training, and standards! • Legal, Tax, and Financial implications
- 5. 5 Our Environment Founded: 1996! Headquarters: New York, NY! Services Offered: Public, Private & Hybrid Cloud, Dedicated Servers, Colocation, CDN, Security, DRaaS, and more! Customers: Enterprise, Healthcare, SMBs, VoIP providers, eCommerce, Information Technology, and more! ! The Webair Value: " ➢Over 18 years providing customers with best-in-class Managed Hosting solutions ! ➢High-touch Support! ➢Full ownership of our customer’s infrastructure stack so they can focus on their core business.! ➢Manages most secure and redundant facility east of Manhattan with trans-Atlantic bypass (Tier III, HIPPA/ SSAE16)
- 6. 6 Global Presence Los Angeles, California" • Technicians local to Colo" • Infrastructure Engineers" ! Bodrum, Turkey" • DevOps " ! Amsterdam, Netherlands" • Technicians local to Colo" • Systems Administrator" ! Boston, Massachusetts" • Systems Administrators Coimbatore Tama Nadu, India" • Technical Support Managers" • Systems Migration Specialists" • Systems Administrators Montreal, Canada" • Data Center Technicians New York, New York (Flagship)" • Customer Service Specialists" • Infrastructure Engineers" • Project Managers" • Account Representatives" • PHP / Linux Developers" • System Administrators
- 7. 7 Language & Culture • Make a conscious decisions you’re willing to deal with the nuances ! • Understand local holidays! • Implications of vacation time! • Phone support & accents! • Provide ESL training where applicable (even in house..)! • Be respectful of local cultures, religions, and acceptable chat topics! • Language Differences: • South Africa: Floppy disks vs Stiffy Disks ! • Indian English: “Do One Thing..”! • “I have a doubt about ssh keys” (question)
- 8. 8 Team Inclusion • Promote the human factor. They’re not just names on a chat screen! • Don’t change people’s names!! Promote personalization.! • Engage them like in-house employees (small talk, build a rapport)! • ‘Good’ Video chat for regular in-house meetings, stand ups, and scrums! • Opportunistic meeting (conventions, client meetings, family trips!)! • Meet face to face at least yearly to maintain relationship and train! • Swag helps…! • Challenge them! • Understand you may not be ! approachable! • Compensation, Rewards, and performance ! reviews
- 9. 9 Managing & Monitoring Complex Infrastructure Remotely • How can our remote teams support & troubleshoot complex setups with little to no information on them? ! • Load Balancers, App servers, Database Servers, Firewalls, DDoS, Cloud Storage, CDN! • Distributed, virtualized, and abstracted infrastructure - Network, Storage, Compute, OnPrem/OffPrem! •Self-healing & Auto scaling! •Microservices based architecture! •Troubleshooting this == An Art.
- 10. 10 Centralized Monitoring • Consolidate screen & windows required to view entire environment (even though it looks cool)! • Combine cross platform infrastructure monitoring for high context! • Consider monitoring ramifications of additional infrastructures! • “2 screens to rule them all”
- 11. 11 Screen 1: Centralized Monitoring & Context
- 12. 12 Screen 2: Social Monitoring Make it part of your culture.
- 13. 13 Screen 2: Social Monitoring
- 14. 14 Screen 2: Social Monitoring • Integration friendly chat platforms: Slack, Hipchat! • Dirty integrations: modified ircd, skype/other chatbots! ! •Connector Tools: Zapier, IFTTT, Bip.io, Cloudpipes (Duct tape for the Internet)! • Integrations:! • Client communication: Tickets, Phone calls, Work order updates, Live Chats! • Infrastructure alerts: 3rd party monitoring services, nagios, OSS tools, Enterprise tools, ! • Continuous Integration: Pull requests, Code pushs! • Provisioning: Ansible, Puppet, Chef, Containers..! • Physical Infrastructure: Data center components, DCIM integration! !
- 15. 15 Email based alerts vs Social • Email notifications no longer required with social monitoring ! • Clogs email (good luck with auto-filing and migrations)! • Not helpful for 24/7 teams! • Digest emails better if required! • Limit to most important alerts only! • Never gets looked at! • Social monitoring provides:! • Historical logging with easy searching! • Contextual - See much more than the alert itself! • Chatter can fill in gaps for bad documentation + notes! • Create new rooms + shard for scale and team growth
- 16. Monitoring for Success 16 • Fast resolution starts with a solid monitoring strategy.! • Empower DevOps to create layered alerts.! • Create simple interfaces, scripts, APIs to allow for easy additions of monitoring to standardized systems.! • Make it part of development & build process.! • Monitor the Big and the Small:! • Big - The finished product. Look for expected result via end user interface to ensure all services are properly functioning.! • Small - Every layer! OK/FAIL monitoring for multi-dimensional services and 3rd party providers.! • If setup properly, big and small alerts should trigger simultaneously allowing instant localization.! • Build automated actions triggered on alerts (log monitoring, splunk..)
- 17. 17 Remove Roadblocks.. • Don’t relegate remote Level1 teams to only observe. Empower them to participate in the long term success of your customers.! • Balance standard methods & procedures with flexibility.
- 18. Smart Monitoring & Troubleshooting 18
- 19. 3rd Party Monitoring (NIH) 19 ”In God we trust. Everyone else we Monitor.”
- 21. Aggregated Statistics 21 Network by Host Host 1 Host 2 Host 3 Host 4
- 22. Aggregated Statistics 22 Network by VM (Host 1) VM 1 VM 2 VM 3 VM 4
- 23. 23 Training & Technical Knowledge • Documentation software & strategy! • Owners for various sections! • Automated article expiration! • Built in diagram creation! • Tie ins to other systems! • Part of your culture, comments, and chat! • Knowledge sharing & training strategy! • Prescheduled internal training! • Mentor program! • Remove Silos! • Build policy which discourages over-escalation! • Don’t forget the soft skills – Troubleshooting, Technical writing, Resourcefulness, Googling, Customer interactions ! !
- 24. 24 Documentation “If it wasn’t documented, it didn’t happen.”
- 25. 25 Security • References & Background checks! • VPN! • Ability to quickly cut access ! • Build trust over time, tiered access! • Activity based alerts! • Historical logging (SSH & other), auditing! • Unique IPs & hostnames! • Device policies! • File change monitoring (Tripwire)! ! !
- 26. 26 Legal and Tax liabilities • Customer transparency for enterprise and healthcare! • Remote team strategy in line with audits & compliance (SSAE16, HIPPA, FISMA)! • ITAR regulations on non-US citizens for US government! • Impact on healthcare BAA agreements! • Data stored in other countries ! • Sufficient Cybersecurity insurance which covers remote team members or outsourced?! ! • Tax deductions when paying out of state employees ! • Are NDAs enforceable?! • Payment methods & Currency! • Sanctions! !
- 27. 27 Do it Yourself! • Expand Opportunistically! • Strong remote team starts with trust – Send someone you trust to start one! • Employees moving ‘back home’ can start a remote office and recruit locally! • Ensure remote management and accountability! • Are they capable of it? Do they want it?!
- 28. 28 Working with 3Rd Party Companies • Presence in your country is a bonus! • Do you receive dedicated support or shared?! • What management options are available?! • What is their employee retention rate?! • Do they rotate employees or do you get to keep them long term?! • Who is accountable for that team, who can you trust?! • Do they offer contracts?! • Will they sign an NDA, who is liable for security?! • References
- 29. 29 THANK YOU! Sagi Brody, CTO! @webairsagi! sagi@webair.com