Network Operation Centre Highlights and Practices In complex networks, the telecom operators and IT organizations can consider the report for high level planning and operations

1. ICT
Network Operations
Center – NOC
By
Muhannad Kalbouneh
Technology Services Management

2. Network Operation Center
• NOCs are implemented by business organizations, public utilities, ICT Companies, and
government agencies that oversee complex networking environments that require
high availability. NOC personnel are responsible for monitoring services with criteria
that may require attention to avoid degraded service. Organizations may operate
more than one NOC, either to manage different networks or to provide geographic
redundancy in the event of one site becoming unavailable.
• Nowadays, there are NOC, SOC, GNOC, iNOC , NOC as Services, Managed Services
NOC
• Usually the NOC will be customized per business and organization

4. In NOC Scope
• Service Monitoring and Surveillance
• First Level Troubleshooting and Resolution
• Service Verification and User Experience Testing
• Services Incident SPOC with Internal and External Unites
• Proactive and Reactive Actions to Assure the Service

5. NOC Applications Considerations
Unified Application to simplify the NOC work
Centralized Application to reduce the cost
Applications Automation to improve the time to service recovery
Filters and Correlation will support the focus on real impact
Dashboards playing vital role to quickly identify incident
Near Real Time Trends will support traffic issues identification
Simplicity will improve the efficiency

6. NOC Main Applications Alarms and Logs Management
Service Trends Repository
Knowledge Base
CRM
Active Service Testing
Dashboards
Process Management
Incident Management Ticketing System

7. Interactions
• NOC to have visibility on all service and network changes
• NOC can be the Single Point of Contact for incident management
• NOC to have regular and weekly meetings with other units for
alignments
• Establish agreed communication channels for business promotions
and new projects
• NOC to be part of general notifications
• NOC to cascade notifications with other unites as needed

8. Knowledge Management
• NOC Resource should be on top of business and technology services and
solutions , updates and changes
• NOC should have a knowledge team who should be part of all training
programs and to share the knowledge with all NOC resource
• Allow NOC resources to attend any new training if possible
• New NOC resource should have an orientation with the technical experts,
commercial, visit the centers where the monitored services installed, get
organizational orientation, get knowledge of all NOC services before they
start the standard shift
• Training materials should be available to all resources in the knowledge
base

9. Dashboards
The message, format, visuals, comments and context for ease understanding
Simple
The dashboard must adapt to its users , generic KPI for management
Multiple Profiles
Unified format will help better KPIs understanding
Unified Format
For smart decision making in the most efficient way, real time or near real
time will support to take immediate actions
Near Real Time
Each indicator should tell a story and to provide the exact impact and what
behind it
Show Value
Fitting multiple interfaces for a screen or rotating interfaces will give more
space and better dashboard design
Maximize Screen Use

10. Services Criticality
Service criticality should be defined and agreed by internal and external parties
considering below main factors
• Customer Demand, Preferences and Requirements
• Commercial and Technical Objectives
• Service Cost and Priority
• Value to the Internal / External Customers
• Service Usability and Volume of Customers
• Top Services and Service Nature
• Stake holders to decide the services criticality matrix
• Service SLA should be defined and agreed by internal and external parties
• Criticality and SLA should be mapped with all involved parties, venders and unites
as End to End

11. Incident / Event Management
• Incident identification verification by available applications
• Incident impact measurement, volume and details
• Mapping the failure to any ongoing activity, promotion or change
• Incident communications to internal and external involved parties
• Initiate formalities according to the process
• Escalate to next technical support or service supplier
• Follow-up, track and records till service resolution
• Export service trends and impact details for reports
• Service testing and validation and closure of the Incident
• Generate outage report for analysis

12. Daily Shift
• NOC should record all Incidents, issues, complaints in NOC repository
• For 24/7 team, resources should upload shift reports, Incidents,
notifications, activities to NOC centralized repository for next
resource knowledge

13. Communication Channels
• NOC should have centralized number as part of IVR to support
multiple calls concurrently
• Auto Ticketing Systems will support the tracking and issues
management one email received on NOC support email
• Centralized – Shared Email address can be used if no Auto Ticking
System available, sure Email auto reply is recommended with
necessary information
• WhatsApp integration is an advantage
• Publish NOC Portal and publish events details as per process
• The usage of SMS, MMS and Mobile Applications will be advantage

14. Escalation Management
For efficient Incident management process its recommended to define
and agree on:
• Build Escalation Matrix Contacts for internal and external customers –
update regularly
• Publish Incidents Details on NOC Portal
• Escalate as Per Criticality Matrix Definitions
• Notify the Internal/ External Customer as per The Defined Process
• Escalate to 3rd Party Supplier Support as Per the Defined Process

15. Incidents / Events Analysis
• Weekly/ Monthly / Quarterly and Annual reports are required to
represent TT trends and give an input for continual service
improvements process
• As part of continual service improvements, repetitive Incident s needs
to be reviewed, categorized and take necessary actions for
improvements

16. Service Management
As part of service management
• Define and publish service catalogue
• Map the agreed SLA and service KPI to incident management
• Track and Record All 3rd Party service requests, incidents and suppliers
performance, record any violation if any
• Internal and external customer cervices and packages details, primary
and secondary contacts, customer ID, emails, service requests and
incident history should be recorded

17. NOC KPI
• NOC KPIs Should be Define to Measure the NOC Performance
• Number of Incidents, Resolution Average and Resolution Duration
• Time to Acknowledgement / Time to Response
• Percentage of Incidents Resolved by NOC before Escalation
• Volume of Alerts

18. User Experience Active Testing Application
• The active testing application is Vital for NOC, as in some situations
no alarms will be raised and no traffic trends will be changed,
dashboards are normal however the service having partial impact, so
it can be slowness, one component failure or any other reason,
having the application that will keep testing the service will support
quick identification of any impact
• User Experience testing is important part of the dashboard

19. NOC Disaster Recovery Plan
• NOC Resources, Applications, Process, Access Material and Site
should be ready for any disaster depends on the organization
business nature and services criticality
• DR simulation is needed regularly
• Applications access should be available anywhere

20. NOC Resources
• In NOC its required to have skilled resources who can learn quickly,
able to understand network and services, take ownership, understand
the relations between components, services, devices, sites service
end to end dependencies, with strong analytical and troubleshooting
skills
• If the NOC is 24/7 function the resources shift rotation is required

21. Process Management
• For any action or note mentioned in this report, it should be mapped
to organizational process where its clearly defined, documented,
signed and agreed
• The notes mentioned in high level however the organization to decide
on the process details, RACI and actions

22. Thank you
Muhannad Kalbouneh
Technology Services Management