How to Identify a Server Management Partner for your company?

Every other CXO and Director I talk to on a daily basis at ServerAdminz is having the same dilemma to outsource the server management to a Server Management Partner or to have an internal team. I believe this is a question that has plagued owners of Data Centers, Web Hosting Companies or ISPs from the dawn of time.

Identify a Server Management Partner for your company

Before considering outsourced server management, you need to evaluate if your company really needs the help of a server management partner.

Few questions to ask yourselves are:

1. How considerably big is your company and what is your growth target?
2. Is it worth to invest in the infrastructure preassuming the targeted growth?
3. Find it difficult to recruit, train and retain good resources in your area?
4. How is the performance of your current team in handling L1, L2 and L3 Issues?
5. Do you always face support complaints from your customers?
6. Do you think your techs are overloaded with no bandwidth to support all your customers?

Once you decide on an outsourced server management company instead of having an internal team to support the technical queries of your customers, the next challenge will be to find a good provider. If you are a CXO / Director of a Data Center, Web Hosting Company or of an ISP; searching for an ideal server management partner for your technical support needs will be strenuous at times.

Here are the questions and my recommendations to find the best server management company.

Leadership Team

– Does your partner’s leadership team has wide experience? Have they traveled length and breadth in the industry? Do they have the capability to plan for growth and scale, bring the best practices in the Industry?

Expert Technical Team

– Do they have a certified and well-trained team to handle your support? Do they have years of experience working with major hosting companies, Data Centers and ISPs

Pricing

– This is one of the major reasons why hosting companies look for external tech support. Partner with a company which provides good service but doesn’t compromise on quality. Outsourcing is so economical, that you can hire a 24*7 team of 4 techs instead of recruiting 1 tech in your office. On experience-wise, with the salary of an L1 tech at your premise, you can hire a certified and experienced L3 tech from an outsourced support team.

24x7x365 Support

– Do they provide 24x7x365 Support? Support provider guarantees 24x7x365 no matter weekends, holidays or vacations. They adjust work shifts to provide the team adequate off.

Quality Assurance Team

– Does your partner provide a QA team to evaluate the quality of tickets solved and the responses to your customers?

Scalable Team 

– Does the provider has a wide pool of resources to choose from? Do they have good employee count? Do they handle day to day challenges and meanwhile handle the support effectively during emergencies.

Conflict of Interests

– Make sure your partner does not provide the same services as yours as this may become a conflict of interest in the future. For example, few of the server management companies own their own web hosting business.

Agreements and Data Confidentiality

– Your partner must abide by the agreements and confidentiality of your business. To avoid conflicts you can ask them for Proposals, Non – Disclosure Agreement, Service Level Agreement and make sure they abide by the same. Make sure your partner’s premises are secure, monitored 24/7 and your data is safe and secure.

International Quality Standards

– It is best to select a server management partner who has passed various quality standards. ServerAdminz, for example, has ISO 27001:2013, ISO 9001:2008 and follow the European GDPR standards.

Customer Reviews

– It’s always better to check the previous client reviews of the partner before working with them. Good server management companies have reviewed in WebHostingTalk, Disqus, CPanel Forum, Quora, Medium etc

Soft-Launch Option

– The CXOs and Directors tell us that their preference is to engage with partners in a smaller way, see rapid results within a fixed budget and then scale up the engagement on success. We provide the soft-launch option and can be even used after trying our team in the free trial period.

Few other perks of having a server management partner are:

Saving time for staffing and training-

Finding the right resource, interview process, onboarding, training, machines, connectivity, infrastructure, recreations, increments, salary disbursal are the major time-consuming activities at the management level. If you are planning to outsource your support, you don’t have to worry about any of them and you will have peace of mind to concentrate on your business. Along with this, you don’t have to worry about attrition rates at your organization and you will shred your burden to manage a team in-house,

Better managerial control – 

Your partner will be taking care of the whole support including shift timings, shift swaps, leaves of the techs

Peace of Mind –

After all, You will have peace of mind to concentrate on growing your business.

Save Infrastructure and Connectivity costs

– Why do you need an expensive team and invest in office space, Machines, Infrastructure, Softwares, and Connectivity? You can save all those.

Save the Time in Recruiting

– By working with a partner you can save the time and money invested in Recruiting, Training other managerial challenges and administrative costs.