KnowledgeBase – collects knowledge in the NOC
NOC, NOC – who there?
We talk to Jonathan Sigemo, IT consultant, who talks about what everyday life normally looks like for the management of an NOC – Network Operations Center – at one of Compose IT’s customers.
Our customers are both knowledgeable and active clients, and they often have a great need to monitor large and complex networks. Likewise, to integrate different system solutions and to both visualize and simplify information from the system, in e.g. a graphic dashboard, says Jonathan.
Having initially been tasked with implementing system monitoring (IBM Netcool) for the client’s network and infrastructure of telecom equipment, Jonathan and his colleagues have also contributed to building the client’s own expertise at Netcool.
Right now, Compose IT and Jonathan are in a period with the customer focusing on operation and maintenance. This means lifecycle management of the IT system, with new upgrades and integrations between Netcool and underlying systems, case management systems, documentation, etc. for alarm and case management, among other things.
What challenges lie ahead?
A telecom operator, and similar actors, have the task of providing infrastructure for all types of telecom and data communication. This means offering uninterrupted operation, with all that that entails. From regular service and ongoing maintenance of the network, but also alarm and case management of various types of events. For example, purely physical interruptions such as a buried cable can create major problems, and must therefore be both located and quickly repaired.
Compose IT has cutting-edge expertise in, among other things, IBM Netcool, and with its know-how and various system solutions can ensure the customer’s IT Operation delivery.
Fundamentally, our solution is based on the customer’s IBM Netcool, where Compose IT has delivered parts of the Compose Operation Platform (COP), explains Jonathan.
The customized solution mainly includes:
- Dynamic Event Management (DEM) – a product that dynamically classifies incoming events that are automatically processed by the system as desired.
- History Search – The Reports and Visualization module is designed and developed to ensure operational reliability, fast reaction time and good follow-up possibilities.
- Dynamic GUI – likewise, a more dynamic Graphic User Interface (GUI) has been developed and implemented, for better and clearer page views.
KnowledgeBase – gathers knowledge
Other things that occur in an NOC, especially in expanding companies and organizations, are, of course, some staff turnover and new hires of operational operating personnel. Something that in turn creates extra work for the NOC management and challenges when companies have to build up internal competence.
And in response to the question of how skills transfer and handover to new staff can be made smoother and more efficient – at a reasonable cost – Jonathan and Compose IT have developed an additional service in Netcool for the customer, KnowledgeBase, which is also part of the COP. KnowledgeBase can be briefly described as a digital checklist and knowledge bank, which stores the operators’ knowledge in the system. In this way, KnowledgeBase facilitates event management for operators by having documentation and routines linked to the events. This, in turn, helps the NOC management to shorten and ensure cost-effective training and skills transfer to new personnel with continued high quality requirements, as well as faster handling of incoming cases.
Compose IT and this customer have a long history together, something that is not entirely unusual according to Jonathan.
We are very niche within our cutting edge and competence area with monitoring and decision support for IT operation, and especially on Netcool applications, which means that we often have long collaborations with our customers, concludes Jonathan Sigemo.
(Footnote: for contractual reasons, we do not name the customer)
With over 600,000 hours of experience as Netcool consultants, Compose IT has accumulated a solid competence and experience bank. It is the bank that our customers benefit from today, and that is behind our system solutions.
