Why Companies are choosing to Outsource Their NOC

IT Outsourcing. It’s a “thing.” And it’s proving to be highly advantageous to businesses that need access to a variety of top talent sans the hiring hassle. Outsourcing app/web development, business processes (BPO) and/or infrastructure maintenance has become ‘business as usual’ for a lot of companies. But there’s a newer acronym in the outsourcing space – NOC outsourcing.

What is NOC? NOC stands for Network Operating Center – a typically internal IT function that comprises all of the activities, aimed at maintaining smooth infrastructure, systems, and network operations.

For managed IT services providers (MSPs) ensuring top NOC performance is non-optional. Otherwise, you risk losing your business due to breached SLAs. But as we all know, things can go awry with remote monitoring and management (RMM) software at any time of day or night. This often means placing your team members  “on-call” during non-working hours – not the best ‘perk’ for employees, right? Besides, ensuring seamless NOC services provisioning 24/7/365 is costly.

So what is the NOC and SOC?

If you’ve done any investigation into the world of cybersecurity and technology maintenance, chances are you’ve happened upon references to the NOC and SOC. Sound familiar? If so, it’s equally as likely that these terms were referenced just by their acronyms. Of course, if you’re not familiar with these terms, that does you no good whatsoever.

Today we’re going to right that wrongs with a blog focused solely on what the NOC and SOC are, and how they matter to your business.

The world of the NOC

First things first, NOC stands for Network Operations Center. Like the SOC, which we’ll explore shortly, the NOC is responsible for identifying, investigating and resolving system issues. However, the NOC’s focus is on issues that could potentially jeopardize or hinder availability and performance. The NOC is responsible for managing incidents, meeting service-level agreements, and reducing system downtime while maintaining or improving performance and availability. Simply put, this is the team that keeps everything running and your technology operating at peak performance.

The role of the SOC

The Security Operations Center (SOC) provides a very different role than its NOC cousin. The SOC’s role is one of cybersecurity as we conventionally think of it. Chiefly, the SOC is responsible for warding against alerts and incidents that could hamper the security of essential data. The SOC is responsible for the protection of not only the company’s data but also any sensitive consumer data the company may have acquired through standard business operations. Think of the SOC as your guardians against outside threats.

Similar roles but different processes

While the worlds of the NOC and SOC may seem similar, their responsibilities are very different. The NOC focuses solely on system events and maintenance issues. As such, team members are predominantly experts in application, systems and network engineering.

The SOC, on the other hand, focuses on active, “living” threats made by outside parties to the system and its data. Professionals working in the SOC are security engineers who work diligently to make sure the company and its data remain safe.