Netmagic's Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM) service enables Virtela Communications to increase operational margins, reduce time to market, and expand service coverage across time zones.

Company Profile

Virtela is a premier global network integrator enabling business solutions for multinational organizations. By aggregating and integrating the best access and backbone infrastructure around the world, Virtela delivers a broad spectrum of services including enterprise network and security services, content delivery, remote access, WAN application acceleration, device monitoring and management, and more. Today, Virtela manages networks for hundreds of Fortune 500 and Mid-market enterprises in all industries and with locations around the world and has won awards from Red Herring, Network World, Network Computing, Deloitte, and Frost and Sullivan.

Requirement & Challenges:

Virtela Requirements A dedicated NOC to monitor and manage voice and data infrastructure around the globe, and commissioning new customers setups either remotely or locally. A provider whose remote infrastructure management services could integrate seamlessly with Virtela's existing Network Operations Centers (NOC). Cross-platform skills and capabilities to monitor and manage diverse IT infrastructure Operational expertise in diverse server environments, hybrid data and voice networks, and strong application management skills. A Managed Service Provider with robust and certified operational and business processes On-demand scalability to accommodate growth

In 2003, Virtela was providing their suite of managed services to customers around the globe. Challenges faced included - Improving time to market Increasing operational margins Expanding support coverage across time zones Ted Studwell, Vice President of Engineering and Operations, recalls - "We knew very early that in order for us to be a leader in our space we needed to find an MSP that could assist us operationally in a professional and competent manner. We needed to work with a company that had world-class infrastructure and cross-platform skill-sets, and could give us personalized service. We expected to scale rapidly, and their infrastructure needed to be able to accommodate the growth we anticipated." Virtela wanted to find a partner that could fulfill the requirements and help eliminate the challenges. After a detailed exercise of evaluating the top MSPs in multiple geographies, Virtela selected Netmagic Solutions, based on their history of providing mission-critical managed IT services to customers around the globe. In September 2003, Netmagic began providing Remote NOC services to Virtela. Virtela chose Netmagic's Dedicated NOC model, where certain Netmagic NOC engineers would work full-time and exclusively for Virtela. Netmagic provided the skilled personnel needed as well as all the necessary support infrastructure required.

Current Service Overview

Today, Netmagic's dedicated NOC for Virtela has almost forty dedicated engineers covering the full breadth of voice and data network operations, Security operations, and customer engineering.

Services include -

Remote Network Operations Center (NOC) Services with 40 full time engineers (L0 - L4) and growing World-class NOC infrastructure, with complete redundancy in all mission-critical support systems such as power and telecom Monitoring and Managing Virtela's global VPN network Customer interface services / Service Desk Customer engineering Customer commissioning / Installation Security Operations Center (SOC) services Datacenter Services

The dedicated NOC at Netmagic covers 16 hours of operations a day. Two handovers are done daily - Virtela's US NOC in Denver, Colorado hands over operations and helpdesk to Netmagic's NOC at the end of the US day shift. The Netmagic dedicated NOC then runs all NOC, SOC, Helpdesk and Customer engineering operations for 16 hours, after which they seamlessly hand over operations back to Denver at the start of the US day shift.

Ted states - "The handover is crucial, because we need to make sure it's completely seamless, every single day. Our business is based on providing quality mission-critical services to our own customers, and we have to ensure that the two NOCs work almost as a single entity. With Netmagic, we're confident that we can achieve this every single time - all tickets are handled professionally and competently, leading to a high level of satisfaction with our own end-customers."

Business Benefits

Virtela has addressed their goals of rapidly scaling their operations, creating world class customer support infrastructure and enhancing their customer capture rate. Additionally, they have realized several other benefits and tangible business results from using Netmagic's Remote infrastructure Management services, including:

• Improve operating margins with Netmagic's cost-effective services and solutions
• Enhance operational coverage and service desk to 24x7 across all time zones
• Improve time to market vis-à-vis commissioning new customers
• Create new market service offerings for diverse markets