by Opslogix, on Dec 9, 2021 2:00:00 PM
Microsoft's System Center Operations Manager, SCOM, is a resource-intense tool to work with. Not the least when it comes to competence and time.
The SCOM platform can come across as rather heavy to work with and often requires some expertise to take advantage of its benefits fully. According to our experience, SCOM also lacks some attraction for the new generation of employees, even though they are prone to move towards a career in IT.
Altogether, these factors can make it complicated to find the right people to manage your SCOM platform. Since it is still widely used, there might be a scarcity of potential employees to make your monitoring go from insufficient to excellent!
No matter the size and applications integrated into SCOM, it needs to be developed to fit your organizational requirements and to be included in the daily operations to function as intended. If the hours allocated to SCOM within infrastructure teams are too few, it will simply not yield the results many organizations expect or wish for.
You can apply several tools to improve the work in SCOM, such as Management Packs, ticket systems, and dashboards. However, it still requires some manual handling.
For a SCOM environment to be sufficiently taken care of, it's not uncommon that a full-time employee is needed, yet, we are aware that working with infrastructure, SCOM often gets no more than a fraction of the time it requires.
We believe that SCOM is here to stay. It may come with new features, changes, and in another shape and form, but for now, there is no indication to believe something else. Thus, as a part of our portfolio, we provide a service to overcome these issues while keeping the monitoring operations in-house.
Outsourcing or consultancy projects are two other routes; however, there are downsides to consider with these options - time/cost budgets being exceeded, distance to the core business and other IT teams, loss of control, little- or no impact on daily operations and data security are some.
We are aware of the advantages of these approaches to monitoring and, with our service, tried to cherry-pick the best of three worlds; outsourcing, consulting and monitoring in-house.
Benefits of different alternatives
| Outsourcing | Consultancy | In-house monitoring |
| Control IT cost | Focus on core business | Control and transparency within the department |
| Access to experts | Access to experts | Data security |
| Increase efficiency | Increase efficiency | Customized environment |
| Compliant and secure | Objective view | Closeness to other teams and departments |
Monitoring as a Service combines these benefits while overcoming the limitations in SCOM expertise out there. The service is developed with automation and technology that decreases manual work, limiting the need to look for external help through outsourcing or consulting.
Additionally, by taking this service approach, we know, from experience, that the in-house know-how of monitoring practices and in SCOM tend to increase, due to the close partnership between us and our service customers.
We believe that there is a possibility to overcome most SCOM related issues companies may face with the right competence and experience. Our service allows you to gain years of both, as we will develop, implement and manage the service for and with you. All while you keep ownership of both people, processes, and information.
After implementation, we will be acting as a knowledge partner, present during weekly support hours and through recurrent follow-up meetings adjusted to the need of your infrastructure team.
Not only will this help you achieve state-of-the-art monitoring in a simple, sustainable way, it will also improve the time available, flexibility, and resource allocation within your department.
To learn more about the service, take a look at our case studies, white paper, or find contact information below!
