Technology Solutions for Small & Medium Businesses

 
SharePoint Tip

Governance is a key factor in any successful SharePoint deployment. Sometimes the ease with which SharePoint can be setup, obscures the real, longer-term challenges around management and governance. To help you create the right operational foundation for your SharePoint environment, check out the "Four steps to creating practical SharePoint governance standards."

SharePoint Operational Support Solution (SOSS)

Business Challenge
Many small to medium-sized enterprises are under pressure to support an ever more complex technology suite to enable greater employee productivity. However, many supporting IT organizations don’t have the in-house expertise or resource availability to meet the either explicit, or more often, implicit service level agreements the organization demands. As a result, IT groups are forced to take a more reactive and often “just in time” approach to ensuring their SharePoint environment operates as expected. Unfortunately, the reactive approach to enterprise system management usually leads to more unanticipated downtime, severe resource constraints during critical periods and a reduction in the time these same groups have to focus on more valuable tasks.

Consejo's SharePoint Operational Support Solution (SOSS)

In answer to these challenges, Consejo has developed our SharePoint Operational Support Solution (SOSS). Through our own consulting experiences with our primary client-base, we have developed a support offering that combines the four services that most SMBs, not-for-profits and state/local governments are unable to deliver internally:

  • Knowledgeable level 2 and 3 support personnel
    This powerful service delivers knowledgeable level 2 and level 3 support engineers for your internally or externally-facing SharePoint farm. We draw on our internal staff of “in the field” consultants to help IT groups resolve end user or IT staff reported issues with your farm. Unlike other services that provide more ad hoc support or use untrained “technical” staff, we are committed to providing top-quality, professional assistance when you need it.

  • Proactive SharePoint Service Pack and Hotfix Management
    Microsoft generally releases a major service pack every six months for both Windows SharePoint Services and Office SharePoint Server. However, critical hot fixes are issued on a more frequent, often monthly or bi-monthly basis. Many issues organizations struggle to resolve are included in either a service pack or a hot fix that have yet to be installed or that IT groups don’t even know exist. Consejo will monitor the release of these patches and ensure timely installation through a coordinated effort with your IT staff.

  • 24 hour, 7 day-a-week SharePoint monitoring
    Beyond the reactive level 2 and 3 support, our offering provides 24/7 monitoring to ensure we’re aware of issues before your end users. Consejo has partnered with Panopta, a premiere server monitoring service and industry leader, to create targeted SharePoint farm monitoring. Whether you have a public website, a company intranet or a collaborative extranet, our proprietary monitoring agent can securely report vital performance and operational statistics about both your hardware and your SharePoint farm to a global network of server monitors. In addition, this data is made available to you through a secure Panopta’s monitoring dashboard. In addition, you'll receive aggregate weekly and monthly farm reports through e-mail. Should a component of your farm fail, the Panopta monitoring system allows us to tailor alerts to ensure both our staff and yours are immediately aware of the issue.

  • Strategic planning for operational readiness
    On a quarterly basis, a Consejo consultant will meet with your staff to review your SharePoint environment. During that meeting we will help you to understand how your SharePoint environment has performed over the past quarter and address any concerns you may have about performance, stability or udpates. In addition, we will have prepared recommendations for improving your environment if those opportunities exist.

While other organizations require you to use their hardware or their datacenter to provide management and monitoring, our offering enables you to keep your SharePoint farm in place; we'll support you in your environment. Our solution is also customizable with added services to meet your organization's specific needs.



Deliverables

Level 2 and 3 Support on any Issues related to SharePoint Farm Operations

  • Support your IT staff in handling end user issues or trouble with your SharePoint farm
  • Assist with issue research to determine solution course
  • Trouble ticket system to track reported issues and their resolution
  • Assist your IT staff in reporting appropriate issues to Microsoft Premiere Support (if applicable)

Management of appropriate service packs and patches

  • Notification of upcoming or newly released patches
  • Planning updates on your environment
  • Installation of update in your environment, based on prearranged scheduling between Consejo and your staff

24/7 farm monitoring

  • Complete farm monitoring through our exclusive partnership with Panopta
  • Monitor dashboard for your SharePoint farm through Panopta
  • Weekly and monthly reports of farm performance and outages
  • Alerts to Consejo support team and appropriate internal staff for system issues and performance
  • Historical reporting performance monitoring

Quarterly Environment and Operational Review

  • Review major events since the last review
  • Opportunities to more extensively leverage SharePoint in your environment (based on support calls and our consulting work with clients)
  • Upcoming events like major upgrades, patches or changes to the product line
  • Recommended changes to the environment based on usage, Microsoft guidance or experience with other clients

Costs

One time initial assessment: $500 (US)

  • We'll run various automated tools to ensure the farm is operationally sound and identify any specific issues
  • We'll produce a report that highlights any issues or areas where Consejo would recommend improvements and/or changes
  • We'll document the farm configuration, service accounts and machine specifications
  • We'll create a customized online portal for your organization’s support contract

Support Costs (monthly subscription)

  • Intranet Farms
    • 0 to 400 users: starting at $20/user per month
    • 401 to 800 users: starting at $18/user per month
    • >800 users: Call for custom quote
  • Extranet Farms
    • <1000 users: starting at $4,200 per month
    • >1000 users: Call for custom quote
  • Internet Farm
    • Call for custom quote

Other Support Services

The SharePoint Operational Support Solution can include other services, quoted based on your specific needs. These can include, but are not limited to the following:

  • Monitoring all the 3rd party add-on solutions in your SharePoint environment.
  • Backing up and ensuring backups of your SharePoint installation
  • Onsite engineering support services
  • Custom SharePoint development

NOTE: Onsite service is available to clients within 50 miles of the City of Chicago. Clients outside of this geography can optionally have a consultant onsite, but the client is responsible for travel expenses associated with the visit. Minimum onsite trip duration is 1 day with a minimum visit charge of $1,500 plus the cost of travel. The costs associated with these additional services will be quoted on a client by client basis, based on the needs of that client.

If you're interested in learning more about how the Consejo’s SharePoint Operational Support Solution can help your organization, please contact us.