Network Operations Center

PCS runs a Network Operations Center at an undisclosed location near downtown Chicago.  This is a secure state-of-the-art network/data center facility with complete redundancy of telco lines, network, server and mainframe hardware as well as ACs and power.  PCS consultants perform all the operations necessary to keep the Network Operations Center running.  The center is a mixed environment consisting of IBM Mainframes, Linux/AIX Servers and Windows Servers.  It is also connected to Cloud providers.  The network is complex consisting of a variety of mainframe network controllers, routers, VLANs, firewalls, mux’s and POP terminations. In addition, we have multiple power stations terminating AC units, PDUs, KVMs etc. We monitor the environment on an ongoing basis in addition the day-today operations using remote monitoring and management software. All security endpoints are continuously monitored. In addition to monitoring our Network Operations Center team ensures that proper preventive steps are taken in a timely manner if needed.  They resolve many issues independently while recording all incidents in an ITIL compliant Service Desk system.  Any hardware issues related to the network or the servers/mainframe processing platforms in escalated to the appropriate vendor for priority support and the processing is switched to backup platforms seamlessly.

In addition to supporting hardware and software upgrades, our team manages all abnormal production process terminations and escalates them to the appropriate Level 3 support personnel.  The team members are trained on classification of alerts, issues and failures.  They classify event or alert severity based on predetermined criteria and apply escalation rules to each situation.  Our client’s network and security policies are applied consistently and competently across all incidents reported. In many cases, our team is able to provide feedback to continuously improve our client’s network and security policies. Our team performs daily backups and recovery when needed. Backups are performed utilizing multiple strategies and tools to online and offline repositories. Our team works actively with our client’s management and IT team resources to perform business continuity and disaster recovery drills regularly. Our team participates in all security and IT compliance audits.  We generate daily, weekly and monthly reporting for our client on a variety of criteria.