MCO in IT: definition, scope and standard contract

When they digitalise their business, companies can quickly end up with an IT system (IS) that is hard to manage, between the solutions used by your teams and your clients (CRM, websites, applications) and your infrastructure.

The slightest outage can have a damaging impact on your business, and mean handling significant financial losses. Hence the importance of taking out an operational upkeep service, also called MCO.

Its objective : to keep your information system running properly, continuously.

Find out what MCO by Premaccess involves.

Operational upkeep (MCO):

• Operational upkeep: definition
• What causes a possible outage of your IS?
• The different components of your operational upkeep
• Preventive and real-time maintenance
• The benefits of MCO

Operational upkeep: definition

Operational upkeep (MCO) brings together all the operations needed to guarantee the constant availability of your information system (IS).

So here we are talking about:

• infrastructure, server, network
• applications,
• website…

This support is offered by managed services specialists.

Two types of maintenance are possible:

• Maintenance can be preventive, in order to head off possible risks (in terms of security and/or performance).
• It can also be corrective. In that case, it aims to fix failures that have occurred on your information system. To be avoided as far as possible, “firefighting” mode is never a reassuring solution for your teams.

Ready to take the step? Do not hesitate to contact the Premaccess team.

What causes a possible outage of your IS?

The causes of malfunctions are many: system overloads, an update that was not applied, hacking, fire, theft of data or of equipment, water damage…

The different components of your operational upkeep

1. Management of your infrastructure
2. Management of your network
3. Management of monitoring and observability
4. Management of security
5. Management of your sites and applications

1. Management of your infrastructure

In the case of an on-premise infrastructure, the components to be managed are the servers, the storage systems and the equipment that belongs to your company and sits on your premises.

In the case of a Cloud infrastructure, your components and resources have to be managed. This may be a private cloud or a public cloud allocated with one of the Cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP, Alibaba Cloud).

2. Management of your network

Management of your network covers:

• your local networks (LAN)
• Your remote networks (MAN and VPN)
• Your Wifi and office network
• Your internet access (WAN)
• Your DNS and DHCP
• and your equipment

3. Management of monitoring and observability

This consists of the proactive monitoring of all your systems.

The following actions are put in place:

• Installation of monitoring alerts for every perimeter of your IS
• Creation of a dashboard showing the overall state of your IS
• Setting up of alerts and management of the escalation system
• Creation of a monthly report for proactive analysis

4. Management of security

The components of your network security are gone through in detail:

• Firewall
• Proxy
• Anti-virus / Anti-spam
• Authentication components
• GDPR compliance
• Pentest & Cyberdefence

5. Management of your sites and applications

This covers the updating and the backup of your solutions.

Preventive and real-time maintenance

Among the preventive measures carried out as part of operational upkeep, we can mention in particular the backup and the replication of your data, as well as its restoration if needed.

Real-time maintenance consists of resolving incidents and problems within a window short enough to avoid any unavailability of your services.

The objective here will be to organise your teams and business needs so as to plan the necessary changes to your IS in advance.

For backup and certain legal obligations, here are the plans offered to you:

• Business Continuity Plan (PCA) : it ensures the instant recovery of your infrastructure, in the event of a disaster, with no loss of data or of service.
• Disaster Recovery Plan (PRA) : in the event of a major incident, recovery through your PRA is planned by your partner and your teams, who handle the rebuilding of your IS and the return to service of your applications. However, the recovery time will depend on your IS and involves a temporary interruption of your services.

The PCA and the PRA are essential to minimise the financial impact on your business during IT incidents.

The benefits of MCO

By opting for an MCO contract:

• You have the assurance that your Information System is always up to date.
• You protect yourself against any outages and incidents, with experts overseeing your IS day to day.
• You are freed from IT constraints. You therefore increase your internal productivity, and in particular you allow your IT department to be more focused on innovation in your services.
• You gain in efficiency by concentrating on your core business. No more time lost on maintenance.
• The security of your system is 100% reliable. You no longer have to worry about it.
• You make savings, because managed services providers and their DevOps, SecOps & FinOps expertise help you optimise your IS sustainably, on the technical side as much as the financial one.

And, this is essential, you stay innovative thanks to our technology watch.

Conclusion

Getting support in the management of your information system has become a necessity today. Because:

Your information systems increasingly take the form of complex structures.

Maintaining the IT system demands technical skills and expertise that are constantly evolving.

Outsourcing your MCO lets you focus on your professional priorities while your provider takes care of the proper management, the maintenance, the operation, the security and the optimisation of your information system.

An MCO project? Let's discuss it together!

Also read: what technical debt is and how to keep it under control, the most frequent cause of an expensive MCO.