When using Microsoft 365 services the main benefit of having a monitoring tool that can assess performance quality and identify issues is that it sends alerts into a ticketing tool such as ServiceNow for example, to initiate the process of remediating the problem. When you don’t have a monitoring tool in place then support tickets aren’t automatically sent and users must identify issues and send in tickets manually with little to no information on where the problem came from.

The phrase “Teams is slow” means that somewhere something isn’t working. But who in the organization should lead the charge to address the problem – especially when the problem isn’t Teams? This blog will examine the different information barriers in Microsoft Teams and how to overcome them.

Providing an effective service – especially in a world with constantly evolving needs – goes beyond standard operating hours. Imagine if a bank only kept your investments secure while they were ‘open’ during their hours of standard operation? Issues can arise at any time and having effective service delivery monitoring and support for enterprise’s IT teams and managed service providers is critical.

When your organization’s very ability to share, collaborate and meet depends on Microsoft Teams performing, solely watching Teams service availability simply isn’t enough. Employees operate on the assumption that every bit of technology they rely on just works. Teams is the modern example of the most critical application to businesses today, with over 145 million daily active users.

The global COVID-19 pandemic caused a massive and immediate shift to remote work which was bolstered by video conferencing telecommunication software such as Microsoft Teams. Although the world is still trying to heal (while simultaneously navigating new and evolving challenges) some organizations have started the process of having their employees return to work and explore new hybrid workforce environments.

Your path to creating an elevated version of your current Microsoft 365 services is one that you already know is needed to create predictability for you and for your customers- predictability yields profitability. The reality is that Microsoft is more focused today on the commodity customer than your specific business needs as an MSP. This is one of the reasons most MSPs tend to take the backup/DR/cybersecurity angle.

The “shared responsibility” model of the cloud puts most of the control with Microsoft, despite the MSP being responsible. As shown below, Microsoft puts very little responsibility into the hands of the customer (or, in your case, the MSP), which is why most MSPs stick to the basic onboarding-related tasks as their Microsoft 365 offering. But the customer’s reliance on Microsoft 365 has changed in the last 14 months… and so have their expectations.

Before you can achieve access to any cloud service a connection to the internet is required. Sounds simple enough, however, the challenge lies not only with the internet connection itself, but the provider of the service as well. Not all internet service providers (ISPs) and pathways to the internet are created equally which makes assessing and understanding the quality of the service you’re on a critical step toward maintaining business productivity.

If a customer has an issue with any part of Microsoft 365, MSPs just don’t have the native visibility to identify the root cause, let alone respond to and remediate the problem. Most of the time, it’s little more than checking Microsoft’s Service Health status to see if Microsoft knows it’s having a problem.

The ability to maintain successful operations in business requires specific agreements that are critical to helping justify service delivery, understand the service performance, and get a budget for any potential infrastructure projects. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are made between partners and customers and focus on the commitment of the partner to uphold an agreed-to level of service.