Physical Security and Environmental Monitoring as a Managed Service

As an MSP, think of yourself as an insurance provider of sorts. And the insurance you deliver protects both your customers’ business and their IT investments by preventing downtime and maximizing performance.

That’s why your managed services portfolio should include solutions that provide physical security and monitor environmental conditions at datacenters, network rooms and remote network locations. You can add this service by leveraging APC by Schneider Electric’s NetBotz family of sensors, monitors, cameras and remote monitoring software. With NetBotz, you can raise security to a higher level, and here is how:

Environmental Conditions

NetBotz sensors monitor and measure environmental conditions such as humidity, temperature and fluid sensors. If any of these conditions exceed preset thresholds, they trigger an alarm to indicate something is wrong. Say the temperature in a particular location exceeds the 70-degree threshold you have set, or a sensor detects an elevated humidity level caused by a leaking cooling system, you’d receive an alert prompting you to respond.

The response might include remotely shutting off servers and systems to prevent extensive damage, alerting the customer to send someone into the room to turn down the temperature or disconnect equipment, and sending out a technician to assess the damage and start remediation.

Response procedures and times could become part of the SLA (service level agreement) you have with the customer. You can specify in the document that should an environmental event like this occur, you will deploy a technician to the site within, say, two hours and get systems back and running within five.

Physical Security

In addition to environmental monitoring, NetBotz can help you secure data centers, network closets and other facilities that house valuable IT equipment. NetBotz cameras deployed in these locations would capture entry by unauthorized personnel, which intentionally or not can cause damage to equipment and data loss. The same goes for unsafe practices by employees or third parties with access to the facilities.

As an example, let’s say a cleaner enters a server room after hours and plugs in a high-powered floor polisher into the same outlet used by a rack of critical servers, potentially causing a circuit overload. This could be disastrous, causing downtime, lost productivity and an interruption of service to customers. Captured on camera, such an unsafe practice could be called to the cleaner’s attention so that it can be corrected.

Incremental Revenue

For a managed services provider, NetBotz technology creates an attractive opportunity to add value for the customer. It’s a next level of “insurance” you can deliver on top of monitoring applications, servers and workstations. By remotely monitoring your customers’ IT facilities for environmental and physical security threats, you deliver peace of mind.

It costs you little if anything to add these services. Even better, this type of monitoring is all incremental value. Once you install the sensors, monitors and cameras at customer sites, you can charge a monthly monitoring fee. And that’s an “insurance premium” that most customers won’t mind paying considering what’s at stake – their business.

To learn more about APC’s Netbotz family of products, please visit this page.

To access more information about best practices in managed services, download our free guide, MSP Matters: A Roadmap to Enduring Business Success. 

Interested in our Managed Services Provider Program?  Click here.