RECAP | ROUNDTABLE | Managing Service Providers

Uptime Institute’s January 23, 2020, roundtable featured a vigorous discussion of how to make the best use of service providers. Joined by Uptime Institute senior consultant Eder Gallardo, participants from a variety of facilities and geographies shared their experiences, with emphasis on tips for helping service providers—and therefore—IT operations succeed.

During introductions, most participants noted that their operations depending heavily on service providers, mostly for equipment maintenance but also for security and other services. One large retailer referred to the vendors as “trusted partners,” indicating a relatively close relationship. This same organization also noted that it used master service agreements to help it leverage its portfolio to achieve pricing and service advantages.

Another participant, an international financial services firm operating numerous enterprise and colocation facilities, also relied on service providers. However, he noted that the variety of facility types and widespread geographies made it difficult to manage all these facilities. His goal, he said, was to achieve standardized operations across his entire portfolio—before retirement.

A service provider from a well-known management company provided an interesting perspective on provisions that should be part of vendor service contracts as well as notes about the limits placed on service providers. Others also contributed ideas.

Specific suggestions included:
• Developing and using a standard scope of work (SOW) for each specialty, including HVAC, generators, UPS, ac/dc and IR scans
• Requiring 2-4-hour SLAs, which should be a consideration as part of facility siting decisions
• Coordinating and updating parts inventories with vendors, keeping replacement parts on site, where necessary, for uninterrupted operations
• Understanding and using in-region vendors for given specialties
• Establishing vendor training and onboarding process for each provider
• Ensuring contract language stipulates that the owner of the company retains data even if it changes suppliers
• Establishing a database of lessons learned for projects and processes from past issues seen
• Performing a criticality assessment of each and every system/component

Roundtable participants, in general, reported a high degree of satisfaction with their service providers. These organizations said that they held regular meetings with service providers to maintain operations. At the same time, they said that repeated performance issues could be escalated to higher levels at the service provider until improvement could be noted.

One participant noted organizations do not have a completely free hand choosing vendors. He noted that only an OEM can upgrade proprietary software/firmware. He also noted that Cummins ATS equipment requires specialty software only licensed dealers can access, which limits vendor choice. In addition, geography can reduce the number of service providers able to meet SLA requirements.

Towards the end of the session, the retailer said that he closely watched vendors for staff turnover. He noted that attrition and turnover could impact vendor performance or require data center operators to spend time constant training and retraining new personnel.

Uptime Institute senior consultant Gallardo echoed participants’ thoughts about maintaining relationships with service providers. He noted that tracking performance data of these firms was critical to achieving high levels of IT performance as well as improving or replacing the performance of service providers, should it be necessary.