Companies used to send their IT workers to colocation centers to perform routine maintenance on their hardware. As a result of COVID-19, companies have had to address the health and well-being of their employees in very specific ways. Over the last 12 months, there has been a 35 percent increase in Remote Hands services. While it used to be considered an add-on luxury at times, remote hands services have become a staple of colocation facilities and data center service contracts.
Here, we’ll examine Remote Hands in depth and discuss why more businesses are adopting this solution.
What are Remote Hands Services?
Remote Hands is a pay-per-use service, allowing clients to minimize the need to deploy resources to the data center to complete tasks.
Services include:
- Third-party vendor escort and assistance
- Cable and port validation
- Structured cabling installation
- Circuit testing
- IT Hardware migration and consolidation
- Asset audit and inventory
- Decommission devices
- Shipping, receiving, inventory, and RMA support
- Troubleshooting
- Technical project management
Consider Remote Hands as both “eyes and ears” in the data center. Clients can track their tickets at any point during the process, from receipt to completion.
How does it work?
Clients open a Remote Hands ticket through a portal, email or phone call. Portal tickets are more efficient and are the preferred option for both clients and data centers.
- Within a brief amount of time, usually 30 minutes, the data center provider typically acknowledges receipt of the request.
- The job gets scheduled based on the existing workload at the facility.
- When the work is complete, the technician closes out the job in the portal.
- The entire process is trackable and reportable.
- All billing is managed by the provider, which makes it much easier to manage than sourcing through multiple suppliers.
- The Remote Hands service is paid in half-hour or hourly increments. Most projects have a minimum billing commitment, such as 30 minutes.
- Some providers also offer discounted hourly fees for pre-ordered hourly rates based on 5, 10 or 100-hour blocks.
- Some companies have started to provide Unlimited Remote Hands capabilities for a flat fee per-cabinet.
What are the trends in Remote Hands?
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Remote Hands has become more popular, and clients’ standards have increased.
- Clients are increasingly demanding validated best practices around Remote Hands services, rather than considering them as a service add-on.
- The health and safety of the operational staff of the data center is important in order to maintain full operational capabilities.
- Remote Hands systems are being used more often by clients to complement their technical staff.
- Clients are working remotely with data centers in several ways:
- Remote Hands
- Video streaming
- Remote tours
Why is it important to companies?
Remote Hands eliminates social contact with both data center employees and providers’ customers. It’s a huge step to ensuring everyone’s health and safety.
- Minimizes the traffic into and out of the data center.
- Fast response time.
- Remote Hands is becoming a more commonly accepted way for businesses and service providers to manage the physical aspects of data centers.
- Consistency and quality of service will increase.
- Remote Hands helps businesses to keep their in-house technicians focused on operating their operations. This is particularly crucial when IT teams are overburdened with reacting to their companies’ rapid digital transformation.
In summary
Remote Hands can be effective for any size client and many use cases.
- Small business with limited resources to dedicate to routine off-site work.
- Large global users who want a standardized experience, but don’t have the budget basic troubleshooting and other similar services.
- All services are billed together, making it easier for clients to control and monitor their operating budgets.
When it comes to deciding which service or combination of services to use, let Silverback be your guide. Our mission is to support people who run data centers. We work with clients in the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento, Seattle, Dallas-Fort Worth, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Chicago, and Ashburn/Northern Virginia. Give us a call today.
