The Importance of IT Alerting and IT Incident Handling

In the Information Technology industry, immediate notification of critical events is essential. The Internet never sleeps, and neither do customers or employees in this age of global business and commerce. IT services must be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, without exception. When a computer or email server goes down, it can mean the difference between a corporation closing that $1 million dollar deal or losing it, or between a small business making its 100th sale or losing it. In any business or organization that contains more than a handful of people, enterprise email and communications are essential tools that must be available at all times. Electronic shopping carts and informational websites also must have near-zero downtime in order to be successful and effective.

So how can IT professionals ensure that they are notified the instant an error occurs on one of their systems? IT alerting is the answer. A notification service can contain a database with all IT employees contact information, including email, home phone, cell phone, work phone, and instant message screen name. These individuals can be divided into groups and scenarios can be created based on what type of event occurs. Then, when an incident does occur, the appropriate person can be notified based on the severity of the event. If multiple servers go down and a company's main revenue-generating service becomes unavailable, then most like the Chief Technology Officer and his team as well as Customer Service, the CEO and other executives should be notified. If a single email server goes down or becomes overloaded, then only a lower IT technician would be notified in order to fix the relatively small problem.

IT incident handling can be made much simpler using a reliable notification service. If a major IT incident occurs, then IT professionals need to be reached no matter what time of day, no matter where they are. It is not guaranteed that an IT expert will be located in front of his computer, able to receive email, when an emergency occurs. That is why robust, customizable notification service is necessary-to be able to send a voice and text message to the IT professional at all of his or her contact points, including email, cell phone, home phone, work phone, instant message screen name, or BlackBerry PIN, and also to get word back from the employee in response to the message. This guarantees the fastest possible reaction to an unforeseen event.

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