Concord Communications Inc. on Monday will debut the latest component of its service provider initiative when it introduces its Best Practices Guide.
The guide builds on the Concord Enabled Managed Services practice designed to help service providers develop and market new managed services.
The new how-to guide “articulates the steps [service providers] need to take to roll out a profitable managed service,” said Kim McCormick, product manager for Global Telecommunications Service Providers in Marlboro, Mass.
The guide focuses on helping managed services providers communicate the value of the services they create around Concords eHealth suite of performance reporting and management tools.
Offered in the bundle of software and professional services that Concord offers to service providers, the guide focuses on five areas: business planning, product selection, implementation, rollout and market launch.
The guide helps service providers define varying levels of service, price their services and determine what types of services to offer. It also offers advice on implementation and working through issues such as duplicate IP addresses and security.
It is intended for four types of managed services: managed router, managed LAN/WAN, managed Web hosting, and managed systems and applications.
Some 500 Concord customers are service providers, and McCormick estimated that almost 90 percent of those are using the Concord Enabled Managed Services bundled software and professional services offering.
The 155-page guide is available now with the eHealth and services bundle.