Help Desk Services

Help Desk Outsourcing Services

Be it an ERP, CRM, or HR management solution, a mobile or a web application, we provide IT help desk services to companies that need to outsource user and solution support. Cloudteam can help you with software products you offer to your customers and with corporate applications and systems that your employees use.

We offer assistance with software issues from password resetting to complex issue investigation on the code level. With IT help desk outsourcing, you don’t need to hire and train support personnel and still can remain sure that your software and its users are taken care of.

What Makes Our IT Help Desk Services Reliable

Thorough IT background: With the profound experience in software development, IT consulting, QA, IT infrastructure services, and more, we go far beyond just following the instructions on how to address software issues. We understand software from the inside and apply this knowledge to design help desk processes and address software issues efficiently.

Value for different skill levels: We adjust our support services to every user category, from novices to experts. We solve minor issues reported by new users and offer training and webinars that help to quickly adopt new software. For experienced users, we provide the investigation and quick resolution of non-trivial issues. To encourage further self-support, we create a knowledge base with the content tailored for every user group: from beginner guides to articles on how to solve complex issues.

Wide experience of collaboration in IT projects: We participated in numerous short- and long-term projects with both IT and non-IT companies, and we know how to establish effective collaboration within a team. We ensure the successful cooperation of our help desk specialists with software developers, network and application administrators, QA team members, and other professionals, both in-house or external, to guarantee that each issue is investigated and handled by the relevant specialist.

IT Help Desk Support Levels We Offer

To quickly assign a service ticket to a specialist with the right set of expertise, we offer segmenting the support team into different levels according to the complexity of issues they are expected to handle.

L1 support: Our help desk specialists answer questions about software usage, provide instructions to solve usage issues and minor problems, such as restoring access when users forget their passwords, and create user guides, FAQs, and support articles.

L2 support: We help to resolve the issues of software configuration, software and hardware interoperability, perform log investigation to identify root causes of problems (e.g., server overload), and fix them if enhancements at the code level are not needed. We are also ready to offer combined L1/L2 support to speed up ticket processing.

L3 support: As an option, we offer L3 support. It includes tackling complex issues on the code level. We involve software engineers who can assist with fixing defects uncovered by L1 and L2 agents.

How We Arrange Our IT Help Desk Services

Analysis of your request

We analyze your request for support services, identify user roles, and their access levels and estimate the number and urgency of incoming requests. This will help us size up the efforts required for your project.

Service planning and SLA preparation

We discuss with you the details of our cooperation and prepare the service level agreement (SLA) accordingly. Depending on a particular case, this document normally includes:

The description of the support service package and the estimated budget.

Support hours (for example, 24/7 or 12/5 servicing) and languages of communication.

The support team’s size and expertise, levels of support provided, contact channels, and the type of the ticketing system used.

Definitions of incident priorities.

Incident response time depending on its priority.

A reporting schedule and the data that reports should contain.

Knowledge and responsibility transfer

We study software documentation, conduct interviews with your company representatives, and analyze software functionality. This helps us to understand how software is designed and how it is expected to behave. Then, we prepare the needed documentation and instructions for our team.

When knowledge transfer is completed, we set up a support handover meeting to transfer responsibility from your development or another support team to our help desk specialists.

Service delivery

Processing requests according to SLA: we receive, assess, prioritize, and handle incidents. We regularly update users about the status of their current tickets to keep them informed. Besides incidents, we solve problems that cause multiple similar incidents to occur. This allows for preventing software failures.

Analyzing results and delivering monthly reports: we provide you with the reports containing the statistics on incidents in the agreed format.

Gathering user feedback: we collect users’ feedback about software, gather change requests, and thus supply get the info that prompts at how to modify the software according to user needs.

Creating the knowledge base: on the basis of the encountered and solved cases, our team prepares FAQs, articles, and other materials that can help software users to solve similar incidents. This significantly decreases the number of incoming tickets and reduces incident resolution time.

Conducting proactive support: monitoring your software and detecting abnormalities in its performance, we identify potential issues and address them even before service tickets come.

Offering process improvements: using KPIs, we analyze the performance of our help desk team and define possible improvements in help desk operations. After prioritizing these ideas based on potential business results, we discuss them with you and implement the approved improvement ideas.

KPIs To Measure IT Help Desk Efficiency

Cloudteam offers a possible set of KPIs to measure the effectiveness of the provided support services.

Main KPIs

First response time (FRT) measures the period between when a customer submits a ticket and a customer support agent provides an initial response.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is usually based on short surveys that users fill out, typically after a conversation with a help desk specialist or when a ticket is resolved.

Resolution Rate (RR) shows the percentage of issues resolved by support agents from the number of total tickets received.

Examples of optional KPIs

Average time to resolution tracks how long customers have to wait for service agents to resolve their tickets.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a loyalty metric used to measure the readiness of the customer to refer the IT help desk to someone else within their networks. To evaluate it, a customer can be asked how likely they are to recommend the IT help desk on a scale of 1 to 10.

Value Our IT Help Desk Services Bring

Having cooperated with a wide range of customers, we know how to bring value to every business by:

Improving solution adoption: your product end-users are provided with prompt and comprehensive answers to their questions on software usage, which helps them to uncover and realize the full potential of the solution.

Increasing end-user satisfaction levels: software issues that your clients or employees face are solved as quickly as possible, which makes your clients and employees more loyal to your software products and company.

Eliminating staff issues: since you don’t have to hire, onboard, and train help desk specialists in your internal team, you avoid unwanted investments and commitments to save time and money for the more relevant business needs.

Application Maintenance and Support

For 10 years, Cloudteam has been providing application support and maintenance services to customers and proved to be a professional and reliable partner. We provide IT support for such companies as SieuViet, I-Glocal Vietnam, Structures Vietnam, NamHung Land, Tara Vietnam, SmartNet Vietnam, Propzy Vietnam, Chailease Vietnam and etc. Our services can be provided on a 24/7/365 basis.

IT Support Infrastructure We Offer

Cloudteam maintains the following multi-tier support that can be flexibly adjusted to your specific needs:

Level 1 support: Involves a user support team that receives queries in your preferred way – by phone/video calls, chat, and social networks, via email, using specific web forms or a tracking system. The Service desk team registers and prioritizes the queries collects the comprehensive description of the problems you faced, and either directly solves simple, previously documented issues or passes them to the next level of support. Support Engineer takes responsibility for the incident and provides status according to agreed SLA until its closure.

Level 2 support: Involves a trained technical support team that deals with system troubleshooting, monitors key performance indicators of the system as well as takes care of simple configuration issues, software installations, and routine maintenance.

Level 3 support: Involves a team of engineers with a deep understanding of the technologies and platforms used in your application. With access to the application’s server-side, the team fixes more complex issues – previously unregistered or requiring code reviews or substantial changes in the system. The engineers can also carry out complex configurations, database administration as well as server and network repairs.

With professional application support be CLoudteam, your company will:

Free in-house IT resources to focus on core competencies.

Improve service response and resolution time.

Achieve a smoother introduction of new product releases and upgrades to end-users.

Price Models Of Application Maintenance And Support

Time and Material (T&M): You receive the end-of-the-month invoice based on the work done for the ongoing support of the existing application.

Bucket Pricing: You pay in advance at a reduced hourly rate for a bunch of hours during which our specialists will deliver continuous support of the existing application.

24/7 Help Desk (Support Center): A dedicated team of our technical support specialists solves the emerging problems of the application round the clock for a monthly flat rate.

Testing Services for Business-Critical Applications

Driven by 10 years of experience in software testing services, Cloudteam is ready to facilitate your business continuity. Our test engineers thoroughly check proper functioning, stability, usability, and security of either a single enterprise application or the whole landscape of interdependent business-critical software.

Application Testing Types We Provide

Cloudteam promotes a multi-dimensional approach to application testing. We deliver balanced testing services appropriate precisely for your application with regard to its nature and specifics.

Type of applications we test

The test team is experienced in testing the following business-critical applications by their purpose:

ERP.

SCM.

CRM.

Document management systems.

Financial management systems.

Order processing systems.

Ecommerce platforms.

Shop-floor applications.

B2B and B2C portals.

PLM software.

The test team is experienced in testing the following business-critical applications by their nature:

Web applications: Either it’s a document management application or a multi-functional CRM, our test engineers can validate that web application lives up to your requirements. During web application testing, we pay special attention to cross-browser compatibility, performance under planned and stress load, an unstable internet connection, general data security requirements implied by GDPR, and compliance with industry-specific standards (HIPAA, GAMP, PCI DSS, and more).

Mobile applications: Cloudteam’s relevant experience helps our team to efficiently manage mobile testing specifics implied by target OSs, their versions, and device fragmentation, mobile interruptions (a dead battery, calls, texts, and push notifications), integrations with built-in mobile features (for example, a camera and a GPS chip), strict security measures (for example, implied by OWASP Mobile Application Security Verification Standard (MASVS) version 1.1.3), and usability requirements declared in such mobile application design guidelines and UI kits as Google’s Material Design for Android and Human Interface Guidelines for iOS.

The test team is experienced in testing the following business-critical applications by traditional or modern technologies involved:

Cloudteam provides testing of applications both with conventional architecture and microservices-based applications and those comprising such technologies as IoTbig data, and AI. Cloudteam’s 10 years of experience in application testing projects helps our test engineers to be aware of relevant testing peculiarities and cover the riskiest aspects bound to each technology.

Application Aspects We Validate

Functionality: Cloudteam’s test team validates the functioning of an application for you to be sure that it really facilitates the daily tasks of employees using it, complies with your specific business rules and their complex interdependencies, and its toolbox meets your requirements. Thus, functionality validation is a serious contribution to the smooth workflow automation, the application’s high user adoption rate, the company’s business continuity, and even its financial stability (particularly, with regard to the proper functioning of financial management systems). Besides, following the needs of an application’s continuous modernization, new features are regularly introduced to it. Our test team carries out regular regression testing to make sure that improvements don’t disturb the existing functions of the application.

Integrations: To form an integral IT environment, all applications should support smooth and secure API integration and standardized file formats for all the data to be correctly rendered in different applications. Our test engineers validate the seamless communication between the application under test (AUT) and other enterprise software.

Performance: Our test team checks an application data transfer rate and response time under peak and continuous load, as well as the maximum number of users utilizing it simultaneously. This way, you can be sure that your application’s performance will remain reliable and stable when it comes to peak load periods or business scaling up.

Usability: Cloudteam’s test team examines information availability and the logical arrangement of an application’s user interface elements (including icons, buttons, and navigation components). Usability testing is particularly important to ensure that an application provides pleasant UX to your employees. This will encourage them initially to learn to work with an application, then to integrate it into their existing work process, and eventually to enhance their effectiveness with its help.

Security: Cloudteam’s test engineers perform security scanning, vulnerability assessment, penetration testing, security audit, and other activities to check an application’s resistance to cyberattacks and malware. They detect security vulnerabilities in the application for you to ensure the security of business-critical information more effectively.

Cooperation Models

Depending on your business needs and priorities, Cloudteam offers the following cooperation models:

Testing during application development: As testing is an integral part of application development in Agile and DevOps/Continuous Delivery, Cloudteam’s test engineers provide comprehensive exploratory, functionality, integration, compatibility, usability, security, and continuous regression testing during the software development process.

Testing before an application release: Cloudteam ensures a delivered application is fully compliant with the requirements specification and your business needs. This testing type is the final stage before the application reaches its end users and should be regarded as an eventual opportunity to detect application defects before they influence user adoption. Our test engineers validate that an application’s functioning is sleek, its end-to-end workflows are logical and executed seamlessly, the user interface is clear and not overloaded with elements that will be rarely addressed by your employees.

Continuous testing during the entire application life cycle: This most comprehensive set of testing services can be baked into your application lifecycle management (ALM). ALM presupposes QA to start as early as application requirements gathering. So, Cloudteam’s QA manager is ready to assist your BAs with the development of a requirements specification to ensure it’s full, coherent, and structured in the way convenient for future testing. Then, our test team proceeds to comprehensive testing activities during application development. Thorough user acceptance testing is performed before the application goes live. In addition, our test engineers keep on with regression testing to ensure that the ALM-driven continuous improvement of the application doesn’t result in severe defects in its existing functionality.

Our Approach To Application Testing

Cloudteam keeps the application testing process focused on the following principles.

Testing with a focus on business goals: We see an application not as a single-standing piece of software but a part of the complex business environment. Our QA and testing professionals perform testing with primary attention to your business goals. Firstly, we ensure our test strategy and plan, user stories, test scenarios, and test data are maximum true-to-life and driven by your actual business needs. Secondly, we prioritize ongoing testing activities with regard to your current requirements that may be subject to change.

Risk-based testing: We prioritize testing activities according to the possible damage that an application defect can cause when it’s found by end-users. Thus, the software issues bound to the highest risks are validated upfront. This testing approach is particularly viable to squeeze multiple testing activities into tight iteration deadlines imposed by Agile and DevOps/Continuous Delivery methodologies.

Well-documented testing: To keep track of the ongoing testing activities and adequately assess their effectiveness, you need relevant test documentation. Our test engineers stick to corresponding ISO/IEC 29119 standards. The set of test artifacts normally includes a test strategy and a test plan, test design and test procedure specifications, test execution, and test summary reports. In addition, our test team provides high-quality defect descriptions that will be easily comprehensible to maintenance and development teams.

Test team’s collaboration with development and support teams: Development and testing alignment are of utmost importance to Cloudteam as it enables the teams to meet tight iteration deadlines and steadily deliver smoothly functioning software parts. Cloudteam’s QA managers cater to inter-team smooth communication by sharing daily and weekly tasks for each team member to know their bearings. Besides, the teams can collaborate more effectively as our QA professionals regularly adjust testing activities to current issues in the application maintenance and development process.

Balanced automated and manual testing: Cloudteam promotes a sensible approach to test automation. It’s most efficient in long-term testing projects with a fairly stable set of application requirements. In such projects, automated testing can result in shorter testing time, vast test coverage, and fewer bugs missed because of the human factor. Our test automation engineers are ready to step in the testing process and automate the most time-consuming, data-intensive, and repeatable test scenarios. However, each enterprise application requires a thought-out ratio between manual and automated testing efforts. Cloudteam’s professionals use forefront tools to execute automated performance, regression, and integration testing. Still, some testing types are executed only manually (like exploratory and usability testing) and some are better to be only partially automated (some phases of penetration and functionality testing). Human involvement is required to accurately track and analyze constantly changing security issues and validate the application’s new functions.

SaaS Application Development Service

The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) distribution model lets users access applications hosted online, thus freeing them from possible installation, maintenance, or integration issues.

SaaS Architectures We Develop

We assist you in understanding the benefits of single-tenancy and multi-tenancy architectures and help you decide which of the two works best for your product.

Our End-To-End SaaS Application Development

With its 10 years of experience and partnership with leading cloud providers, Cloudteam offers professional SaaS application development services. Combining quick product evolution with the quality and stability of the code, we cover all the stages of SaaS development and deliver reliable SaaS solutions with conversion-optimized UI/UX design.

Discovery phase: Our business analysts perform a discovery phase that helps to define the value proposition and the functional core of your SaaS application. Cloudteam’s BAs thoroughly analyze your needs, build a shared coherent vision of your product, and assist you in feature prioritization, focusing on the features with the largest user demand. If you are creating a software as a service MVP, we make sure to draft its detailed roadmap for future iterations before starting the development of the MVP’s first release.

Conversion-driven UI/UX: Knowing that user interface and user experience play a critical role in attracting and retaining users of any SaaS, we give special attention to designing UI/UX. Based on thorough market research, Cloudteam’s UI/UX department creates user personas and scenarios that help to deliver SaaS with excellent usability. We also follow the material design trend to wrap robust functionality up in an eye-catching interface.

Architecture design and programming: When designing SaaS architectures, Cloudteam prioritizes high and easy scalability. We know how critical service availability is for cloud-based solutions and make sure the developed SaaS solution withstands peak loads and seamlessly adapts to the growth and expansion of your business. Our large pool of developers lets us adapt to your project’s needs too: we can easily ramp up the team at any time in order to meet a hard deadline.

Testing and QA: With the comprehensive quality assurance (QA) approach that comprises regular code reviews, unit tests, and testing at all stages of SDLC, we deliver stable, bug-free, and secure SaaS. We also apply secure software development life cycle (SSDLC) strategies, which help SaaS solutions meet the most rigorous quality and safety requirements, including HIPAA/HITECH, NIST 800-171, PCI DSS, and GDPR.

Evolution: When helping your SaaS evolve, Cloudteam applies rigor to combining the frequency of releases with high code quality and stability. To ensure fast and bug-free delivery as well as seamless deployment and environment integration, we follow the Agile technology as well as CI/CD and DevOps principles.

Our Approach To Collaboration

At Cloudteam, we are convinced that successful cooperation should be nurtured from both sides, and we generously invest efforts in doing our part. As a completely self-managed service provider with in-house software development-, QA- and risk management, we offer you KPIs (key performance indicators) and SLOs (Service Level Objectives) that contribute to the high levels of transparency of our processes. This way, you always remain on the same page with us while participating in the SaaS project management to the extent you see convenient for yourself.

Cloudteam can launch the project with you in less than one month. We are capable of adapting to various cooperation schemes and welcome customers with both elaborate and high-level product requirements, offering:

Specification-based SaaS development: When getting already elaborate requirements from our customers, we meticulously follow them to reproduce your vision.

Concept-based SaaS development: If you have only a general idea of your software as a service, our business analysts work together with you to create a well-defined technical vision, explaining to you all the development intricacies in layman’s terms. Once the vision is aligned with you or your product management, our developers start bringing the application to life.

Service Variations

Apart from different cooperation models, we offer service variations for infrastructure configuration and QA, letting you choose the most suitable option.

Infrastructure: Cloudteam configures infrastructure according to the guidelines set by a customer; Infrastructure is configured by a customer; The infrastructure is configured by another vendor.

Quality assurance: QA is performed by Cloudteam; QA is performed in-house; QA is outsourced to another vendor; A customer performs release testing, the rest of QA is done by Cloudteam.

Software Product Development Services

Distinguished by its discerning business analysisconversion-driven UI/UX design, well-honed CI/CD practices, and balanced product evolution, Cloudteam offers all-round and self-managed outsourced product development services.

Software Products We Develop

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): We take over your SaaS software development and implement either a single-tenant (granting maximum privacy and security) or multi-tenant (offering reduced costs and easy version control) architecture.

Mobile apps (with or without the back end): We bring to life your ideas of native, cross-platform, and hybrid mobile applications of various complexity, targeting smartphones and/or tablets.

Desktop applications: We commit to software development of all types of desktop applications for macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Industry and Domain Expertise

Having delivered multiple software products throughout 10 years of our presence on the IT market, we have fully grasped the industry standards and the specifics of operational processes in such business directions as:

Manufacturing.

Healthcare.

Retail and Wholesale.

Professional Services.

Financial Services.

Telecommunications.

The delivered projects allowed us to accumulate rich experience in product engineering for diverse domains, including:

Field service management solutions.

Ecommerce solutions.

Supply chain management systems.

B2B and B2C portals.

Customer relationship management software.

Enterprise mobile applications.

Financial management software.

Applications are driven by data analytics, big data, IoT, AI, etc.

The Scope Of Our Outsourced Product Development

We make product development as easy for you as possible as we build a comprehensive technical vision based on your industry-driven concept and deliver a functional solution that reflects your product idea. Cloudteam provides full-fledged outsourced product development and ensures mature processes on all of the following stages:

By managing agile processes and adhering to DevOps principles, where applicable, Cloudteam’s team quickly and safely develops products and delivers its new versions. We always keep to the planned schedule without deadline pressure and guarantee a short time to market. Apt in risk management, we strive to minimize all possible challenges but are also capable of addressing such situations as schedule compression or pivotal requirement changes with no negative impact on the product.

Business analysis

Our business analysts work with both high-level and elaborate requirements. If you don’t have a detailed specification yet, our BAs discuss the general concept of your product with you and help you to understand, plan out, and prioritize its features. Cloudteam’s business analysis always results in a clean-cut, shared vision of the software functionality explicitly reflected in technical documentation.

UI/UX

At Cloudteam, we consider UI/UX design to play a crucial role not only in overall usability but also in:

Improving upselling.

Diversifying subscription options.

Enhancing retention.

Raising the number of converted new users.

We achieve these benefits due to understanding user needs and application value from user perspective via the following approaches:

In-depth UX research.

Detailed user behavior analytics.

UI layout optimization and conversion/retention driven design.

The use of A/B testing and other fact-based methods in practical UI/UX experiments.

Architecture Design

Cloudteam puts great emphasis on software architecture because it defines reliabilitymaintainability, and performance of any application as well as provides for product evolution. We make sure to devise the architecture that fits your product requirements and enables the most convenient way of integrating with other software products. Some of the architecture types we implement are:

Microservices.

Reactive architecture.

3-Tier architecture.

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).

Quality Assurance: Our comprehensive approach to quality assurance comprises not just testing activities but a whole range of practices that ensure orderliness and accuracy of all internal processes throughout development. These practices include:

Definition of Service Level Objectives (SLO).

Choice of architecture design.

Regular code reviews.

Test planning.

Software quality analysis.

Cloudteam makes it a priority to deliver faultless, high-performing software products. From the project launch onward, we implement all types of software testing, maintaining a balanced mix of manual and automated methods. We perform:

Structural and exploratory testing.

Regression testing and testing of new functionality.

Functional, performance, and usability testing.

Integration testing.

Release testing (for every iteration in case of iterative development).

Thanks to our QA efforts, we manage to achieve the following software quality goals:

Absence of functional errors.

High-quality architecture, allowing easier maintenance and evolution.

High application availability and fast response time.

High UX quality.

Integration

We factor in integration from the earliest project development stages on and set up a CI/CD pipeline in order to reveal and minimize risks related to future integration of your products with other systems. Our team builds effective cooperation with third parties responsible for the systems your software needs to be brought together with and guarantees successful integration.

Product Evolution

Cloudteam has cultivated a proper balance between rapidly evolving software and preserving its functional stability. We make change and growth an integral part of software development, ensuring quality on all stages of the software product development life cycle. With each new release, your software gains both necessary upgrades for the existing functionality and new features.

Managed IT Support Services

Equipped with 10 years of experience in ITSM and the expertise in DevOps implementation, Cloudteam offers to take over the support and management of your diverse IT services.

Situations Where Our Managed it Support Can Help

You may need our managed IT support services in the following situations:

You want to reorganize your IT environment extending the number of IT technologies and introducing new services to support your business growth. You are concerned about your IT environment diversity and immaturity of IT management processes and seek for a way to implement your ambitious IT initiatives, possibly within a DevOps approach.

You intensively use your IT resources and intend to improve the IT environment. Your challenge is to ensure IT infrastructure stability and create the conditions for the further development of a diverse IT environment.

You use IT to the full but have no plans to further develop your diverse IT infrastructure (for example, due to budget limitations). You need to keep your IT reliable staying within budget and be able to resolve IT-related issues quickly.

Your IT infrastructure is managed by different vendors and you have concerns about service coverage gaps that lead to high IT risks. You’re looking for a vendor who will ensure full coverage of all daily IT management tasks at an affordable cost.

IT Components Covered By Our IT Support Services

We handle all daily management and long-term evolution of the entire IT infrastructure or its part and ensure the continuous support of:

Networks.

Websites.

Desktops.

Applications.

Cybersecurity solutions.

On-premises data centers.

Cloud services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS).

Data storages, including databases, data warehouses, big data storages.

What Our Managed IT Support Services Include

Our services are designed to meet the customer’s needs of different complexity. We combine mature IT service management and reasonable agility on all the stages of the managed IT support services we deliver to ensure high service quality. We proactively improve service reliability and functionality and scale up our IT support services to meet the needs of your growing business.

Cloudteam’s managed IT support services include:

IT infrastructure consulting

We define IT issues you are concerned about and the business objectives you want to achieve. We analyze the current state of your IT infrastructure, i.e., its applications, enterprise systems, cloud solutions, servers, etc. We determine the relevant technologies you may need to adapt to achieve the set business goals. Applying our ITSM experience, we help you achieve competitive advantage and viability with a full cycle of IT support services we offer – from designing your IT infrastructure to a building, migrating, and optimizing your workloads.

IT environment administration

We manage and maintain the operability of your data systems, network components, and applications. Cloudteam’s IT infrastructure administrators ensure: User administration; Software configuration; Regular software updates, and more.

Help desk support

We assist you in managing both your internal applications and software you offer to your clients. We handle software issues varying in complexity – from password resetting to the code-level investigation of issues. With IT help desk support levels we provide, you don’t need to arrange an in-house support team but still can be sure that your applications are managed properly and concerns of your users are timely addressed.

IT infrastructure monitoring

To predict and promptly detect issues related to the performance of your IT environment and its components, we configure and use appropriate monitoring tools (e.g., PRTG, Zabbix, Nagios). Our IT administrators can constantly monitor all components of your on-premises or cloud-based environments, including servers, applications, data storage, virtual machines, and provide you with regular reporting on your IT infrastructure performance and resource utilization.

To achieve higher IT operations efficiency, we integrate IT infrastructure monitoring tools with ITSM tools. As a result, we get increased visibility into the IT environment, reduced service restoration time, and an automated ticketing process.

IT issues troubleshooting

We address the issues related to the operability of your servers and end-user devices following the next steps.

Designing a contingency plan to address major incidents, analyzing the business impact, and defining preventive measures.

Ensuring plan execution to avoid recurring critical incidents.

Resolving incidents resulting from server misconfigurations, the insufficient protection of endpoint devices, etc.

Finding and resolving the root causes of the incidents with a thorough log investigation.

IT infrastructure evolution

Cloudteam pays due attention to the support of the growth and evolution of your IT infrastructure. Our team is eager to:

Cooperate and provide the necessary assistance in planning the improvements and development of your IT infrastructure.

Smoothly implement changes in your IT environment avoiding downtime.

Collaborate with third-party vendors responsible for the management of the other parts of your IT infrastructure, applying the DevOps approach if necessary.

Ensure user adoption of the changes in your IT environment via release notes and comprehensive training provided to your employees when needed.

Provide a proper level of cybersecurity of your network, applications, databases, etc., either with our own resources and capabilities entirely or in cooperation with your in-house information security team or a third-party vendor’s specialists.

Benefits You May Pursue And How We Deliver Them

Cloudteam is ready to contribute to your business sustainability by delivering the following benefits:

IT management costs reduction

We offer reasonable rates for our IT support services governed by an SLA with the details of cooperation.

We provide our services remotely when applicable to minimize costs.

We combine the efforts of different IT specialists (IT infrastructure architects, cloud administrators, etc.) and optimally utilize support resources (both human and IT) to make our services cost-effective for you.

We apply mature ITSM processes combined with IT infrastructure automation practices (e.g., infrastructure as code (IaC)) to deliver our services more efficiently without increasing the amount of needed effort.

Improving IT services quality and reliability

We offer ITSM based on KPIs and SLOs agreed to provide you with an ability to measure the quality of IT support services we furnish.

We deliver a service portal for your users (either internal or external) to improve user experience by getting informative user feedback and quick incident reporting and responding.

We ensure a high level of your IT infrastructure automation to decrease the time needed to deliver IT modifications.

We ensure thorough and continuous application monitoring to make the performance of your applications flawless and find software defects before end users come across them.

Providing IT evolution while keeping IT reliability high and costs reasonable

We ensure structured change management: we analyze the areas to be improved in your IT environment, determine the related risks, define the change scope, configure and test the potential changes in a separate IT environment, arrange user acceptance testing, and implement the changes in your IT environment with the minimal downtime.

We apply our DevOps expertise, if required, to implement changes in your IT infrastructure promptly and smoothly. We implement a thoroughly designed continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) approach to provide you with more transparency over the development pipeline, automate and accelerate modifications delivery, and improve the overall IT environment reliability.

Releasing internal IT management resources for other tasks

We proactively improve the reliability and performance of your IT infrastructure, as well as promptly solve your technology-related problems before they show themselves and cause damage or downtime in your IT environment.

Based on the SLOs stated in the SLA, we self-manage and maintain a high level of IT support services we deliver to you.

We build open communication directly with business managers to gather all the possible details on your current business priorities and help you arrange your internal IT resources so that to release them for your higher-priority tasks.

Cooperation Models We Offer

We tailor our IT support services depending on the level of involvement you expect from us:

Complete managed IT support: In terms of complete managed IT support, our team takes the whole responsibility for keeping your IT infrastructure reliable, maintaining your network performance, managing your virtualized environments, and ensuring a high level of your IT infrastructure cybersecurity with the efforts of our expert information security team.

Co-managed IT support: If you opt for a co-managed cooperation model, we efficiently align our efforts with your internal IT infrastructure department or, for example, third-party cloud or security specialists and are ready to constantly cooperate with them in adjusting SLOs, improving risk management processes, administering and maintaining software and hardware operability. We also offer you our expertise and assistance in analyzing user satisfaction, conducting regular security checks and threat assessments, if agreed in an SLA, and preparing regular detailed reports on our IT support activities.

Our Approach To Organizing And Delivering Managed IT Support

Taking into account a cooperation model you decide on, Cloudteam provides their services according to the following stages:

Responsibility transfer

We analyze your current IT situation by studying your business plans and strategic initiatives, incident history, change backlogs.

We conduct necessary meetings and interviews with your business and technical teams or, for instance, third-party cloud or security providers to get all the possible information related to your IT assets, infrastructure components configurations, and process descriptions.

We design a detailed plan to deliver our managed IT support services and prepare an SLA with a detailed KPI system (see an example below) and agreed with SLOs to provide you with an ability to control our services.

In case you approve the defined SLOs, service level reporting, and other components of the prepared SLA, you pass the responsibility for the entire infrastructure or the appropriate IT environment components to us.

Service delivery

We provide you with a full set of support services or particular IT support services described above.

We regularly analyze the results of our support services and deliver you detailed reports on our work weekly and/or monthly for you to have visibility over service delivery.

Improvements

Our IT infrastructure experts provide their innovative ideas and proposals on possible process improvements and IT infrastructure enhancements and further help with their implementation if needed.

Our Approach To Collaboration

Following a result-oriented approach to collaboration, we build strong and open communication with our customers and third-party vendors avoiding conflict situations and finger-pointing. We work together with your IT department or with the teams of your other vendors to satisfy your IT needs and quickly solve any occurring problem while staying within budget and technical limitations. Thus, we minimize management and administration efforts on your side.

Below, you can see how an effective multi-tiered approach to collaboration may look (we can adjust it according to your specific requirements and wishes):


KPIs and SLOs for total transparency over our service activities

Due to the maturity of our IT support and project management processes, we self-manage the quality of our services. Nevertheless, you can easily control the service deliverables with a detailed KPI system.

Here is how a KPI system may look (it can be modified according to your specific situation):

Costs

Budget planned.

Budget spent.

Over budget approved and spent (if any).

Time spent by your employees to handle Cloudteam’s requests.

IT infrastructure security

The number of vulnerabilities found by independent penetration testing.

The number of security incidents.

Services reliability

Service availability.

Response time.

IT incidents (issues users encountered).

Changes (by business value and priority)

Delivered.

Waiting in a backlog.

Backlog waiting time expired.

User satisfaction

User satisfaction score.

Change adoption metrics.

Managed Security Services

As the experienced cybersecurity services, IT consulting, and IT service management (ITSM) provider, Cloudteam offers real-time monitoring, proactive prevention, efficient management, prompt detection, and quick response to security incidents of various complexity.

Customers’ Needs We Address

As an MSSP with more than 16 years in cybersecurity, Cloudteam tailors its offer for different customers. Among our customers are companies from manufacturing, banking, retail, healthcare, eCommerce companies, and other online businesses, SaaS providers.

We design our MSSP offering to address the following security-specific needs:

Sufficient security coverage across customers’ diverse IT environments.

IT infrastructure protection against non-targeted widespread real-time threats, advanced persistent threats (APTs), etc.

Compliance with the requirements of security regulations and standards.

Cybersecurity Components Our Managed Security Services Include

Cloudteam’s security services include real-time monitoring, management, and/or provision of the following cybersecurity components (hardware, software, cloud services):

Security information and event management (SIEM) systems.

Threat intelligence tools.

Firewalls, intrusion prevention systems (IPS), and intrusion detection systems (IDS).

Email security and antivirus software.

Denial of service (DoS) and distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection solutions, and other security components.

IT Components Our Managed Security Services Cover

Cloudteam’s offering in managed security services is designed to ensure the protection of the following IT components:

Networks.

On-premises data centers, data storages, big data storages, etc.

Cloud services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) customers use, as well as customers’ applications and data in cloud.

Customer-facing applications, e.g., eCommerce stores, customer portals, SaaS applications, etc.

Corporate IT infrastructure and customers’ internal applications, and other IT components.

The Scope Of Our Managed Security Services

Cloudteam offers a full set of cybersecurity services:

Security strategy design

We design the entire security strategy and its technical components (e.g., IDS/IPS to use, mandatory security policies to apply).

We plan the adoption of cloud-based security technologies within your IT infrastructure to increase the overall cyber protection.

IT infrastructure configuration

We integrate a customer’s IT infrastructure into a modern could-centric security infrastructure.

Security incidents prevention

We advise on the security policies to apply to improve the entire security level.

We advise on the implementation of the SecOps approach to provide for a higher level of application security.

We conduct managed vulnerability scanning of networks, servers, databases, and applications.

We carry out penetration testing regularly depending on each customer’s needs and the necessity to ensure compliance with security regulations and standards (PCI DSS, HIPAA, and others).

Managed detection and response to security threats

We ensure the 24×7 security monitoring and analysis of security events collected from the IT infrastructure and application logs.

We deliver advanced threat monitoring and unified threat management with the use of the latest threat intelligence technologies.

We ensure rapid security incident response.

We deliver regular compliance reporting based on the data gathered with a SIEM system.

We provide reporting on device, application, and network security management and security monitoring results.

How We Deliver Managed Security Services

At all cooperation stages, we stay self-managed, which minimizes customers’ management and administration efforts. Along with that, our customers can easily control our performance through regular reporting they get based on KPIs, e.g., security incidents detected and resolved, changes in security components implemented, etc.

Discovery

We analyze the IT landscape, cybersecurity needs, and tools in use (SIEM, IDS/IPS solutions, etc.) based on the incident history, change backlogs, the input from IT and business departments.

We perform knowledge mining for IT assets, infrastructure, and its components configurations, security policies, process descriptions, etc.

We conduct service planning and prepare an SLA with defined service-level objectives (SLOs).

Responsibility transfer

We design a cybersecurity strategy with a possible migration to modern cloud-centric security technologies.

We integrate a customer’s IT infrastructure into a modern security infrastructure.

We take over the responsibility for a customer’s overall infrastructure protection.

Service delivery

We deliver a full set of managed security services.

We provide service results analysis and reporting (weekly and/or monthly) to ensure that our customers have complete visibility over the service delivery.

If applicable, we implement a SecOps approach by aligning the efforts of our security team with IT infrastructure operations team and application developers.

Improvements

We prepare proposals on the possible process and IT infrastructure security improvements quarterly and assist in their implementation.

Benefits Our Customers Get From Our Services

Proper protection built within a short time frame and at a reasonable cost

Cloudteam’s security team provides:

A set of managed security services with standardized processes and templates.

Security consultants are available at the discovery stage and ready to constantly collaborate with customers’ IT operations and development teams.

Advanced cloud security tools.

Coverage of all cybersecurity aspects without big investments into hardware, software, personnel

Cloudteam’s security team ensures:

No substantial upfront investments.

The usage of primarily cloud-based security components to minimize costs.

The availability of competent security architects, administrators, analysts, and security testers to cover all the duties of a security operations center (SOC).

Advanced threat protection

Cloudteam’s security team provides:

Advanced event and flow analysis leveraging threat intelligence of the managed SIEM system.

SIEM and log management.

Protection against the perimeter and insider threats.

End-to-end managed security services delivered within the budget

Cloudteam’s security team offers:

Pricing based on service consumption.

Mature project management for optimized resource utilization.

Managed Infrastructure Services

To maintain the reliability of the customers’ complex IT infrastructures, Cloudteam’s IT team has been delivering infrastructure managed services for more than 10 years already. Our ITSM expertise, DevOps experience, and other tech leaders allow us to guarantee a high level of infrastructure managed services we offer.

IT Infrastructure Components We Cover

We take responsibility for continuously monitoring, supporting, and optimizing your IT infrastructure or its parts, i.e.:

Networks.

Onsite data centers.

Cloud solutions (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS).

Data storages.

Big data storage.

Data warehouses.

Infrastructures for applications.

Cybersecurity measures.

Our IT Infrastructure Managed Services Scope

With IT infrastructure managed services Cloudteam delivers, you get the opportunity to maintain the reliability of your diverse IT infrastructure and enable its steady evolution while keeping costs down.

IT infrastructure monitoring

We set up and configure IT infrastructure monitoring tools, e.g., PRTG, Zabbix, Nagios, Prometheus to ensure prompt detection of any IT issues occurring in your IT environment.

We provide reports on your resource consumption and the performance of IT infrastructure components, i.e., onsite or cloud IT solutions, data warehouses, etc.

We apply ITSM methodologies and processes to automate the ticketing process and increase visibility over the activities happening within your IT infrastructure.

IT helpdesk and troubleshooting

We provide help desk services and address IT issues of various severity and complexity, thus completely freeing you up from the necessity to arrange your in-house IT infrastructure help desk team.

We timely address the issues that may potentially damage your IT infrastructure or its components, i.e., we analyze the possible business impact of an incident, suggest preventive measures, resolve incidents, thoroughly study the event logs to identify the root causes of incidents, analyze the possible business impact of an incident, and suggest preventive measures.

IT infrastructure enhancement

We plan and design changes and expansions of your IT infrastructure.

We implement the changes and expansions with our own efforts or in collaboration with your in-house IT team or your other vendors.

We help your application development and support teams adapt to the changed IT infrastructure by delivering appropriate training and release notes.

Advantages You Can Get From Our IT Infrastructure Managed Services

Cloudteam’s IT infrastructure support team is eager to help you increase your business reliability with the following benefits you get from the cooperation with us:

Reduced IT infrastructure maintenance costs due to:

Mature ITSM processes.

Optimization of cloud resource consumption.

Ability to deliver infrastructure managed services remotely if applicable.

Reasonable service costs.

Improved IT infrastructure performance quality due to:

Service offering based on the detailed KPI system and SLOs set in the SLA.

Continuous infrastructure monitoring applied to predict IT issues or detect them promptly, thus avoiding downtime.

An enhanced approach to IT infrastructure changes delivery due to:

A high level of IT infrastructure automation aimed at accelerating the delivery of IT infrastructure improvements.

Structured change management we apply: analyzing IT infrastructure loopholes, defining possible risks related to them, planning the scope of needed changes, testing and adjusting the potential changes in testing IT environment, and further implementing them with the minimal downtime.

Using our DevOps expertise and implementing IaC, CI/CD, and other practices if applicable to you.

Service Options

Depending on the services coverage you expect from us, we can deliver our IT infrastructure managed services according to two possible models:

Complete managed IT infrastructure services: We use only our own IT and human resources and efforts to keep your IT infrastructure and its components (networks, servers, virtual machines, etc.) reliable, highly-available, and secure.

Co-managed IT infrastructure services: We strive to establish strong collaboration with your in-house IT team and/or your third-party cloud or security providers to jointly cope with IT infrastructure maintenance (e.g., adjusting risk management processes, performing regular security assessments, delivering regular reports on your IT infrastructure performance) quickly and efficiently. If required, we can either deliver our cybersecurity services as a part of our IT infrastructure managed services, or collaborate with your in-house information security team or your third-party security provider to ensure that your IT infrastructure is highly protected from internal and external security threats.

How We Deliver IT Infrastructure Managed Services

Responsibility transfer: We assess you current IT infrastructure design, talk to your business and technical stakeholders (or third-party vendors) to get the details on the configurations of your IT infrastructure components and available IT infrastructure assets, prepare a detailed SLA with a defined KPI system and agreed with SLOs to ensure you get adequate control over our support activities. Eventually, you offload the entire responsibility for your IT infrastructure to us.

Service delivery: Cloudteam delivers either a full set of IT infrastructure managed services or maintains the reliability of particular components of your IT environment – depending on the cooperation model – and delivers regular reports.

Change delivery: We support changes and improvements that can be implemented within your IT infrastructure to increase its reliability and flexibility, and further support you in change implementation.

Our Approach To Building Collaboration

We adhere to a multi-tiered approach to collaboration with your IT team or your third-party vendor’s team and adjust it taking into account your business situation, objectives, and requirements. Due to our approach, the activities needed to maintain your IT infrastructure become less time-consuming and more cost-effective allowing you to stay within budget and focus on your key business operations.

That is how our collaboration may look:


Defined KPIs and SLOs to provide you with complete visibility over our services

Cloudteam’s IT team self-manages the services it delivers to minimize your efforts. With the use of a KPI system we prepare and SLOs we agree on with you in the SLA, you can control our activities any time you need.

A sample KPI system:

Costs

Target budget for managed infrastructure services: Budget spent; Over budget approved and spent (if any).

Your employees’ time spent to handle Cloudteam’s requests.

IT infrastructure security

The number of vulnerabilities found by independent penetration testing.

The number of security incidents.

Services reliability

Service availability.

Response time.

IT incidents (issues users encountered).

Changes (by business value and priority)

Delivered.

Waiting in a backlog.

Backlog waiting time expired.

User satisfaction

User satisfaction score.

Change adoption metrics.

Managed Application Services

Malfunctions, failures, stops, and irrelevance of critical business apps can result in significant monetary losses, alienate users, undermine clients’ trust and cause complete disarray in business processes and data.

For 10 years, Cloudteam has been delivering software solutions and services that allow its customers to develop and run available, high-performing, and business-relevant applications and keep their workflows smooth and efficient. With the expertise gained, we’re ready to take responsibility for the comprehensive, tailored, and efficient management of your apps.

Application We Focus On

Cloudteam has a record of successful management and upgrade of multiple enterprise-level solutions.

Industry expertise: Manufacturing; Healthcare; Retail and eCommerce; Banking; Professional services; Telecommunications, etc.

Business process expertise: Supply chain and procurement management; Financial management; Sales management; Customer service management; Marketing campaigns management, and more.

Explore Managed Application Services

Cloudteam’s offering comprises a comprehensive portfolio of services around application monitoring, problem tackling, system availability, and reliability management, continuous app refinement, and helps desk provision. All services can be mixed and matched according to the specific needs of the business.

Application monitoring and performance management: Retaining responsibility for app performance management, Cloudteam’s team executes a wide range of monitoring activities to keep an eye on all critical metrics, such as response time, transaction completion, message queue exceeds and detect and resolve potential dangers before they cause any serious process disruption or damage UX.

Application troubleshooting: Cloudteam maintains appropriate application work by addressing problems of any application misbehaviors, component unavailability, slow request handling, abundant memory consumption, data inaccuracy and inconsistency, and more.

Application enhancement: Cloudteam’s team ensures orderly and timely management of minor and major application changes, updates, and roll-outs of new versions.

Application optimization: Cloudteam can help to keep the apps relevant to the changing business context, increase their ROI, and optimize TCO. We carry out the business process review to identify existing pain points and modify applications (introduce automation, migrate to new techs and platforms, restructure or modularize solution) to accelerate weak and inefficient flows and simplify maintenance.

Change management and training services: To manage app modifications successfully, our team pays due attention to all core steps of the change process. We analyze the reasons for a change, ensure comprehensive testing coverage, estimate risks, make up a safe release plan, and conduct the post-change review. Also, Cloudteam sees the smooth adoption of new app components and upgraded/extended versions of already existing ones to your IT environment. We complete a delivery with tailored training (in the form of step-by-step guides, onsite workshops, webinars, etc.) for different users and departments so that they can leverage the updates to the fullest.

Application security: Cloudteam’s security experts implement monitoring and testing activities to prevent any breaches to your data due to application vulnerabilities.

Help Desk capabilities: Our managed application services can be additionally reinforced with help desk support. A multi-lingual help desk available on the 24x7x365 basis becomes a single point of entry, which improves the experience of app users with prompt responses and constantly updated knowledge base. It also optimizes the work of support teams of higher levels with the right prioritization and helps a business to be in more control of their apps with comprehensive reports on resolved tickets.

How We Get Started

The established transition plan helps us to ensure smooth adoption of responsibility. We always start cooperation in implementing 4 important steps:

Software quality assessment: Every project starts with a comprehensive quality assessment (implemented by us, the customer, or a third-party vendor) of the applications we’re to serve. By that, we estimate the actual state of the applications, to focus more on their pain points, plan more effective and relevant service scope, and decide on best KPIs to further track improvements in application operations.

Knowledge transfer: We take the time to thoroughly understand your application. Cloudteam’s team investigates existing technical and functional app specifications and code documentation, mines business rules directly from software code, and communicates with your employees.

Service planning and SLA preparation: We discuss in detail the service scope in accordance with your needs. To keep the process clear and avoid any disruptions/blind spots in it, together, we allocate responsibilities, establish benchmarks against which performance will be measured, choose appropriate communication tools, define reporting timetable, and decide on the data security level.

Responsibility transfer: We take over the agreed scope of responsibility and start to carry out the planned services.

Managed Services

For about 10 years we offer managed services on a remote basis to take care of our customers’ IT infrastructure. As a universal, midsize MSP, we accept any customer’s vision on managed IT services and are ready to discuss and comply with non-standard requirements.

Managed Services Why You Nedd Managed IT Services

To have a competitive edge, enterprises have to be technologically advanced. However, managing more and more complex IT systems becomes a challenge.

Significant expenses on additional IT specialists and maintaining the IT infrastructure fully operable, updated, and secure.

Reduced focus on core services. You spend time and money on technology and top-class IT team, instead of developing your primary competencies.

Cloudteam is ready to become your managed service provider (MSP) to help you escape these challenges.

Smooth transition from your in-house team.

IT service availability improvement.

Information security.

User satisfaction at a reasonable price.

Our Offerings

Shift the burden of day-to-day IT infrastructure maintenance to Cloudteam’s professionals, who provide the following managed IT services on a remote basis.

Applications: Deployment; Maintenance; Ensuring application availability.

Desktops: Software configuration and administration of desktops, printers and mobile devices; Software installation and updating.

Servers: System administration; Performance monitoring; Fine-tuning.

Enterprise systems: Data Centers; Directory Services; Mail; VoIP; Intranet and collaboration solutions; CRM systems; ERP systems.

Data storage: Monitoring and administration of databases, data warehouses and big data storage; Storage disaster recovery.

Network and security: Integration, maintenance and ensuring the security of LANs and VPNs; Integration and maintenance of IDSs/IPSs and firewalls; Integration and maintenance of antiviruses.

Cloud systems: Integration, maintenance and ensuring security on various cloud computing platforms.

Managed IT Service Challenges We Address

Customer’s demand to extend the scope of managed IT services: Cloudteam’s customers are free to entrust any scope of IT management functions to our team. We have a wide range of competences and capacity reserve allowing us to handle load increase.

An inefficient reactive approach to handling IT issues: Like our customers, we prefer to prevent problems rather than cope with their outcomes. So, instead of a break/fix approach, we provide value-based managed IT services to keep IT operations up and running.

A threat to customer’s data security: Having deep access to customers’ sensitive data and commitment to keep it safe, Cloudteam follows the customer’s security policy and apply our own security measures. This provides an additional level of protection to ensure that the data is not accessed and tampered with unsolicited third parties or altered by ransomware.

Rigid SLA: Cloudteam doesn’t keep its customers trapped in a service level agreement (SLA) when their business strategy and IT needs change. We are open to discuss and alter the terms of a managed service contract and adapt our IT services to any of those changes.

Specific Services

Help Desk Services

With IT help desk outsourcing, you don’t need to hire and train support personnel and still can remain sure that your software and its users are taken care of.

Managed Application Services

Malfunctions, failures, stops, and irrelevance of critical business apps can result in significant monetary losses, alienate users, undermine clients’ trust and cause complete disarray in business processes and data.

Managed Infrastructure Services

To maintain the reliability of the customers’ complex IT infrastructures, Cloudteam’s IT team has been delivering infrastructure managed services for more than 10 years already.

Managed Security Services

As the experienced cybersecurity services, IT consulting, and IT service management (ITSM) provider, Cloudteam offers real-time monitoring, proactive prevention, efficient management, prompt detection, and quick response to security incidents of various complexity.

Managed IT Support Services

Equipped with 10 years of experience in ITSM and the expertise in DevOps implementation, Cloudteam offers to take over the support and management of your diverse IT services.

To have a competitive edge, enterprises have to be technologically advanced. However, managing more and more complex IT systems becomes a challenge.