What's the Difference Between a Help Desk and a Network Operations Center?

Help desks and Network operations centers are often considered to be the same but there is a slight difference between them. Organizations that need to manage and monitor their business technology opt for a help desk or a network operations center.

It totally depends on the requirements of the company to choose from the two options. While both of them are cost-effective solutions that do not affect the overall experience of end-users, they are still not the same. Here are the features and definitions of a help desk as well as a NOC.

What is a Help Desk?

A help desk solves the questions that are raised by end-users. It offers professional services along with product support so the queries are resolved instantly. From setting and configuring devices to publishing product information for the users, a help desk does it all.

In simple words, when your television is not working, you call the customer service of the company to report an issue and it gets fixed at the earliest. Similarly, the little issues of your company like password resetting can be fixed easily.

Help desks allow the end-users, partners as well as employees to organize and manage requests. Track the progress of the issues to see if they are fixed or not. This results in higher user satisfaction and a seamless user experience.

If you already have a dedicated IT team and you want someone to manage and answer the questions of your staff then the help desk is the perfect option for you. When the simple questions are settled by the help desk, it gives your IT team to focus on more important business aspects.

There are some very basic problems that do not require the attention of your IT staff. Instead of disturbing them time and again for trivial issues, it is always better to hire a help desk for such matters. This will not affect the productivity of your staff while all the issues will be fixed without any hassles. 

What is a Network Operations Centre?

The network operations center, also known as NOC is a centralized location where the health, as well as the performance of a network, can be monitored throughout. Moreover, the main objective of a NOC is to assure continuous uptime along with network availability.

From monitoring the network to identify threats to disaster recovery, the network operations centre covers a wide area of features. Such services handle low-level issues along with dealing with complex problems as well. NOC does everything that a help desk can do and also performs detailed tasks like threat detection. Businesses that work round the clock irrespective of day and time especially need NOC. Downtime can cause a whole lot of damage to the company so NOC services ensure continued uptime of the network. Even if any issue prevails, it can be fixed immediately because of the 24/7 support.

Your staff works on a schedule but this is not the case with hackers. They are constantly looking for a weak link so they can attack your network. Such incidents can be prevented with the help of a network operations centre. Be assured that your network is protected at all times.

Forget about manually updating and installing software on all the systems that are connected to the company’s network. NOC can automatically update as well as troubleshoot problems quickly. The services check if the system needs an update or there are any issues in the network waiting to be fixed.

Analysing the attacks before they happen is one of the greatest features of a network operations center. Save your company from major damages by stopping the attacks before they take place. Furthermore, NOC’s also see to it that viruses stay out of the systems of the company's network.

To Conclude -

Help desks and network operations centers are both important in their own ways. It depends on the size and needs of the company to decide which option to opt for. While both the names sound similar, there is a world of difference between the services. Just remember that help desks resolve simple issues whereas NOC can tackle both simple and complicated problems.