Data center management

[14] Business-service management (BSM) treats IT as part of the larger enterprise strategy,[15] and helps fill the gap between business and IT.

[16] IBM notes that major problems often happen in the grey areas, particularly due to errors in the interfaces, and focuses on critical failures.

Tools that help BSM include a modeling language,[17] and a common dashboard, which together allow data center personnel to see problems before business customers do.

[18] Remote data center management[19] allows offsite experts to watch for situations needing their timely intervention at a lower cost than having such staff be onsite 24/7/365.

Achieved through the implementation of specialized software, hardware and sensors, DCIM enables common, real-time monitoring and management platform for all interdependent systems across IT and facility infrastructures.

DCIM products can help data center managers identify and eliminate sources of risk[27] and improve availability of critical IT systems.

[30] More effective automation tools can also improve the number of servers or virtual machines that a single admin can handle.

Within a corporation, these are also known as help desks[38] often arrange their technical support structure as a three-tier (plus two) system:[39] The extra tiers are:[39] Access to varying levels of support for products and services to in-house employees and corporate customers, providing information and troubleshooting[40] is via various channels such as toll-free numbers,[41] websites, instant messaging, or email.

[42] As the incoming phone calls are random in nature, help desk agent schedules are often maintained using an Erlang C calculation.

Requests for new features or information about the capabilities of in-house software that come through the help desk are also assigned to applications groups.

With remote access applications, technicians are able to solve many help desk issues from another work location or their home office.

[44] Many organizations relocated their technical support departments or call centers to countries or regions with lower costs.

A common scam typically involves a cold caller claiming to be from a technical support department of a company like Microsoft.

The scammer will instruct the user to download a remote desktop program and once connected, use social engineering techniques that typically involve Windows components to persuade the victim that they need to pay for the computer to be fixed and then proceeds to steal money from the victim's credit card.