Every data center, hosting, and managed services provider offers a customer portal. Typically, they provide visibility into service performance and a modest degree of service parameter controls, but none were designed to fundamentally evolve the data center experience. DataBank took a different approach, custom-building a platform that empowers customers, taking features and functionality to a truly self-service level. Whether we’re hosting a colocation environment with managed internet, or a cloud environment with managed services, the DataBank Portal provides granular visibility and control unmatched by the typical customer reporting platform.
“It’s about transparency. You see what we see. Every alert and metric in your environment is available to you in real-time. The idea is to empower customers with the data they need to make informed decisions.”
-Vlad Friedman, CTO, DataBank
When we initially developed the Portal, the goal was to ensure total transparency through a central point of management for your environment; this is the objective that drives any changes and upgrades we make on an ongoing basis. Customers can see everything DataBank sees and can communicate with us at any time. You’re also able to specify how much access users can have to the environment through the Portal.
Key NEW Enhancements to the DataBank Customer Portal
Data Center Physical Access
Customers can now schedule visits at the data center facilities ahead of time, saving valuable time and easing the burden. It’s self-service when and where you need it.
Now, everything can be administered online. Customers can approve, activate, and deactivate user access with the click of a button. Online self-service also allows customers to provide cardholder and data center access lists to auditors quickly and easily. The self-service Portal also allows for supervisory roles for approvals, streamlining the entire process from top to bottom.
Colocation Space and Power Management
One of the major frustrations for IT administrators and managers when colocating equipment in the data center is knowing whether you are overloading your power circuits as you rack new equipment and as changes are made within cabinets and cages.
DataBank has eliminated that frustration by providing visibility into all power circuits provisioned and in-use, allowing IT staff real-time visualization of power utilization for any given circuit. A graphical representation of green, yellow, and red allows staff to see where there might be exposures.
Network and Internet Visualization, Performance, and Monitoring
One of the issues with other managed services and cloud providers is the unknown cost of bandwidth utilization. Quite often, you don’t realize the true total cost until you receive the invoice because you pay an unknown amount for egress as well as ingress.
DataBank now gives customers access to not only 95th percentile reporting, but granular flow detail by IP, port, protocol, prefix, and protocol distribution – allowing customers to fine-tune infrastructure and applications where there may be overconsumption or other anomalies present in the environment.
We also include a “Threat List Widget” so customers can correlate security threats within their environment, fulfilling our commitment to not only provide raw Internet, but Secure Managed Internet Services to customers who choose to have DataBank manage their Internet service.
A Breadth of Features for Managed Services Customers
Much of our vision for the Customer Portal is based on enabling the freedom to make changes independently, without contacting DataBank. Through the Portal, you’re able to view the status of any system, make changes, open tickets, review security services, and more. Here’s a snapshot of some of the specific features Portal users have access to:
Data Center Physical Access
Network and Internet Visualization, Performance and Monitoring
Colocation Space and Power Management
Executive Dashboards
Managed Systems and Services
Support tickets
Compliance
Security
Billing
User management
Reporting and analytics capabilities are particularly helpful for the IT team handling day-to-day support initiatives, compliance planning, or DR and business continuity. Executive leadership can also benefit from complete access to reporting analytics.
A Better Portal Experience Comes from the Ground Up—Not off the Shelf
The biggest difference between our Portal and other MSPs is the level of transparency and granularity. Typically, customer portals are based on off-the-shelf software tied into monitoring, so the data rendered shows only average. Conversely, the DataBank platform is custom-built from the ground up by our internal team of developers, hired exclusively for the care and feeding of the Portal. Capabilities extend to the application layer, offering greater visibility and detail, rather than just the OS layer. We consider ourselves your first responder, here to help manage your environment in the fashion that works best for you.
“My background and degree are in information technology. I was an IT director for two small firms before going into telecom as a consultant and account manager, so I’ve worked with many MSPs over the years. Most will give customers access to average stats on their environment but won’t let them drill down and investigate events and alarms on a server in real-time.”
-Yvette Hamill-Graves, Senior Account Manager, DataBank
Further, our specialization in compliant, high performing environments is unique. We’ve dedicated a full section of the Portal to compliance, which includes certifications and audits performed multiple times per year. DataBank covers around 80% of controls for compliance; customers address applications and code as well as user access to data.
The capabilities made possible by technology multiply when accessibility and self-service are built into a single point of management. For this reason, DataBank employs a full staff of developers dedicated exclusively to the Customer Portal to ensure we’re providing you with the information you’re looking for while continuously innovating. A customer portal might seem part and parcel to working with any MSP, but with DataBank, it’s a key component of evolving the data center experience.
If you’d like to schedule a demo of our Portal, contact us today at 800.840.7533.
Discover the DataBank Difference today:
Hybrid infrastructure solutions with boundless edge reach and a human touch.
