A JitterWorks colleague works remotely from a cold weather location. A place where snow accumulation is measured in feet, not inches. Company emails to him often conclude with the words “stay warm.” Hard to do when the heating unit doesn’t work properly. Sometimes the heat comes on, sometimes not. He called the maintenance guy. Twice. Unfortunately, on both occasions, heat was flowing out the vents and the house was warm. Nothing to see here.

That’s the problem with intermittent problems. There is absolutely an issue with the heating unit. But it’s impossible for the HVAC expert to pinpoint the problem if everything is working fine at the time they are looking at it.

Our colleague is no HVAC expert, so when the heat is off, he calls in someone who is. Many companies are experts in their field, but need help when it comes to the technology issues they face now and then. These companies often have a guy  they call when there seems to be a problem. These IT consultants or Managed Service Providers (MSPs) are very good at their job. 

However, when they get to your place of business, they are analyzing your network in real time often without the benefit of historical data which would help them find and solve the problem.

We recently worked with an MSP on a problem he was trying to solve for one of his clients. The MSP figured out the problem was initiated by the client’s Internet Service Provider (ISP). However, when the provider accessed the account in real time, there didn’t seem to be any problem on their end. The provider insisted it was something within the company network.

JitterWorks set up our equipment to capture, store and analyze the client’s network for a week. With the information we were able to provide, the MSP was able to go back to the ISP. When he was given the runaround by a lower level customer service representative, he insisted on speaking with somebody further up the chain of command.

Because he had concrete historical analysis that showed the problem, he was able to do just that. In the end, the higher-up at the ISP agreed it was their responsibility and they were able to fix the problem.

We were happy to help this MSP and look forward to working with him more in the future. We encourage other MSPs who can relate to this situation to contact JitterWorks. We would be happy to work with you as well.