Making the case AGAINST outsourcing

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A few years ago I worked for a company that had 6 employees including me, and we had a full server rack at a colocation facility and about six servers (and one SAN) at our office location. There were two of us that did the primary administration and maintenance on the servers. We did highly data-intensive work, and there wasn't much "user account" maintenance that had to be done. I'm pretty sure that most small companies wouldn't need what we had, but we definitely needed all those servers and were adding about a server a month. There's no way that we would have ever outsourced the maintenance of the servers, primarily because they were used for highly sensitive client data.

 

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True... but, like you said, you were in a technology company... so that's to be expected. If you were 6 employees in another line of work, you probably wouldn't have needed even a single server.

 

Sorry, busy weekend, I don't think it'd do too much harm to run through our server list.

• As previously mentioned we have one server running file server, print server, DNS, DHCP, AD and a couple of other bits.
• One running Exchange.
• One running our old reservations system (which will be retired soon™)
• One running backup and archive duties, also runs WSUS and the UPS management software.
• One Linux box running SpamAssassin.
• Callview call reporting on a seperate box.
• door entry system management on another box
• And our 2 virtualisation hosts running 2x 2008 server for terminal services, 2x 2003 IIS for our new reservations systems (test and live), 1x 2003 SQL for the res sysstem DBs (our new intranets DBs also sit on here) and a Linux VM which will be handling the DB sync between our new website and the res system.

 

Can you not combine several of those onto one box? Not even talking virtual boxes here (though you could do that as well)... can't you combine several of those onto one machine? Fair play if you can't... but just wanted to let you know that it is usually possible to do so. Each of my servers had several functions, provided those functions didn't bog down the box. For example, I had my software rollout app, AV management, Websense, and a couple other things on one box... for a 500-user company.

 

I'd love to, some of the seperation is because of the software companies involved who are very clear on the fact they won't support the software if its run alongside anything else. I'd dearly love to rebuild the file etc server and have that take over the WSUS and UPS management duties, probably have the backup handled directly from there too. Archive duties could be handled by a fairly cheap NAS box. That'd get the box highest on the 'likely to die' list out of service (It's an incredibly elderly dual PIII which has served its time well and earnt its retirement).

The old res system box will be going soon as I say, which will make me a very happy boy, no more SCO UNIX and no more MySQL v3 DB! Also no more old intranet so that weird frankensteins monster will be laid to rest (its written in .NET and there is no connector for MySQL v3 so everything goes via a truly bizarre MS Access route to make it work. Troubleshooting is a nightmare and the whole thing seems to work more by luck than judgement).

 

Yeah, they'll say that to cover their backsides. But if they don't administer the actual box, either locally or remotely, then they'd have no way of knowing whether it runs alongside anything else or not.

Sounds like your other problems are sorting themselves out on their own... ;)

Props to you for trying to make things better at your company, by the way.

 

Our UK arm (the company I work for, natch) has just over 200 employees... and just under 130 servers.

Of course, we're a technology company too - so it kind of goes with the territory. There isn't a better sector for nerds to work in than technology

 

Absolutely!

The consulting company I worked for in 2005 had approximately 8 employees and 20 servers.

 

I too work for a company who looks after different business' networks. The reason I haven't called it an Outsourced IT outfit is because I believe Outsourced IT to include everything related to in house IT (such as desktop support etc). We actually, like cragie's company, only deal with network/infrastructure/projects and planning and somewhat 'refuse' (or so we should) to do any form of desktop support/IT admin and the likes.

I feel that having a company do ALL of your IT (including desktop support) without having one person internal is a mistake. Personally I don't know the FULL ins and outs of all of our clients' networks which means I have to look into things/work things out first before being able to diagnose. That's time that potentially is crucial. Having in house IT, they deal with the network every day.. They know the full ins and outs, what goes wrong weekly, monthly, etc.. know what technologies would help the business without trying to make profit .

I'd advise any SME to have at least one in-house, and get some network/server support as cover.

 

Depends on the size of the company. For example, neither of my eye doctors need a full-time IT person. Nor did several of the clients I supported over the years, up to perhaps 80 employees or so. Some need a full-time IT person at much smaller than that; others don't.

Absolutely. But that's the risk they take in order to save money on salary... not everyone needs 10-minute service... same day service is generally good enough for those companies.

Plus, you can get pretty familiar with a client's network, particularly if you're the only guy supporting it. The more often they call... the more familiar you get. I was extremely familiar with Tennessee Orthopaedic's network after supporting them for 10 months as a vendor... then they hired me full time.

As far as "trying to make profit" is concerned... I tried to make profit by doing a good job, including telling my client what technologies they did and did not need. They appreciated it when I saved them money, so they kept using me. Now, I realize that not everyone works that way... in those cases, I'd recommend that the customer find one of the "good guys".

 

It's also easier to liase, as the contractor/outsource, with one person who generally knows what they're on about

 

If the "one person" generally "knew what they're on about"... they wouldn't need a contractor. ;)

 

Yeah but they do fiddle and break stuff.