This post is continuing in a series that started with a monster post that discussed how to benchmark your I.T. service delivery vs. your competitors. That post is here: http://www.crcexchange.com/benchmark-your-it-vs-your-competitors-it

Everything you ever wanted to know about outsourcing your IT Department

Robert Kiyosaki said that while most people dream about vacations and boats, he dreams about accountants and lawyers — working exclusively for him.  That makes sense if a company is large enough to hire specialists, but I don’t agree if a company can only afford one or two of any profession that has areas of specialty.

Would you want your Real Estate Attorney defending corporate litigation?

I hope not.  Yet, every day we see companies that hire one IT Guy and expect  him to be the backup expert, the security expert, the Mail Server expert, the Database expert, the help desk, etc.  Often the result is the same as having a bookkeeper plan your tax strategy: disaster.

Being out and about in the Atlanta business community, rarely does a day go by that I don’t hear a story about how a company lost data.  Why? A hundred different reasons, but they usually boil down to just two: either the IT Guy (or IT Company) didn’t know what they were doing — or they were stretched so thinly that they were unable to devote necessary attention to the task.

By outsourcing to a large, established company: you get the right people, working on the right technology, at the right time, doing the right things.

Data Protection

It doesn’t take much imagination to see how things would be different if a full time backup specialist — who does nothing but monitor backups (and solve issues the instant they occur) would have a much greater chance for success than a one-man-band (either inside your office our outside).  It should be noted that the danger can be mitigated using an adequate service provider for backup such as www.crcDataProtection.com.

Help Desk

When a member of your staff gets ’stuck’ on a certain task (whether that is their ability to get email, find a feature in their new Office 2007 software, or get access to their files on a server) your ROI on that salary drops to zero.  Worse, client service beings to suffer that moment.  In addition, her morale begins to deteriate, her mind loses focus, and you are paying good money after bad to have her sitting there unproductive.  If not using an outsourcing company and your one or two IT Guy’s are busy with other tasks, there is nowhere to turn; and your employee can not go any further on that task.  Hopefully it’s not critical!

In contrast, an outsourcing firm that has a call center and a  help desk can handle the issue, contact the user immediately, and get her back and running very quickly in most cases.

Security

We humans are too busy to re-learn things (and especially if we are stretched trying to do the job of many people as is the case when SMB companies hire one or two people to do their IT.)  For that reason, the IT Guy tends to want to install what s/he knows (and that may not be the best decision for your company.)  Perhaps Cisco would be the best solution for your company; or maybe SonicWALL?  Perhaps a whole host of others?  Each product has tradeoffs that make it the correct choice for some offices and the wrong choice for others.  Having experts certified in the various security appliances gives your company the ability to get the best fit for your application.

Chief Technology Officer

The CTO for a large organization creates (and is responsible for the implementation) of the strategic technology vision for the company.  S/he is tasked with exploring new and emerging technology, figuring out how it can apply to your company, meeting with the C-Level managers to colloborate on the vision, and then ensuring that the growth of technology in the company supports the overall growth and vision of the company.  This is a bit much to ask of your average technician.

Perhaps you could hire a CTO and a technician or two, but a CTO with only one or two reports is not going to be happy long term.  In contrast, outsourcing to a larger IT outsourcing company delivers a virtual CTO — somebody who fills the same role as above — on an as needed basis.  Best of all, s/he is acting as the CTO for many companies — seeing the best and worst of what is out there, and bringing that experince to bear on giving the best advice for your company.

(fill in the blank_______) Administrator

Email, Sharepoint, Web Services, Database, Active Directory, Line of Business applications…all are evolving at dizzying pace! There is simply no way that one person can keep up with all of the changes and best practices.  To do justice to any one of these is to work in the environment full time.  Having just-enough-to-get-by skills in all of the above means that critical things are going to get missed.  We see it all the time when we take over accounts…Microsoft best practice items not implemented…either the IT guy didn’t know or didn’t have time.  But the results are the same: crashes, outages, lost data, degredation of performance.

Patch Management

What are patches? Well, hackers look for security ‘holes’ that will allow them to ‘get in’ to systems and do what they will.  A ‘patch’ is a change to the software that ‘patches’ the ‘hole.’  Did you know that over 85% of attacks on PC’s and Servers are against ‘holes’ that have been publicly admitted by Microsoft and other publishers for over six months!!? 

Hackers know that a certain (large) percentage of machines are not going to get patched regularly, and that gives them time to perfect their attack.  Virus and hacking software is tricky business — and these people are experts: with patience.  They will take time to get the attack just right and then launch it — knowing that many people will not have any defense.

In many SMB’s, the job of ‘patching’ the computers falls to the IT Guy (who doesn’t have time because of all of the above.)  The result? Systems don’t get patched very often and your company becomes vulnerable to an attack that could have been prevented six months ago!

Outsourcing companies use expense software tools to automate the process of patch management (and more importantly…montior and mainatain the environment.)

24×7x365 Support

We once did a network audit for a client who said that a few years earlier, his building had burnt down to the ground at the same moment that their IT guy was on an airplane to India! Clearly, having one or two IT Guys is not going to get your company the same level of support as an entire team — already taking calls 24×7x365. 

This post could go on for quite some time, but by now you get the idea: Even a 20 person network has a great deal more work than one person can handle (or provide expert effort on each task calling for an expert.)

The final point: Cost

With all of these experts, the staff, the 24 by 7 by 365 support, the virtual Chief Technology Officer, etc. you may be thinking that it would be prohibitively expensive to outsource.  However, that is not the case.  On average, it costs less than the full time salary of ONE IT Guy to outsource and get the entire benefit package above and much more…for up to about 50 person companies.  At 150 people it usually costs less than two IT Guy salaries.  Beyond 150 people, it begins to make sense to have some onsite support — with an outsourcing firm doing most of the day-to-day work.

Tags: IT Outsourcing, IT Outsourcing Firm, Outsource, Outsource IT

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 2:29 pm and is filed under Business Topics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.