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    IT Story and Question

    I had a meeting with a prospective client today. I talked to him on the phone first and he is the CFO a medium size business with multiple locations. 150 employees. He is looking to move some or all of the daily tasks off to a solution provider like our company. I have the these conversations more and more frequently these days. It usually comes when the IT guy has just moved to greener pastures. Some times the IT team is overwhelmed because of growth so they need help.

    I walk into the meeting and their current IT guy is there with the CFO. Usually with this setup, the IT guy wants to kill me because he thinks I'm going to take his job (even though I'm not). The CFO starts off that it is the IT guy's idea that he wants to only do the design on the data side of the house and have a 3rd party do all of the voice and all day to day desk-top support and maintenance. The job he wants to do is probably 2-3 hours a week. He even tells the CFO that he will be there 40 but only really "work" a few hours a week. Sounds like a great gig for 6 figure compensation.

    My question for you IT guys, what are the two or three day to day tasks that you do that you wish someone else (outsourced) could handle for you? The new term is cloud provisioned but it is still outsourcing in my book.

    #2
    email and email archiving to meet required retention policies
    Right now, this is all that I can think of that I really struggle with.

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      #3
      In the past it's been email archiving- that used to be a PAIN in my side until the old company I worked for outsourced it to Rackspace. Then it became even a larger pain once Rackspace got a hold of it. Rackspace's sales team made promises they couldn't keep and once we found out they couldn't keep the promises they made, it was too late. We went from paying $4pr email account a month to having to upgrade to their $8pr email account. I have no idea what their pricing scheme is now, but it ended up being over $4k per yr more than quoted and paying for the 3rd party email client we used (can't remember what it was) AND was equal to what we were paying previously using MS Exchange.

      With my new job, we have 2 (fixing to be 3) database/server guys that take care of that now, so it's been pretty smooth sailing for me minus learning a completely new (to me) software program I had never heard of a yr and a half ago. (Scada)

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        #4
        Drive 35 miles to the office


        Just need to make sure the www connection is reliable - something that any good IT guy has a fair amount of time to monitor

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          #5
          Tier 1 support for VOIP phone based systems. Adds - moves & changes of extensions and personnel assigned to these extensions.

          As it is with any Corporate entity, Joe Public calls into a support queue. Typically there is a call flow related to this external to internal call routing. Having an outside resource handle the call routing changes is a big plus. Document the existing, find out who is who in the call flow priorities, and support that as they add and or replace employees. Some organizations are more revolving door than others, meaning attrition and turn-over in the lower rung positions can eat an single IT guy up.

          AV & MALWARE management. If they are an RDP based shop, lots of remote access end users, managing RDP profiles, short-cuts and drive mapping to back-end resources can be a pain if it's not well documented. Once again, each department will have network shares specific to them and no other Group. As folks leave and others are hired to replace, it's another job that requires a bit of insight of the various business units to support.

          Server management. Provisioning shares, access lists, updates to firmware and security\hotfix management. You do not want to let the monthly MS Update auto-update all servers at 0300 each month. This can spell absolute disaster on the morning after a bad update. Have a guy do this incrementally each month, server by server till complete. Conservative updates are best.

          If the shop is a huge suite of desktops, this will eat you alive with AV and MALWARE management. Get a baseline of each department, network share requirements, application dependancies as well as external business to business portals specific to these departments.

          Firewall management and ACLs (VLAN and VACLs).

          SMTP archives as mentioned. Barracuda SMTP is pretty cool and it covers a lot of the retention coverage for those who need an email archive, historical and AV module in one edge device solution.

          Any regulatory requirements for retention? Finances, email and or voice communication correspondence with retention history requirements mandated by Fed or State?

          Backups - are they automated with a modern RAID Archiving solution (IE Barracuda style) and or old school with tape libraries and or at best NAS?

          EFax, multi-function printers, advanced scan to network shares etc? Another area where work will eat hours per month. Who manages printer maintenance and consumables? If the IT guy was doing all of this, you need to identify this up front before commitment. Are they leased systems, owned systems and or a mix of both? Are these printers and scanners smartphone enabled and or bluetooth enabled? A heavy load of PDAs & smartphones that share printer\scanner space, it's a royal pain if you don't get those arms wrapped around it.

          WIFI management, remote access management - who's allowed and who is not.

          PDA support - Exchange with Outlook anywhere enabled smartphones part of the mix?

          Laptops, PDAs and any other portable computing devices - who has them, where do they go (lots of business travel with remote access?) So much here, it can overwhelm someone if they have 5 or 6 road warriors with heavy back-end needs...most particularly if these folks are not very IT Saavy.

          Server infrastructure architecture? Are they virtualized within their own domain? Partial virtualization? Old school server farm? MAC XServers with Unix and or Wintel mixed?

          Any private b2b frame networks that drive back-end business collaboration and data sharing needs?

          Web server (intranet & extranet). Client support with web integration? eCommerce transactions? Credit card and payment information systems. Point of sales requirements?

          Fleet services and mobile workforce. Do they have vans and or mobile employees that need dispatch and or scheduling connectivity to the main office?

          Call center and or service center - do they have a public service requirement where folks work all day simply scheduling and or conducting sales with Joe Public?

          Help desk management software?

          These are a few things I manage alone for 115 folks at my organization now.
          Last edited by AtTheWall; 04-23-2014, 02:52 PM.

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