IT Strategy for SME that scales and is cost effective

John_Mc

Hi,

I've been tasked with investigating our options for an IT strategy that will allow us to scale as we need to, whilst still keeping costs as low as possible.

A bit of background about us
We're an SME that provide IT services such as business analysis, software development, testing etc. We currently have 9 employees and expect that to continue to grow in the near future

Our current infrastructure includes:

• One on-premise physical server running 2 Hyper-V Virtual Machines
• One VM is our Active Directory Controller running Windows Server 2012
• The other VM is an application server running things like SQL Server for testing and it also has System Center 2012 installed although this is not used
• The VMs are replicated to Azure for disaster recovery
• Active directory is synchronized with Office 365

We use Office 365 for Sharepoint, Outlook, Skype for Business etc and our preference is generally to use subscription services rather than purchasing software licences outright.

Right now we are purchasing and rebuilding laptops for new employees as and when they are needed. Due to time constraints we have not created a base image for the OS, drivers and baseline applications so this means that one of our techies, i.e me or one of the other developers has to install the OS, updates and applications on each new laptop.

We are not big enough to justify a dedicated IT support person so if something goes wrong then its usually one of the developers that has to stop developing and investigate the issue. This is why we are looking at other options because random IT issues with a laptop belonging to someone else is the last thing you want to be dealing with as a developer when a deadline is looming.

Our options as I see it

1. Continue to purchase laptops but dedicate time to create a base OS Image to make it easier to build new machines
2. Lease laptops and outsource IT support
3. Use Virtualisation

Does anyone have experience with leasing and outsourcing IT support? Does it work for you and is it cost effective? Any suggested suppliers/providers?

I personally don't think virtualisation will work for us because employees will always need a good internet connection and that wouldn't be the case on trains, buses, flights etc.

Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated.

John

Cuddlesworth

Even if you outsource your IT, people will still walk the twenty feet to you because it's the easier option.

You're too small to justify dedicated support staff as well.

Fysh

I don't have direct experience, but from colleagues the general rule of thumb seems to be that when small organisations outsource IT, there may be some financial savings, but there's also likely to be a drop in service (possibly just perceived, but more likely genuine).

The easy example I can give is of a school a friend worked at - they originally had 2 onsite IT support staff, but ended up outsourcing the service due to budget constraints. The problem is that now, not having people onsite and needing to route everything through the managed support service, faults take longer to resolve because there's nobody available onsite for the "I need this fixed right now or I can't teach this lesson" situations, so teachers end up reluctant to use the computing facilities in classrooms. They key here is poor identification of requirements when evaluating suppliers.

In terms of suggestions, there are a few things you should be considering:
1) Identify some way of automating software distribution to your machines. Desired State Configuration might be a good point to start - if need be, you could couple this with packaging up software installation packages into self-extracting executable files.
2) While your support is being provided internally, determine an accepted amount of time that is required to cover the minimum requirements (eg 1/4 of a full-time employee, etc) and figure out how this can be spread across existing staff. You may not be big enough to justify a dedicated full time person to fix it, but problems don't fix themselves and failing to have anyone who is responsible and empowered with keeping your productivity tools working just means everyone has to figure out how to fix stuff instead of doing the work they're paid to do.
3) Related to the previous point - use this as an opportunity to get some data on how often you need support and what sorts of support are required. This will help you draft requirements list with accurate details.
4) If you do go for the hardware-and-support-as-a-service option, make sure you get the terms of support absolutely nailed down - ie specific SLAs and response times (for email/chat, telephone, and on-site visits) specifed for requests, minor problems and major problems; get it in writing that the supplier covers all license and hardware costs; what happens in the event of SLA breach on their part; decide whether you require them to keep additional (suitably-patched-and-maintained) spare systems available in the event of hardware failure and if so how many spares should be kept, and so on.

ED E

Might be an idea to start running Spiceworks to get some data on what you're running into and also predict problems before they happen where possible.

I'd also provision 2x extra machines as "hot spares" so when something goes down you can just hand them another unit and leave the troubleshooting until such point as you have time,

Graham

I don't think you're really big enough to get much benefit from outsourcing, certainly not from any of the mainstream managed service providers although you might find a small operator that you could work with. A small player might also open other markets for your BA/Dev services too.

Take the time to sort out a base image for your laptops. If new build are something you do on a regular basis the time spent will be an investment that will repay itself very quickly. Definitely take ED E's suggestion about the hot spares, with your standard build image you'll have them setup in no time.

John_Mc

Great suggestions folks, thanks very much for taking the time to answer