Where Would You Outsource Your Datacenter?

An anonymous reader asks: "I want to outsource everything in our rackspace to reputable online providers. After wasting valuable time every day on mundane problems and upgrades, I'm convinced it's cheaper to pay monthly than maintain our hardware and staff time. So I ask you, Slashdot: who would you turn to for reliable and secure outsourcing of a VPN server, Exchange server, online backup, and webserver hosting?"

Comments

Re:...and you are givign the wrong answer

[hdparm]

I totally agree. From personal experience though - it is very hard to convince management assembled of bean counters not to outsource.

My company did just that and they were stupid enough to sign a contract that doesn't include any service level agreements, just blank statements of the type that company such-and-such will provide this and this and that. When? Nobody knows - as long as they do it on the last day of contract (2 years) they're good.

What did we get? Hosted email server that is down several times a week, unstable VPN, 30 something servers still waiting replacement, lack of central backup facility, more promises and IT dept decreased to 2 people treated like shit (1 of which is me).

New GM seems to have brains, so he's started pressing very hard and looks like he's going to manage to get out of contract. Once he does that, IT dept. will shrink further because the day the contract is terminated and IT services brought back in house I shall resign with great satisfaction of being right from the beginning and the opportunity to rub few big noses.

So, my advice to Ask /. inquiry is DO NOT DO IT! Find couple of people who are competent and who care - you'll be surprised how much good work and cost saving can be made by just two guys like that.