Slashdot Mirror
Small, Virtual Sysadmin Services?
treesim asks: "I work for a tiny research company of five employees, with a growing need for a system administrator. However, our needs are unlikely to ever require a full time person, so I'm wondering if small, offsite sysadmin services exist (something like virtual assistants, since the larger corporate-sized outfits are just too much). On one hand, this seems an obvious niche to be filled by entrepreneurial moonlighters, but there are a ton of questions regarding trust. Nonetheless, we already have good relationships with offsite bookkeeping and payroll services. Am I just being naive, or does anyone have experience with outsourcing small-scale sysadmin tasks?"
Have you considered sending one of the five employees to a community college for some classes? Maybe a part time highschool or college student would fit the part too. You could hand him some mindless tasks when nothing else needs to be done.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
My experiences have only been with individual contractors. In this case it's just a roll of the dice if you can't get a specific recommendation from someone you trust. It's easy to post to craigslist and others. But I suggest asking around other small companies in your area you're familiar with. The only way to know what you'll get is to speak to another customer.
Developers: We can use your help.
Speaking as someone who IS a some-time sysadmin for several clients, I can say that trust is paramount. The places of which I speak are generally self-sufficient on a day-to-day basis, but need advice or someone to "just do it" when a major upgrade needs to take place and no "regular" staff can be spared for the task (assuming their knowledgeable.) I do work for doctors, lawyers, and one print shop (to which I even have a key!). These are all people I have known for years, however, in a rural setting. I would think that references should be a MUST given what you are likely to need such a person to do.
signat-url: http://www2.potsdam.edu/dctm/prescor/signat-url.h
Sure they do!
Send an email to these guys, and tell them they're interested in outsourcing your system adminstration tasks. I did, and they got me set up in a jiffy.
By the way, what was your username again? >clickity-click<
So you asked for a company, here it is:
HandyNerds.com http://www.handynerds.com/
That's the company I run, and that is the service I provide. Honestly it is hit or miss if you get someone worth their while. Unfortunatly you won't discover this until you are in the thick of it.
If you want more information, let me know. Always happy to help.
--Brett
Now you do mention virtual sysadmin, but I will guess you don't mean someoone who is completely remote, they might be a need for them to come in and do some manual stuff like setting up the physical network, printer stuff, etc. I previously worked at a company of 20 employees where we do outsource our tech support. The person would come in 2 times a week for an hour or two, and we would schedule work for them. Fix a computer, install software drivers, update the OS, that kind of work mainly. The problem we faced was the quality of the workers, and the response times. We used one company who had a pool of tech support, and some of the guys they sent us were a hit or miss. Those who sucked we never saw again. As for timeframe, we had one incident where we had to wait a few weeks to get a laptop problem resolved. The good thing was we were provided with a temp laptop in the meantime. Some of delays are to be expected since it is a virtual staff. Arrival times, and scheduling them between work hours or at least when a company employee is present is difficult at times.
Here's a different idea:
If you're in a small office tower, consider pooling the resources together of everyone in the building or street. Maybe you need someone 2 hours a week, the office down the hall (or street) needs someone one day of the week, etc. There might be a skilled self-employed computer tech in your area who doesn't want to travel much. Check around.
You might find that in pooling all your resources together, you can find one or two techs you trust to do all the administrative tasks. You should get a better quality person in the end since they're virtually 'guaranteed' the hours to fullfill the tasks in the area. And it should eliminiate the chance you get a different person each time.
I'll third this line of thinking. Trust is huge. I am self employed, run my own business doing this type of thing (and more), and have other people (sub-contractors, basically) I rely on to get specific work done that I know I can trust to do it well.
ALL my work is with former employers, people who run their own businesses, are CIOs/IT Directores, etc., and people I've known for years. I do not advertise as a general rule because I don't need to, for one, and I find word of mouth much more meaningful and effective, for two.
Think six degrees of separation...you know somebody who knows somebody, etc., and that's a good why to find somebody trustworthy, who does good work for a reasonable fee.
127.0.0.1, admin, admin.
Whaddya know, it worked!
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
I'd like to add that as much as you need to trust, you also have to cultivate trust from you occasional sysadmin. Pay them promptly without having to be asked more than once please.
I tried the solo-operator tech to small business and I absolutley hated hounding companies (referred from people I know and trust no less) so that I could pay my rent.
Also, listen when your hired tech tells you that what you want can be done, but will take anywhere from x to y number of hours, they're not kidding!
Oh and one last thing... if you change your mind, you don't get the first 4 hours work free.
ok, I'm done
Here are some tips:
h ing support is easier and cheaper for everyone. If you want to be able to fuck around on your systems, and expect hand-holding, be prepared to pay extra or find a third-rate service that will put up with that.
1) Be prepared to sign an agreement for monthly support, and pay it regularly. Nothing makes contractors happier than knowing what to expect. And nothing makes them angrier than not getting paid.
2) Be up-front about your needs. Don't try to hire someone for a few months and have them teach you everything they know. These people exist, but they bill at $150/hr and won't be worth your while. Micromanagement behaviour, especially from small businesses who claim they need outside services, sets off alarm bells for contractors. If they don't trust you, you won't trust them.
3) Be extremely clear with each other about what type of support is expected. Full service, I-have-the-root-password-and-nobody-installs-anyt
4) Pooling resources is also extremely beneficial. If you can find a few other small businesses in need of support, the odds of finding and retaining high quality help will increase.
5) And, most importantly, computer support is about more than just fixing mice and installing updates. Especially for small businesses, outsourcing IT means reaping the benefits of more efficient processes than you otherwise would be able to accomplish. Take advantage of those benefits.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
This is exactly what I get paid to do.
We drop in a linux box for a router, and set you up with a vpn from that to out network. We SSH to linux systems, RDP to servers and VNC to desktops all from our office. If it breaks too badly, we head onsite.
We run multiple companies, from 2 people to over 200 people with no problems and minimal cost - if you're in Ottawa, I can help. Otherwise, just look up the smaller IT outsourcing firms. They are always willing to let you keep some control of things. But we also will think your an idiot if you interfere with us keeping things running for you by breaking it.(have had one or two who do that constantly)
The confidentiality is part of the contract, and is about as good as any other outsourced finance or the like.
Just do the standard checking around before choosing someone, there are a lot of pathetic fakes out there too, and I hate cleaning up after one of them has messed up a network.
Anyway...
Enjoy!
On Arrakis: early worm gets the bird. Magister mundi sum!
Individuals who do this are generally cheapest, and sometimes you can get past the trust issue by using a friend or a friend of a friend. On the flip side, they have a tendency to leave for day jobs when times get tight (or be hard to reach when busy if they're moonlighting).
Companies give you a few advantages -- they tend to be more stable (if one person leaves, you still have backup if they're well organized) and they can have a wider variety of expertise (so the odds of needing to bring in other parties is lower). But there are two challenges here. The first is that if they're not sufficiently well organized, you'll sometimes get someone who doesn't know your environment. The second -- if they charge by the hour -- is that no matter how worthy of your trust they are, it's still in their best interests to bill you for as many hours as possible. This means that most of the successful ones either find ways to get you to buy extra work, or don't do the proactive maintenance they should (so they get more revenue from the things that break).
We've taken the approach of managing IT infrastructure for a fixed monthly fee. This is tricky, but after a couple of years of using this model it's coming together. It's a difficult sale, because you have to get customers to agree in advance to pay for hidden IT labor costs (both ongoing minor maintenance and the periodic major incident) -- small companies are used to paying for IT reactively rather than budgeting for it. Also, you need to become actually good at the things that IT organizations always talk about being good at -- sharing information, doing proactive maintenance, documentation, following processes, etc. And the work is generally front-loaded, so most customers aren't profitable until the second year. And this model ends up having a little more overhead (despite being more efficient per customer) so it's hard for the whole thing to be profitable until you've grown enough to have some economies of scale. That said, about two years after converting from an hourly and project model to a fixed-monthly-fee model, we find it working quite well (and we're finally profitable again).