Transitioning From Small Shop IT To Enterprise?

Imaginary Friendly asks: "I'm the 3rd guy in a three-person IT firm. We're good and we're expanding. Our clients range from three computers to 30, with our largest client having six servers. We can handle the work but, thanks to my efforts and love (or just luck), I may be signing up two new clients who have 200 networked computers each. We're spread thin as it is, and hiring competent IT staff has been difficult. We're now doing 60-hour work weeks, so re-education has remained passive. How do we transition from manual rebuilds and CD deployments, to full scale (proper) IT administration?"

Comments

drink the koolaid

[Gothmolly]

Since 90+% of your clients will be MSFT shops, drink the koolaid. Get an MSDN subscription. Buy a big multicore machine, and you can all learn on VMs. Master all the MSFT (RIS, SMS, etc) and bolt-on tools (NetPro, GPA, etc). Learn to do everything the MSFT way, and you won't starve (at least until Linux takes over, if and when). In your spare time, look at alternative desktop environments for tip and tricks.

First...

[misleb]

I would seriously recommend turning away those bigger clients for now until you first get the staffing to handle it. You can try to pick up the clients later. Maybe they'll hire someone else, but there is a chance that they will be unhappy with that someone else and come to you. You don't want to take the clients on now and screw up and ruin your reputation. If at all possible, hire someone (or multiple people) who already have experience with larger networks and kill two birds with one stone. I don't think it is really worth it to give you advice here on how to manage larger networks. You've got staffing problems. You need to address that first.

-matthew

Re:First...

[KillerCow]

Ditto.

By your own admission, you are stretched thin and can't handle your current load. Now you want to take on new clients, but not just any new clients, new clients with large needs that you don't know how to address.

Do you really think that you are going to be able handle your current load (which you say that you can't already), the load from these 2 new big clients (whom are each about 7 times bigger than your current largest client), and be able to figure out how to change the way that you do things to meet the demands of these new clients (when do you plan to have time for this)? No, no, and no, on all counts.

Fix your staffing problems.

Serve your existing clients without killing yourself, then expand.

You are risking your current client base in order to add more business that you admittedly can't handle. You will likely ruin your existing reputation and relationships, just to pick up some clients that you can't serve. It's hard to say "no" to new business, but sometimes you have to. If you grow to fast, it will get out of control.

Establish Procedures, hire someone who knows them

[StewedSquirrel]

Hire someone who knows corporate IT.

Please.

I've dealt with too many "three man IT shops" who treat IT work like auto mechanics. "try it, tweak something, try it again, tweak something, try it again, tweak something, try it again, tweak something". All the while, the company is offline. Corporate IT is about establishing procedures BEFORE the issues happen and about having backup plans for WHEN they happen, all of which is designed to minimize downtime.

Working with an office of 2-3 people... if you're diddling with their router for 2 hours, your time is probably worth more than the time the company has lost. But if you diddle with 200 people's connection for 2 hours, you've just cost their company $20,000, possibly more. Imagine what sort of investments could have prevented that downtime, how much cheaper they are than that downtime and why you should have implimented them :-)

FYI, Documentation is more important than you think.

Stew

"good help is so hard to find"

[SuperBanana]

Businesses love to complain about how hard it is to find employees when they're being cheap on labor, or how they can't retain good help.

There's no talent problem; there's a "how the IT industry treats workers" problem. Here's the current IT talent pool "problem", as I see it:

• The IT industry is one of the few industries that seems almost completely unwilling to recognize general skill/talent, and expects to hire someone who they can drop in and have productive in a matter of hours. It doesn't work that way- in the IT industry or any other industry. Every new employee needs training and familiarization, every new hire causes lost productivity. GET OVER IT. There are industries where corporations send workers to a WEEK OR MORE of training before they've "worked" a single hour.
• Loads of IT workers were encouraged to drop out of / skip college because their technical skills were all they supposedly cared about. Now it's "degree or don't apply." So much for technical skill.
• Employers and the industry are doing nothing to make training/certification easy or inexpensive. Redhat certification, for example, costs thousands of dollars- out of reach of most job seekers. Furthermore, loads of employers are refusing to invest in their workerforce (continuing education/training) and/or treat them like shit. They're then shocked when said employee's performance drops and they get fired/"laid off"
• Employers are abusing "temp to perm" and "temp" positions, cheating the unemployment and benefits systems and tricking workers into thinking that, if they're good little drones, they'll get the job at the end of 3 months- when in reality, the company will show them the door with a silly little excuse.
• HR departments use all sorts of fancy technology to effectively dump your resume in the trash can without a single eyeball seeing it, after cheerfully sending you a "thanks for sending in your resume!" letter.
• Employers post insane requirements looking for people with a skillset that goes on for PAGES and have grossly unrealistic expectations for years-of-experience. For even the most mundane schlep, I mean help, desk positions. Candidates respond by simply flooding employers with any position the candidate thinks they might be remotely qualified for.

Is it any wonder that IT staff leave the industry in droves after just a few years?

Read This Book! Live This Book!

[DaGoodBoy]

The Practice of System and Network Administration by Thomas A. Limoncelli and Christine Hogan is the definitive reference to build, and more importantly, maintain any network and system infrastructure. It is written in an accessible style with plenty of real-world examples that focus on the importance of key infrastructure. It is not a "How To" book exactly, rather it offers advice and specifications for the kind of support infrastructure you have to build to be successful supporting large system and network infrastructure. If you are familiar with this book, please add your comments on it.