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Ask Slashdot: How Can You Find a Good IT Consultant?
Slashdot reader Thelasko says his wife manages a small eight-person business -- but remains unhappy with the company's IT consultant:
She's had endless problems with Windows 10 Pro's update system causing downtime. Anytime she calls the IT consultant, they don't resolve issues to her satisfaction, and the company gets stuck with a large bill. She's resorted to researching and providing support for the company network herself.
The contract is up at the end of the year, and she wants to find a new consultant. The company owner however, doesn't want to switch because all of the work the consultant provided is covered under a "warranty" for 3 years (the company typically gets charged). I don't work in IT myself, and am unable to provide advice. What should they do? How would Slashdot find a reputable consultant?
Leave your best answers in the comments. How can you find a good IT consultant?
The contract is up at the end of the year, and she wants to find a new consultant. The company owner however, doesn't want to switch because all of the work the consultant provided is covered under a "warranty" for 3 years (the company typically gets charged). I don't work in IT myself, and am unable to provide advice. What should they do? How would Slashdot find a reputable consultant?
Leave your best answers in the comments. How can you find a good IT consultant?
On one hand I have never seen a "good consultant", on the other hand, how could you expect a single person to fix the complete and utter mess that the Windows 10 update system is?
I have encountered some quite good freelance "support providers", though. They don't have a website, they don't advertise, they seem to be keeping as quiet as they can, because they get more than enough work just by word of mouth. So the only way to find them is to talk to other comparable businesses in your area.
To be fair, I have worked at some fairly large companies that took a really long time to get a grip on their windows update issues.
They ended up installing some proprietary tool that was sold by our enterprise security vendor. It was not cheap and it was difficult to set up and required frequent attention, (like 2 people to implement over a month and 1/4 person to maintain).
Since then Microsoft has come out with WSUS (Windows Server Update Services), which allow you to stage updates to an internal server then push and verify them as you want. This system would have similar personnel requirements and both systems would require constant attention to verify that updates do not 'break' your other systems.
A few key points:
1. The constant "Security Patch Tuesday" updates will always set your IE and Excel settings to high security
2. This breaks almost all software that requires easy integration from server to client via web services.
3. Paying a person to babysit these problems is hella expensive (in terms of downtime for workers and face time with the IT guy)
4. Setting your Group Policies to disallow changes to certain settings will eventually squash most of these bugs, but there will always be more issues
5. Companies cannot operate with out good security practices, good security people are expensive
TLDR; How fast do you want to go? How much are you willing to pay?