IT Consultants or do it yourself???

I did a bunch of things that was suggested. I sat down and wrote how much time it would take me to do the rollout myself. I factored in the current network and any issues that arise I would have to stop the rollout for. I compared that to the consulting company using 6 people and 46 hour quote to get the job done compared to my 3-4 week time frame. I compared all 6 of them's knowledge and experience vs my 3 years. The CEO looked and said OK. FINALLY!!!! The company is feed up with the current systems limitations and it's starting to affect production and sales. The computers and servers have been ordered. Arrival time is a week before Christmas. We are planning to begin the rollout the first week in Jan. Thanks EVERYONE for your input. It definitely helped this newbie.

Why not work with the consultants, that way the work gets done on time and you work with them and learn at the same time. You oversee the project which and still have time to perform your daily tasks.

I would tell him it would take x number of hours multiplied by your wage & that number is more than the difference in the bid. Not only that, but it would take you away from your other duties. Even if you make $25/hour and at +2 hours/per machine & @+8 hours/server, 2 hours/VPN, and 4 hours travel time, I'm sure you'll come up with a greater number than $800.

I work at a school were I am the only IT person looking after 5 servers and 350 workstations.
We did an upgrade 2 years ago all new servers and new software (NT4 to Win2K srver). We had our supplier come in and do all the insatllations of both the hardware and software.
The problem is that there is always something that will go wrong because of so many variables. If your CEO does not see the value of spending $800.00 more, then I am afraid he should not be CEO of a company. Our consultant took images of all our servers and did an update in a test enviornment which you cannot do. This was to iron out any problems (and there were) before the actual live update. If you are the only IT person at this company my advise is, DO NOT do the upgrade yourself.

Having over four decades of exposures and experiences on both sides of consulting my vote is spend the $800.
The value add you get for this amount is your ability to continue running day to day operations, your change management vendor alliance control on all the adverbal stuff that they will have to jump through and most of all a well written service level agreement between your team and their team that can be written with penalities just in case they don't meet your standards as well as you can.
This gives both your management just cause for the $800. and shows them how much more value add you bring to them in not only keep things going; but, able to orchestate the future at the same time.

Obviously, you need the help. With that little price difference, I am wondering whether the consulting company is the best one to choose. In any event, your management has a poor decision making process. Try to sell them on the costs the will be produced if it is done poorly. Impacts on business, lost business and employee production time if the new system fails. I would use these costs to argue for a competitive alternative analysis, select the right consulting company wiht a successful, verified history and work with them to acquire the skills during the whole planning and delivery process. Pick up all of the new skills. Then look of a new job where the management has the skill to make good decisions.

We have 180 users that 3 of us take care of. We just migrated to a new Exchange server, and have been working on it for the last week getting setting changes made on each users workstation. Your CEO has to realize to save money may interrupt business until you get finished. Which is better, spending money or losing money not being able to do business at full capacity?

There's a post from Rocky that said the company doing the work gets a 10% cut from Dell, so the real profit to the company is closer to $6000.
Even in my most desparate times a few years ago, I wouldn't do a setup for $40 each :)

Advice: Prepare a memo to CEO... and advise him/her of the pros and cons of both options. Give him/her a breakdown of the time and financial implications with respect to each option.
Note: Your situation is not uncommon... too many times, CEOs simply do not understand and need to be brought up to speed on the details of the workplace. Good luck!

Trockii:

Don't do all that work yourself. You know how things can go wrong. I suggest, you be firm with the CEO, tell him it is too much work for one person. Don't put yourself in a postion to get fired. Guess who gets blamed if there is a problem(s)? Send him a detailed E mail explaining that the $800.00 is definately worth the money. YOu can ssist the IT company to learn and help get it odne faster, but do not do it yourself. Just my 2C's

Besxt of luck, keep me posted,

Jess
jporter32@cox.net

I have been on both sides of this fence, as a manager and as a consultant. I have almost 25 years in IT.

The first question you need to answer is can you do this yourself?? The second question is $800 worth your job??

The $800 difference is about 1% difference between the two values you mentioned. However the extra $800 can mean the difference between your job and your career. Many an inexperienced IT professional has tried what you are trying to do by theirselves, only to have to 1. either redo it several times to get it correct and end up costing a lot more in your time than $800 or 2. get fired or lost a long-term opportunity because it ended up so screwed up that the company lost faith with you and your abilities.

The extra $800 goes a long ways to having accountability and the extra skill sets to successfully complete this project. I also agree with the prior post about the extra hands to get this accomplished quicker - heck the reduced period of completion should be worth the $800 alone. This will allow you to manage the install, build your project management skills and make you look good AND have a (hopefully) reliable company to fall back on and get additional tech support should something happen along the way.

Thanks,

On one hand, it's worth getting the consultants in if it's only $800 it's a small price to pay to cover your ass. On the other hand, 20 workstations and 2 servers isn't exactly out of this world - you should be able to build the boxes using Ghost and whilst server setup can be tricky in certain situations (are you using Exchange and AD?), it isn't impossible by any means. If you do the job yourself, you will know exactly how everything is set up and it wll all be done as you want it. Also you will learn a lot along the way. Finally, you can manage the risk by doing it in stages, you should be able to set up the servers and a few of workstations and test it all before you go live. Once your happy that all is as it should be you can change over to the new system. Hardest thing may be user education allow plenty of time for this.

There are bad consultancies out there. There are also good consultancies. I hapen to work for one of the latter.

Of course, I don't think I've ever run across one so bad that they actually did the equivalent ot picking up some guy at the bus station and handing him a screwdriver. Besides, if you do that, you don't have to pay him $25/hr.

Well, that was the wrong approach. I wonder why someone would blame the servers for the actions of a stupid admin. That's like giving up a given brand of car because your mechanic never bothered to replace the tired and you had a blowout after 110,000 miles.

Hire a knowledgeable independent consultant as a new full-time employee under you. Many consultants are suffering because of the anemic status of the IT industry right now.

The consultancy might be using something like Nobilis hardware, which is higher quality and often cheaper than Dell.

Consider that you will need to do all the support on that system when it is up and running. If you purchase from a vendor like Dell, they will only support hardware for the life of the warranties. They will charge for software support, no warranty available for that, and you will need to get used to Win XP and server 2k3 on your own with little advise from the vendor at all.
With the consultancy, you will be working with them from the ground up. You will get the benefit of their experience, and will have the opportunity see the details of how the security of the system is set up with them, before the roll out. Tech sent by Dell for set up would be third party, which means there will not be much time spent in planning the infrastructure; and no time spent informing you of how it is set up.
From what you've said in the opening, it seems your boss has a lot of faith in your abilities. If you have been working alone in your IT dept and have been able to keep your system running and secure. Purchasing from vendors may be the best for you and your boss. But if you came into an already established system, the consultancy may be most cost effective in the long run.

That's completely hosed up. That guy needed to be fired.

Your CEO is screwing you on the pay scale. You should be making $25 or $30 for what you're doing. Didn't you say you had three years of solid experience? That's not a whole lot, but it's enough to put you over $20, certainly, no matter where in the States you are. At least, it is for one man running a network of the size of yours.

If possible, the rollout should be phased in on isolated network segments first, then to the primary network, before the systems that are being replaced are removed entirely. This, unfortunately, is rarely possible.

Do what you can to ensure no interruption in network uptime.

He needs probably two network flunkies, on rotating shifts so that one is on-call for eight hours before work and does four hours of duty in the morning, and the other does four hours of duty in the afternoon and is on-call for eight hours after close of business for the day, or something along those lines. Then, when major projects come up, he can have both his flunkies come in and help him do major system rollouts and the like.

As long as he doesn't have that kind of support, he needs to be able to call in consultants for these projects. In a production environment, you don't want one single man doing this. The stakes are too high, and the vulnerabilities inherent in a one-man operation on that scale (as opposed to a small team with a leader) are too significant. It's either consultants for a case like this, or make him a supervisor (and pay him accordingly).

There's an eight hundred dollar difference in the costs, not an eight hundred dollar profit margin. Any vaguely professional consultant will never indicate the actual profit margin for his work like that.

I personally made $300 about three months ago as part of a two-man team doing a total network upgrade in an office with six workstations, one server box, two black-box server appliances, and three network printers. To make only $40 on something as significant as what this thread is discussing would be worse than starvation wages.

Went through half the posts and I think I have a good understanding of your major issues. Cutting it short, it appears you've done your homework and justified the $800 extra for the consultants.

Although it will be exciting to handle the project yourself and gain the learning experience while at it, it will be too costly in time etc as you have other things to do and no assistant. As the single person there, your responsibility is to get the job done - not necessarily to do the job yourself. Good consultants will bring with them a wealth of experience which you could and should tap into.

Whenever feasible and possible, get contractors/consultants to get a job done and pick their experience. That way, single-handedly you could manage a few projects at the same time rather than trying to wrestle each one of them yourself.

If the CEO expects everything to be done in-house than he should have hired additional IT staff. Otherwise, I think he's content with just you managing contractors/consultants so that the company can focus on hiring and managing staff that are directly related to the company's core business. That is your worth to the company.

AZ

Rocky,

As a Professional IT consultant in Boston, Massachusetts I strongly recommend you to explain to the company CEO that spending an extra $800 will turn out to be a safe, productible and wise decision. With you not having no experience on such a master project, if things don't go smooth as planned it will really hurt the companies productivity and even reputation. I have my own IT consulting company and I have seen small companies destroy their businesses because with similar situations as you face today. Plus, how does he expect you to take care of the office end-users request while working on this project without an IT staff of at least two?

If the decision is for you to handle this by yourself I which you the best of luck. If I can be of any help feel free to e-mail me.

Roger.

Your question and AM's excellent response sparked some questions in my mind. Being an independent consultant myself, I am pretty skeptical about what exactly this outside consultant is going to do for you for only $800 more than the hardware cost. I would urge you to examine closely, and make sure you have in writing, exactly what they are going to do for you for that price. Some questions I have:

1. Is the hardware/software configuration the same or equivalent to the one you checked at Dell?
2. Does their hardware come with the same/equivalent warranties and service to back up the quality of the equipment?
3. In addition to the points brought up by AM, make sure you know EXACTLY what their price includes. For example, are they going to configure a standardized desktop, install any additional software that your users need (other than the basic OS), connect the machines to the network and make sure the networking components are working properly, etc., etc. You can probably think of more. The point is, you need to think of all the things that might need to be done to complete the installation and then find out what they will and will not include in their price. Some or all of the things I mentioned may be things you will do yourself anyway, but you just need to be sure you're getting a fair price for what they are providing.

I'm in general agreement with the answers above - $800 is a piddling amount compared to the work it takes to configure and install $60,000 worth of equipment. That's why I'm a bit skeptical about what exactly they are going to do. I would be much surprised if their price includes more than pretty much delivering the equipment, setting it up and making sure it boots up.

I wish you the best of luck on this project. No matter which way you go, it's bound to be a good learning experience!

Pull the database files out of that exclusion list.
Three words - Binary Long Object.

Just because noone has done it effectively yet doesn't mean it's not coming.

One waay or the other or even some different ones, when it works it'll cost more.

Still, you have to focus on getting your job done the best way, written and unwritten job description wise and sometimes a consultants the way to go.

Don't plan on it really only being 800.00$ though, even if the CEO needs to think that is what happened.

All of these may seem to be a daunting task: Lots of servers, lots of configurations, VPNs and so on. But you will be missing out on one heck of a learning experience that will make you a total network administrator (plus the fact that having consultants may deprive you of absolute control over your network and security). Like you, Im the only overall IT adminstrator of 6 companies! We have 4 separate networks connected by wireless bridges and VPNs connecting 70 computers + 6 servers. Before i hired 2 assistants (hardware technician & software admin) I did most of the work (and I mean everything!).

We do not have a single branded PC. We buy only the parts and assemble them ourselves. On the average it only costs us USD500/PC(with XP Pro,Office...) Hardware and software installation is pretty much routine once you get used to it. If you do it right the first time, these units typically last a year before you have to reformat them again. The bulk of your work will then be on maintenance (updating anti viruses, checking connections etc).

What really helps me in this kind of job is the constant research, practice (and lotsa net admin buddies who i steal ideas from). My boss has gotten to know me real well coz of the connectivity we have (and so will you!). Just take the plunge! There is no better way to learn than to have practical experience.

In your request you state the price of the hardware only for do it yourself. You also need to include your own time & salary. And also the cost involved in how long it would take to do the upgrade as you are doing it yourself.

This gotcha may have been discussed already, but I thought I would mention it.

I have a feeling if you do a true cost analysis for do it yourself you will find that the consultants are actually cheaper.

Nobody ever thinks of their own time and effort when doing these kinds of things.

Geesh, I can't believe this. For a mere extra 1.2% you can get a consultant to help you out and you still can do your day-to-day tasks! Come on, it's 60,000 order! What kind of CEO is that?

Sounds like mine... to tell you the truth.

Sounds like you need a Project Management Plan.

I agree with this train of thought wholeheartedly and in fact employ this within our own dept. Well educated and experienced answer.

as it has been suggested if you are the IT guy, it would be ideal to prove to them that you can manage it; I would recommend a simulation at home with a Client-Server configuration, and maybe 2 Servers if you can - the Server2003 and Windows XP shuld be available as Trial editions on the MS site.
I think the main point here is not the $800 but whether you want to grab the opportunity of showing your mates who is in charge of the IT. :)If you dont try you will never know...Anyway I would definitely do it myself...Good luck

The original poster of this thread, trockii, has started a followup thread detailing his resolution of the issue.

https://www.techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=3&threadID=165095&start=0

Thanks for letting us know how things turned out!

If you have the knowledge DO IT YOURSELF, document what you accomplished and use it to ask for a raise!!

As usually happens, it sounds like the CEO doesn't really know what he's doing. But he does control the purse strings so you're going to have to find a way to make him understand.

Hi

If you setup the servers first which will not impact the users. Then build a master image for the PC's and in the image attach the Pc's to the new domain. Then deploy the new PC's a few at a time. Setup a trust between the original servers and the new ones and use robocopy to copy the data from your original servers (assuming they are Microsoft boxes). You can use a program called print mig from Microsoft to migrate printers from server to server.

I would recomand a VPN appliance rather then setup one of the servers to carry this out.

You think you are going to put this together as well as an IT consulting company?? Heh!
Dell is only selling the hardware, not converting, installing, listening to complaints, etc.
Especially since your boss thinks $800 might be saved. He's nuts.
If this quote had of been for $2,000 above Dell, it still would have been a steal.
The IT consulting will make sure it works the first time, every time.

I too had the same problem 2 years ago. We wentt from two Lans 75 miles apart Novell 5.0 to a LAN/WAN enviroment via T1 upgrading to MS 2000 including Terminal server, Groupwise to Exchange and from our hosted corporate website to hosting our own via IIS web server. Being that I run a network for a CPA office and am the only IT person we compromised on a local vendor that I worked along with and did as much as I could alone. I moved alot of the info between servers at night. We also installed a Sonicwall firewall and I had to learn to configure VPN clients. I learned alot coming over as CNE but had nevr touched MS. I also ended up imaging all 98 PCs to XP Pro by purchasing and learning Ghost. My take is get the help...but compromise on price on the things you can do or assit the contrator with. To this day that is how we handle things...

Good luck,
Rob