Networks

Ask something
Question Locked

Quantifying IT Staff requirements

0 helpful
5 replies

by itmisc

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

Hi

At what point would you expect an organisation to need a full time IT person to look after their Network?

For a Network of 40PCs,& 3 servers, would a part time Network Administrator be enough? Outside support could also be brought in as needed.

Also,should they be looking for an IT Engineer or an Administrator at that level? There will be wired and wireless networks involved.

All thoughts welcome, to look at all angles of a new project.

5 replies

by thechas

For nearly all of the questions relating to IT staffing level, the first step is to evaluate the impact of downtime.

The greater an impact that network or individual system downtime has on the business, the more important it is to have staff on hand ready to respond.

The next factor is how does the business use it's computers and network. The more sensitive the data, the more important it is to have someone actively monitor the network.

The next factor is the computer skill level of the users. While the impact of low skill users is clear, if you are not allowed to lock down all computers, the high skill users can cause problems too.

This is by no means all of the factors, but some of the main ones that I look at.

Chas

by bigbigboss

Are the 40 pc the same or they are all different ? Are all the people working on those 40 PC doing the same type of job or they are all different ? Why 3 servers ? Do they do different things ? Any network connection to the outside world or other parts of the company ? How many different kind of services running on these servers ? Are there custom applications on these PC's and servers ? Are there web services on these PC's and servers, and who looks after the web pages ?

The more complicated the office is job wise, the more people you need.

You cannot base number of IT staff just using number of PC's and servers. The complexity of the work place is way more important. And, of course, how do yo want down time handled - wait for couple of weeks for you to find someone to fix things, or they need to be up right now ?

Oh, how good are these people using those 40 pc's. Are they quite self-sufficient or do they need a lot of hand holding. Or are they the kind that will bring their own favourite software to the office and install them on their own machine, and spread them around to the rest of the office ?

by itmisc

There's a mixture of PCs across the usual core functions like sales, marketing,development,admin, finance. The servers are e-mail, file and application, and a dedicated sales server. Web pages are looked after already with a combination of internal & external input.We will have to be able to provide facilities for visitors from time to time.
We have a choice of using part-time internal staff with external support at short notice as required, or a dedicated full time IT person.
It's hard to know at this point how much time will be needed to look after it all, but your comments have been very useful, and much appreciated.

by itmisc

Sounds good advice. I suppose our problem at the moment is predicting the level of problems in advance.All downtime is expensive in any organisation, so avoiding it will be a priority.
I hadn't anticipated to much problem caused by high skill users, but maybe I need to take another look at that.
Your advice has been much appreciated.

This discussion is closed to new replies.