Why Hyperconverged For Small Business

I am the new internal IT guy for the company being screwed. We are a small manufacturing company. The previous IT guy was not really an IT guy and never took an interest in his job. I think the VAR identified this pretty quickly and are trying to one-up themselves with what they can get away with.

I'm no slouch but I am also not an IT expert. My background is mostly software development and manufacturing automation but also have experience with things like ERP and MES. Most jobs I take are with small companies and I end up doing or assisting with a lot of the IT work.

My frustration is that I don't even do this full time and can't find a single drop of value this VAR is adding even though they claim to be experts at this.

woodbutcher

@scottalanmiller

Thanks for all the links. I've got some homework to do for sure and appreciate the guidance.

Dashrender

Sounds like no one at the company is head of IT - well, the owner is of course, but he's just shuffed it off onto this VAR.

If the company really wants to do IT right and be a business, this is something they need some redirection in - perhaps you can fully step into the role, though it would require a frank discussion with owners/management so they understand the situation, otherwise you might be just fighting against management's wises and everyone just ends up unhappy.

scottalanmiller

@woodbutcher said in Why Hyperconverged For Small Business:

The previous IT guy was not really an IT guy and never took an interest in his job. I think the VAR identified this pretty quickly and are trying to one-up themselves with what they can get away with.

It's a standard model. "Fake" IT guy (or lazy, over his head, politically screwed, fill in the blank here) finds a sales guy that is willing to do something that kind of looks like his job for him, for "free" and gets the company to pay for it. The company gets insanely screwed while the VAR makes loads of money for being unethical, and the "IT guy" gets away without having to do the job he is being paid for. So the company pays double for something they aren't getting at all (IT guidance and protection.)

The tiniest audit or thought from management catches this. It's impossible hide. But it exposes how often CEOs take zero interest in IT and totally ignore it.

scottalanmiller

@woodbutcher Enjoy! jaja

scottalanmiller

@woodbutcher said in Why Hyperconverged For Small Business:

My frustration is that I don't even do this full time and can't find a single drop of value this VAR is adding even though they claim to be experts at this.

That's how sales people work. And that your company had engaged a sales person to be an expert, it is caveat emptor. The sales person isn't pretending not to be a sales person, so 100%, absolutely all fault lies in the management at your company for engaging a sales guy and acting like he's an IT guy. As a business, it is their job to properly engage experts and hire them. And only themselves that are put at risk, so the decision is theirs.

scottalanmiller

@woodbutcher said in Why Hyperconverged For Small Business:

I'm no slouch but I am also not an IT expert. My background is mostly software development and manufacturing automation but also have experience with things like ERP and MES. Most jobs I take are with small companies and I end up doing or assisting with a lot of the IT work.

Then bringing in a real MSP/ITSP is the proper course of action. A qualified MSP will protect you and save you a ton of money. Going to a VAR means the company is throwing money away to avoid critical thinking. It's a common approach as it is quick, easy and very, very few people point out the obvious flaws in the process so it caters well to hubris.

scottalanmiller

Needing an MSP is 100% the way that any company under thousands of employees with a huge IT investment should run. You need a minimal amount of dedicated skills, and a really broad range of skills to be able to handle basic stuff.

For example.... it takes a minimum of three staff just to cover phones on a normal helpdesk, not even to have skills. To be able to support what you have today, you need Windows, ESXi, and some app skills plus networking and security. Just at a minimum from what we know.

But to make proper decisions about your needs, you need loads and loads of operating system, platform / hypervisor, networking, vendor, supply chain, ERP and other skills across a huge range so that decisions like what architecture should you use, backup and restore plans, performance, OS design, application management, patching, high availability needs, blah blah blah can be done. No VAR (easily literally none) has those skills and even if they were able to have them, they'd never let you talk to them because they'd constantly stop you from spending so much money.

NOthing will come close to being as cheap as having a good MSP. They will meet or beat any possibly in house IT cost and do so with a potential for more longevity and stability. Finding a good MSP is really hard, but so is finding a good employee. You can't just hire anyone and you can't just hire any MSP. You have to check why they make sense. Are they big enough to have the range of skills and support you need today (AND for the future.) Are they stable? Do they have a reputation to put at risk? Are they fly by night or established? Are they a professional MSP or just some guys who say that they are an MSP while being out of work because they are otherwise unemployable? Are they not even an MSP at all (or even IT guys) and just sales guys masquerading as IT because they know that it is easy to dupe customers?

gjacobse

@scottalanmiller said in Why Hyperconverged For Small Business:

For example.... it takes a minimum of three staff just to cover phones on a normal helpdesk, not even to have skills

Not to take away from the topic, but here we have a full total IT Department of seven.

Director; Infrustructer Engineer; EMR Analyst; IT Lead / Generalist; and three IT Generalists.

The four of us are split between
Service desk (phones), Break Fix, Projects which include every facet of the company. Some days we really need more staff due to the projects... Like the phones, Active Directory rebuild, ...

scottalanmiller

@gjacobse said in Why Hyperconverged For Small Business:

Director; Infrustructer Engineer; EMR Analyst; IT Lead / Generalist; and three IT Generalists.

And in that you have a manager and the EMR Analyst isn't likely IT. So you have four generalists and an Infrastructure Engineer.

So who has the deep systems skills, the platform skills, the networking skills... it's only generalists. And IE is a silly term... that's just a more senior generalist without networking. I wouldn't call it a full team. It's more like "good and highly costly internal coverage for day to day stuff with little or no consideration for the skills necessary for critical decision making."

The reason that those skills are lacking is because there is no way to be current or have experience. Even your senior people are in a tiny environment with no peers and have to make decisions only once a decade or so, likely making an entire career at the company in between major decision processes. So they never, ever get to flex the muscles that are must important for their jobs. So everything outside of mundane day to day is likely either being outsourced or overlooked. And that's how companies get really screwed. The day to day work is the easy part.

scottalanmiller

@gjacobse said in Why Hyperconverged For Small Business:

Not to take away from the topic, but here we have a full total IT Department of seven.
Director; Infrustructer Engineer; EMR Analyst; IT Lead / Generalist; and three IT Generalists.

Big questions that have to come up from an IT management perspective...

How do you justify the time and cost of a director, and keep them interested, when they are managing just three people (direct) with three indirect reports? That's so tiny, there's no need for a manager at that size. What value is the director adding?
How much infrastructure is there to keep an engineer busy? What do they do all day?
Four generalists feels like a bit much with no structure. Typically already by that size you have people with different skills or levels so that you can break up who is working on printers vs. who is doing tough troubleshooting.

Basically it feels overloading and lopsided. Enough people and management to support thousands of users. But no allowance for the key skills that would be the differentiators to the company.

gjacobse

@scottalanmiller said in Why Hyperconverged For Small Business:

@gjacobse said in Why Hyperconverged For Small Business:

Not to take away from the topic, but here we have a full total IT Department of seven.
Director; Infrustructer Engineer; EMR Analyst; IT Lead / Generalist; and three IT Generalists.

Big questions that have to come up from an IT management perspective...

How do you justify the time and cost of a director, and keep them interested, when they are managing just three people (direct) with three indirect reports? That's so tiny, there's no need for a manager at that size. What value is the director adding?

How much infrastructure is there to keep an engineer busy? What do they do all day?

Four generalists feels like a bit much with no structure. Typically already by that size you have people with different skills or levels so that you can break up who is working on printers vs. who is doing tough troubleshooting.

Basically it feels overloading and lopsided. Enough people and management to support thousands of users. But no allowance for the key skills that would be the differentiators to the company.

Well of course I don't / can't answer that but so well. The six of us report to him.
We have sixty 'servers' fifteen of which are RDS for the EMR (no - please don't asked. It'll just give me another headache. @Dashrender uses basically the same EMR only direct and doesn't have the bloat we do). Additionally we have four primary offices and ten satillite offices in schools. Also have two pharmacy offices, and a two chair mobile dental bus.
The four of us 'grunts' deal with all the day today stuff including installing toner at two offices (uhm, again - please don't ask.) ADUC is a mess and that's a project, we have nearly a hundred printers which includes some forty-five Zebra printers. We are replacing some lease printers with new cloud print Lexmark (Follow You type system) which has seen set backs due to product availablity as well as integration issues.

I'd wager a guess that if you 'toured' our network and work flows you would laugh until you decided to retire and move back to the US.....