We want to create an IT department, looking for advice on how to start.

Hey, I hope it's ok to post this here in the lounge. I wasn't really sure where else it might go. It's a bit of an out of place question, but I figured it would be nice to get input from the technically minded folks of this site.

My company is looking to create their own IT department. The company focuses on legal work and has roughly 100 people across several states (but mainly in one state) with a mix of laptops, desktops, and smart phones. We're also growing very fast.

Right now all IT help we get has to come from outside companies. Something breaks on Bob's computer? Call an outside company. Jane's monitor won't work? Call an outside company. The 1 document server we have goes down? Call an outside company. We need to set up a new office somewhere else? Call an outside company. (You get the idea)

To try and speed up response time and keep things moving, we'd like to create our own on-staff IT department of perhaps 2-4 people. The problem is that we don't really know what we'll need to make this feasible. Do we need to hire a sys admin of some sort? A netsec guy? Someone who can program? There are so many specialties that we don't know where to start, much less what the expected pay range would be for people at various levels.

I figure a lot of it would depend on the systems we have and where we're going. Like I said earlier, most everyone in our company has a desktop, VoIP phone, a laptop, and a few have company iPhones. We primarily do all our work through e-mail, which is something else we've out-sourced because out mailboxes easily fill 25GB since we move large documents through them.
One thing we've been really looking at is virtualizing everything. If we got rid of all the desktops and switched over to thin clients, then had amazon or godaddy host our servers somewhere, we could easily manage everyone's computer, efficiently manage resource allocation, and easily set up new employees.

If we virtualized everything, would that change the type of people we'd need to hire?

We could really use some guidance and advice as to what to do in order to develop an IT department.

 

It's OK to post this kind of question here, it is technically related and a good question to ask.

My first recommendation would be to speak to a company like Serco who could, if you so wished, take over all your information services and provide them for you.

However, if you do wish to have your own department in-house, I would personally start with a sysadmin. Sysadmin is a generalised role description, and you could fine one person under this title that can do everything you need, from networking including basic security to server virtualisation, to light programming and scripting. If you find this one person (and believe me in this economy it should be easy) they should be able to assess the condition of your infrastructure (whilst you continue to use your current providers) and provide a detailed plan of what and who you need, when, and how. You could also find companies to do this for you. Job descriptions for someone with 5 years or so experience in the US tend to give a salary in the region of $60-80,000

Server virtualisation is a good way to go these days, as you can lower the failure rate of services and increase security by running one service per virtual server if necessary.

Cloud hosting and off-site hosting is also a possibility, but in my personal opinion the technology and the laws surrounding it have not yet matured far enough for me to trust it. For instance, if you lose your internet connection, you lose all services. Another problem is that you might not know exactly where your data is, and therefore what laws affect it, or possibly what laws affect it en-route to and from the offsite location. However, it can be cheaper than having your own infrastructure as you pay for what you use, and it is easy and quick to configure up more space or capacity, and you get nice predictable bills every month, and you don't have to worry about supporting much of the infrastructure.

 

Hi Abusementpark, good question.
I am the Sys Admin for an Australian niche company representing several global fashion brands with about 30 employees and showrooms in five of the states in Australia. My job role involves specifying and buying new hardware and software, fixing PCs in situ using Teamviewer, looking after the file server, network hardware, hosting accounts, domain names, SSL Certificates, Mail servers, UPSs, the digital phone system, printers, mobile phones, air conditioning and I also make program changes to our accounting software as required as well as debug and rectify software problems when they arise. In fact I am the dogs body for everything LOL We have several websites which I farm out to contractors as my qualification as an Electronics Engineer mean I am excellent with hardware and software things but not very creative in a graphic or artistic sense so knowing this limitation we use graphics designers and advertising consultants to design our websites and online stores. Currently I am investigating moving to the Cloud but as collinsl quite rightly mentions

and this is currently a bit of a stumbling block but I am sure there will be a solution where we may just mirror a server or something even if it only keeps head office admin going because after all this is only a worst case scenario type strategy and probably wouldn't happen I have been working for this company for over 10 years and they have only lost their internet connection twice and both times for less than 4 hours :cool

My best advice is to try and keep it in-house and look for someone with broad IT / hardware experience who is a motivated self starter and knows what he can and can't do. You don't want someone who says he can do everything but when the crunch comes can't deliver on his promises causing expensive downtime possibly causing other staff to miss their deadlines. A good Sys Admin can do the work of several help desk script kiddies so is well worth the extra money he / she will be requesting. Before you advertise the position you should sit down with all the stakeholders and find out what are their IT requirements and IT needs going forward and then draft up an accurate job description so the applicants can accurately assess whether they can meet or exceed your needs. An accurate job description is very important from a professional point of view because it offers protection to both the prospective employee and also the company should things go awry.

My experience would be to choose an in-house solution rather than outsource as this way you retain total control of your outcomes and the IT Department runs to your company's timetable. On the other hand with contractors you may find like my company recently discovered when urgent changes to our website were required and we had to wait while our usual contractors finished a job for someone else before doing our unscheduled job. This situation doesn't happen very often but when it does it can leave the company in a bit of a predicament and in our case having to delay the release of new product and missing the global launch date by two weeks thus losing any global advertising momentum. If you use Micro$oft products then an MVP qualification would be very handy but more valuable would be someone with expert knowledge of your accounting software and your reporting applications. Sound networking knowledge especially relating to security and virus/malware prevention is a must and now as smartphones and ipads are all the go then knowing how to integrate them into the network is also essential. Another valuable skill the Sys Admin should have is being able to quickly diagnose and fix all manner of hardware problems at all levels as downtime is very expensive and can also be extremely disruptive to company business. Good communication skills are also very important especially when fixing things in a remote location and you are relying on other people to give you feedback regarding the problem. Of course there are many other skills that would be useful in specific situations but this should be assessed on a case by case need.

Another thing worth mentioning is that I only go into the office one day a week for physical backups and to check the hardware for any signs of trouble. Generally I work from my home office or if I am away somewhere I use my laptop and this is very cost effective as I save on a 45 minute each way drive to head office thus saving 1½ hours travelling time each day:cool
The software I use can turn remote PCs on with nobody needing to be present so I can do updates and system maintenance after hours whenever I feel like it as long as it gets done in a timely fashion :-D

 

Another point I forgot to mention is that it might be worth your while looking for a sysadmin with Linux experience. If you are unsure of what Linux is, it is a normally free operating system group to rival Windows. It comes in many "distributions" made by different people for different characteristics, like having a small resource utilisation or specialised for file serving, or for serving websites, or for having the most number of options available for how to use it.

The great thing about Linux is that if it is configured and maintained correctly, it can be more robust and reliable than Windows. I am not suggesting this for your desktop PCs, but for any new servers you may need. It can be made to interact with Windows fully, and paid support is available from a wide variety of sources.

Another thing to consider here is that if you hire a SysAdmin, he/she is likely to want to standardise your equipment. In the long term this will save you money through reducing support times and the difficulty of supporting a wide variety of systems, but it might cost you a bit to start off with.