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So I've only read the most recent posts, but I think there are two different ways of looking at this: 1. Outsourcing to save money (this seems to be the most common) 2. Outsourcing for expertise. We actually do the latter, and often interact with the former. The painful part of the process is dealing with incompetence due to outsourcing. This is a widespread issue in IT, and I think is actually hurting big business. We often come across customers that have outsourced their IT and those outsourced people don't even understand the simplest of technologies. Depending upon the company it can take years for them to realize their mistake. You get what you pay for. We sell a different level of support, based mostly around our products and market space (Advertising & Print). I can't remember the last time I encountered a tech with a higher level of experience than what is available here. For our customers they tend to defer to us for the complicated answers. Customers will pay for it, but we do find ourselves arguing the point often enough, just not with the folks that count (typically bean-counters). So you do get what you pay for. Much of outsourced IT is built around Windows Desktop Support with a bit of Windows server support. Paying more and getting more, you may get a reasonably skilled MIS/Enterprise IT support that will be well versed in Microsoft products, networking, and perhaps some SAN/NAS products. However my experience is that *NIX skills (includes Solaris, HPUX, AIX and Linux) is something you actually need to pay a premium for. Often there are in-house admins, and higher-level systems engineers get contracted for projects. So day-to-day administration is always available, but complicated projects or issues that directly affect the bottom-line get either T&M resources or contract experts applied. Last point: GOOD Linux system engineers are very difficult to come by. Competant Linux admins are out there, but it's not always easy to tell them from mediocre Linux admins. Tinkerers calling themselves admins, and admins calling themselves engineers are far too common. Grant M. -- Grant Mongardi Senior Systems Engineer NAPC gmongardi at napc.com http://www.napc.com/ blog.napc.com 781.894.3114 phone 781.894.3997 fax NAPC | technology matters
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