The perfect IT network?

[HelloWill]

We are an innovation company and we pride ourselves with disrupting industries and forward thinking. We need help simplifying our network and making it easy. In our mind, our network infrastructure should be like oxygen: you need it to live but you don't have to think about it. Our vision is to have everything so simplified and centrally managed that we literally wouldn't need IT staff full-time. SSO, simplified backups and storage, the works. Easy, simple, centralized. I want to throw out the status quo of existing networks and build the perfect Oxygen infrastructure. Let's consider our network an open canvas where money is no object, what is the way that everything simply works? How can we set it up so we don't have to constantly worry about it? What does an ideal network look like? Where is the IT industry going and how do we create the future?

Network Map: http://imgur.com/p1sHDjd

 

[dave_the_nerd]

That's not a map, that's a very abstract conceptual diagram.

You get rid of full time IT staff by cloud-sourcing everything and everything. There are numerous companies that operate as IT subcontractors and provide everything from colocation and server maintenance to helpdesk. But unless you're a pretty small firm in terms of # of employees, you'll probably find it cheaper and better to keep internal people around. (Even if you really, really don't like them.)

What are the physical demands of your workspace? (number of employees, computer on every desk, size of offices, video conferencing, etc.)

Thing is, there's really no way to set things up and just "make it work." Generally speaking, this stuff requires maintenance and management. Often a lot. An IT team of 4-5 people probably could automate one guy out of a job, but nobody wants to draw straws and somebody might want to take a vacation sometime. Smaller than that in an organization of any size and you're probably not working with a lot of slack.

 

[imagoon]

The first step to your Oxygen infrastructure is to step back realized that you don't know what you don't know. Your desire to make everything "easy" tells me that you have no knowledge on how this stuff works.

A great example being mentioning "SSO" and "Easy" in the same sentence. The concept of one password sounds easy until you actually have to use kerberos, SAML, certificates, trusts, authentication sources, POST events, SFP, LDP etc to actually make it work.

 

[Gryz]

I think you should look at SDN (Software Defined Networking).

With SDN everything becomes easier, cheaper and more flexible. You sound like your company is perfect for SDN.

 

[her209]

 

[her209]

 

[azazel1024]

You need plants to make oxygen though. You might not have to think about it, but you need it and someone has to keep making it.

Unless very small, there really is no such thing as a company without a full time IT staff. You can outsource the stuff, but again, unless small, generally that is more expensive in the end than an actual IT staff that is full time.

Think about your stuff at home, I'd wager you've had IT problems of some sort at some time. Could be as simple as the internet not working and you call your ISP. It could be a computer dies, or you lose some files from a crash and try to recover them, etc., etc. Maybe you do it yourself, or maybe you have a family member or friend who helps you, or maybe you call your ISP and/or local computer repair shop every single time.

Now take that and multiply it by the number of employees you have, plus a large extra fudge factor for whatever extra shared and networking resources you have. Pretty quickly you are at "needing a person handling this stuff full time who knows what they are doing".

In my limited SOHO and SMB experience, the HO part can generally be up to the end user with a tiny bit of knowledge. The SO part can often be an employee who "knows this stuff" as part of their job and/or contract it out to a company the specializes in the small office IT support. Once you get to SMB, where you start talking more medium business (and by this I mean generally once you are talking offices over about 20 employees), you REALLY need a full time IT person. Ideally a small team, especially once numbers start getting up there on the business size.

20 employee business might be able to handle contracting it out still, barely. A 50 person business probably can't. A 100 person business DEFFINITELY can't.

PS When I speak of business size, I am generally talking about "white collar"/people using computers/computing devices for most of their work. I don't mean, for example, a resteraunt which might have 40 employees, but 2-3 POS machines, maybe a couple of kitchen order trackking machines and maybe the manager has a computer in their office in the back and that is it.

Downtime, document loss COSTS!

 

[william.davis]

The first step to your Oxygen infrastructure is to step back realized that you don't know what you don't know. Your desire to make everything "easy" tells me that you have no knowledge on how this stuff works.

A great example being mentioning "SSO" and "Easy" in the same sentence. The concept of one password sounds easy until you actually have to use kerberos, SAML, certificates, trusts, authentication sources, POST events, SFP, LDP etc to actually make it work.

imagoon,

What HelloWill is trying to say is that he needs it to be easy to the end-user. A good analogy is the push start car - very easy to use, but most likely very complicated under the hood.

So when he mentioned SSO and easy in the same sentence, imagine the accounting person using the system - no need to remember 100 different passwords, it simply just works for him/her, but the IT side (installation, configuration, etc..) was probably a pain in the arse.

 

[stlcardinals]

imagoon,

What HelloWill is trying to say is that he needs it to be easy to the end-user. A good analogy is the push start car - very easy to use, but most likely very complicated under the hood.

So when he mentioned SSO and easy in the same sentence, imagine the accounting person using the system - no need to remember 100 different passwords, it simply just works for him/her, but the IT side (installation, configuration, etc..) was probably a pain in the arse.

You related to HelloWill?

 

[Chapbass]

You need plants to make oxygen though. You might not have to think about it, but you need it and someone has to keep making it.

Unless very small, there really is no such thing as a company without a full time IT staff. You can outsource the stuff, but again, unless small, generally that is more expensive in the end than an actual IT staff that is full time.

Think about your stuff at home, I'd wager you've had IT problems of some sort at some time. Could be as simple as the internet not working and you call your ISP. It could be a computer dies, or you lose some files from a crash and try to recover them, etc., etc. Maybe you do it yourself, or maybe you have a family member or friend who helps you, or maybe you call your ISP and/or local computer repair shop every single time.

Now take that and multiply it by the number of employees you have, plus a large extra fudge factor for whatever extra shared and networking resources you have. Pretty quickly you are at "needing a person handling this stuff full time who knows what they are doing".

In my limited SOHO and SMB experience, the HO part can generally be up to the end user with a tiny bit of knowledge. The SO part can often be an employee who "knows this stuff" as part of their job and/or contract it out to a company the specializes in the small office IT support. Once you get to SMB, where you start talking more medium business (and by this I mean generally once you are talking offices over about 20 employees), you REALLY need a full time IT person. Ideally a small team, especially once numbers start getting up there on the business size.

20 employee business might be able to handle contracting it out still, barely. A 50 person business probably can't. A 100 person business DEFFINITELY can't.

PS When I speak of business size, I am generally talking about "white collar"/people using computers/computing devices for most of their work. I don't mean, for example, a resteraunt which might have 40 employees, but 2-3 POS machines, maybe a couple of kitchen order trackking machines and maybe the manager has a computer in their office in the back and that is it.

Downtime, document loss COSTS!

I disagree on the number of users you're referring to. The previous company I worked for did outsourced IT for companies, and we had several that were 80-150 users that we would maintain no problem. A lot depends on the contract they sign. Most of the contracts we had was an all you can eat type plan, where we were basically internal IT, we just worked for a separate company.

 

[imagoon]

I disagree on the number of users you're referring to. The previous company I worked for did outsourced IT for companies, and we had several that were 80-150 users that we would maintain no problem. A lot depends on the contract they sign. Most of the contracts we had was an all you can eat type plan, where we were basically internal IT, we just worked for a separate company.

I agree. A proper MSP can handle 500+ person companies fairly easy. Granted they generally start dedicating people that client at that point.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

imagoon,

What HelloWill is trying to say is that he needs it to be easy to the end-user. A good analogy is the push start car - very easy to use, but most likely very complicated under the hood.

So when he mentioned SSO and easy in the same sentence, imagine the accounting person using the system - no need to remember 100 different passwords, it simply just works for him/her, but the IT side (installation, configuration, etc..) was probably a pain in the arse.

There is no technological magic bullet for this.

If you expect the end users to be "lusers" and the IT people to fix everything, then all the end users should have to do is make a phone call or submit a web ticket. And in most cases, that's all they DO have to do. (Besides remembering their password(s) and remembering which button to click on in Word, etc.) But they at least have to do that much - pro-active monitoring of systems can help a lot, but it still won't get you more than 90% of the way there, and it adds another layer of complexity which can, itself, fail quietly.

But in this context, "easier" for the user usually refers to things like relaxing password change and complexity requirements, constantly changing or upgrading software packages (where's my start menu go!?) rationing things like printer use or email mailbox sizes, which used to be unlimited (which forces people to think more about nuts and bolts, or change their workflows to accommodate, which they hate), and surly IT staff who make living with a problem less painful than asking for help.

You can certainly, for instance, change the evaluation process for tools to prioritize ease of use. But ultimately, a lot of that is unavoidable. (Powerful tools are complex. Printing and storage costs money, etc.)

But the last piece - "customer-focused' IT - is about management priorities and corporate culture; and, potentially, having the guts to hold skilled, valuable people accountable when they don't live up to your organizational standards.

 

[azazel1024]

I agree. A proper MSP can handle 500+ person companies fairly easy. Granted they generally start dedicating people that client at that point.

It can work, not saying it can't, but in my experience dedicated internal IT generally works better. I am sure variability in the field of support companies, but the response time and often expertise of what is actually onsite to be supported and managed is generally a lot lower than onsite full time IT support from what I have seen (I am not saying they have to be an employee, but onsite and full time are important).

I have seen pleny of issue with partial/full outsourced IT where the issues were primarily related to this fact. Of course I've also seen SNAFUs from crap in house IT too.

 

[imagoon]

It can work, not saying it can't, but in my experience dedicated internal IT generally works better. I am sure variability in the field of support companies, but the response time and often expertise of what is actually onsite to be supported and managed is generally a lot lower than onsite full time IT support from what I have seen (I am not saying they have to be an employee, but onsite and full time are important).

I have seen pleny of issue with partial/full outsourced IT where the issues were primarily related to this fact. Of course I've also seen SNAFUs from crap in house IT too.

I find it is more related to upper management than who handles what. I have seen very successful large scale outsourcing (Read MSP and not a 52 various contractor firms.) If upper management doesn't care then neither solution will work well.

 

[Chapbass]

I find it is more related to upper management than who handles what. I have seen very successful large scale outsourcing (Read MSP and not a 52 various contractor firms.) If upper management doesn't care then neither solution will work well.

Yes, this is the key. MSP, not a ton of various firms. The fact that the staff isn't on your payroll and instead is an external bill doesn't matter in the slightest so long as the MSP is legit and the documentation is sound.