Hey y'all,
I'm trying to devise a proposal to bring our IT services in-house. I currently oversee a third-party "break/fix" role working 16-hours a week. We also pay for monitoring services of our servers, equipment, and computers. Anything outside of break/fix (third-party integrations, new server setup, disaster recovery testing, etc.), is an additional hourly expense. We are now at the point where we have spent nearly the same in "project" expenses as we would having an in-house, full-time, person doing the work themselves.
We are a self-hosted environment on physical servers, and are looking to move to the Azure cloud this summer (though that's a lofty goal of mine). We have one administrative office and two theaters connected by way of a site-to-site VPN, and are connected to the TKTS booths and Spectrum Ticketing (third-party call center) through remote desktop connections; we also have Azure Disaster Recovery. Though the physical servers should be moving to the cloud, we will still need to monitor all the on-prem equipment, such as firewalls, WAPs, routers, etc.
My question to you - What should I budget for in terms of monitoring equipment/software? They use something called "Nable," which may now be "SolarWinds MSP N-Central" as per Google. What do you use? I can mock up a job description and estimate a salary, but I want to ensure that person is setup with the proper tools to do the work our third-party rep is currently doing.
Any info you can provide would be greatly appreciated... Feel free to respond here or email me directly at enash@2st.com.
Thanks so much!
Honestly, depending on servers and endpoints the number could be wide range. You need to get a rep on the phone. But, I am assuming you can fit in the first pricing teir with less than 200 ends points. That would cost ~ 15 - 20k. That is a perceptual license with a ~1k renewal per year. I would budget for a 3-5% uplift in renewal. Again, I would go directly to the companies. Everyone's environment is different enough that any information you get here will be off. SolarWinds is good though.
Good to know, thanks for the information. I'll reach out directly, but that's a good starting point. $15K - $20K is still cheaper than our current outsourcing agreement, even taking into account a new staff position.