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Hey Spiceheads,

Looking for some help if I may!

In your opinion what is the best way to manage I.T. for a small business (1-99 company size)?

To keep all I.T. managed in house or to outsource to an MSP?

Any additional thoughts/ comments are very welcome.

Thanks in advance!! :slight_smile: outsource_i.t.jpg_x2.jpg

Small Business IT- To outsource or to keep in house?
  • Outsource all the way
  • In house- we can handle it
0 voters
28 Spice ups
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We need some value ranges on the “small” metric in business. Ten people? Outsource! 50 people? Well, it depends…

3 Spice ups
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Doh! Good point! 1-99 company size.

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I think that question is really “user specific”. I work in a similar sized business and most of the time there is more work than I can handle alone. Our end users are really “needy” so we have an “outsourced” part-time guy and that works out really well. We are open 70 hours a week and I can only be here 40 hrs a week, so he fills in another 20 hours and that keeps everyone happy. I guess you could call it a hybrid system.

8 Spice ups
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There are a lot of variables we see that go into this decision (company needs/goals, IT environment, staff, etc.). Often there is overlap of in-house and managed services.

6 Spice ups
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It also depends on the local MSP - I was brought in my last job to replace the local MSP as they weren’t providing the service that the owners wanted (response to emailed questions in less then 24hr and onsite repairs in like two or three days - despite prepaid hours it was normally 3 days for email and maybe a week for onsite help); it was only a part time gig initially but made a great stepping stone in the area for my career.

Realistically if they could’ve provided same day email and next day onsite (or at least close to) then the company never would’ve considered bringing it in-house

In-house has a place - they know everyone as well as things like user acct management and the hardware repair/uptime is nice

1 Spice up
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This varies more beyond company size. What are the needs of the company? I’ve seen a 30 user network with Enterprise level solutions that needed at least one person in house. I’ve also seen 60 user network that do nearly everything in the cloud and get away with outsourced solutions. I’ve worked in SMB roles for 20 years, 10 of which at an MSP, company size means nothing.

My vote was for in-house, as I can do so much more as an employee for one company than I could ever do supporting companies from an MSP.

6 Spice ups
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Not a Question which is generally answerable.

How many IT-Guys are on premise?

How many Servers, how is the structure and… what business?

We work here in a “sbs” but we host everything inside. We are in construction, I have the hold on about 15 Comnputers, all Hand picked by me. We host all our 3dmodels in our Servers but we have as well two “Cloud” service… backups and email. All my VMs are as well stored in a Hosted Solution.

So… it depends. Once I worked in a Hospital, there we had some services outsourced (cheaper that way) but most of the services were mission critical, so inside. But in addition one MSP for times like illness and vacation.

3 Spice ups
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Like everyone else is saying…Not an easy question!! So many variables.

If there was the ability (budget, etc.) to have an in-house guy, I would tell anyone to go that route.

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Every business has different needs and expectations. Can an SLA suffice to cover all that management wants done, or do you need immediate assistance quicker? Does the outsourced company have all of the skills needed to perform the job? What happens in the event of a regional emergency (think, hurricane) when competing customers demand that vendors time for recovery - where does this business stand in that hierarchy? What is the cost-trade-off for having IT staff in YOUR area?

We have <50 employees, but full time IT (nothing outsourced beyond EMR support). A vendor coming from 30 min-1 hr away cannot respond nearly fast enough for out needs, let alone having all of the skills needed for a complex enterprise.

This is not black-and-white, this is a complicated matter which requires senior management’s understanding.

4 Spice ups
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Also there is a bit of a continuum here. In addition to full outsourcing and fully in-house and on-premise, “hybrid cloud” and similar options mean a given company could have a smaller in-house IT staff for day-to-day fixits while outsourcing other functions.

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As stated, this is very subjective and depends on business requirements/objectives and IT environment.

  1. Is the business running a 24/7 manufacturing environment?
  2. Is the business a storefront that needs to be on-line 24/7, but the distribution side of the business is only 8/5?
  3. Can you company data be stored in the cloud, or due to security restrictions, the data has to be in-house and supported locally with strict access control?
  4. Are your users mobile or do they have to be in-house to perform their job functions?
    These are just a few quick questions that popped into my head when reading this post.
    Most environments that I have worked in have in-house support for the daily break/fix requirements of a business, but outsource support for the applications, so this would be a hybrid configuration.
2 Spice ups
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As an MSP, of course my default answer is “Outsource all the way!”

The real answer, as many have already noted, is “it depends”. (Non-IT folks must be really sick of hearing that answer from us so often, lol)

If a customer’s complexity and up-time requirements are high enough (regardless of company size), the MSP’s skillset and/or SLA may not be good enough and they should consider in-house IT.

Why not both? A “hybrid” solution could work in some cases: an in-house IT director focuses on high-level projects and strategy, while the routine tasks and help desk requests are outsourced to the MSP.

3 Spice ups
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Going to depend on a lot of factors.

I have one customer that’s about 60 computers, mostly in remote offices and salesmen on the road. Their environment is very stable, hardware for the most part is modern, etc. They are pretty self-sufficient. I bill them $450/month to keep their servers patched and test/approve WSUS updates. Everything else runs around $2000-ish a month for misc. work.

Aren’t going to get in-house talent for that nor would they want to pay someone sitting around most of the time.

2 Spice ups
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I’m going to agree with pretty much everyone else and say it depends on the specific circumstances and needs of the business, and there are advantages/disadvantages to both paths. For example, having internal IT can give you deep institutional knowledge of the IT setup and needs of your company. However, if you’re an SMB with only 1 IT person and that person leaves, you’ve lost a lot of that knowledge. An MSP isn’t likely to give you the same level of institutional knowledge, but you don’t have to worry about your 1 person leaving.

Personally, I like a hybrid approach for the SMB space. Internal IT for your day-to-day needs and to get the benefit of institutional knowledge, with an MSP to provide vacation coverage, to help with larger projects, and to give the company a backstop if their internal person leaves. Not a particularly cheap option though.

1 Spice up
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I am currently one of the 3 IT guys for a company of about 70 people. What we do really needs to have in-house IT based on all the special stuff we have. I have also be the guy that does IT for smaller companies than this and got a call maybe once a week on average.

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It completely depends on the business. For example. I have a friend who is a system admin for a company of about 70. They have close to 30 developers and 5 system people and still outsource some stuff. They also have close to 1000 servers between their production, pre-prod and test environments and a ton of infrastructure to support. They are a very data driven company.

On the other hand you could have a company that the only thing they need a computer for is email. And they might be fine just sending in laptops for repairs when needed.

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Having worked for a MSP for over 10+ years in the past we got this question all the time and just like everyone else the answer truly is “it depends” and isn’t just based on how many people are employed by the company. A few things that I would always ask to help the business have the right conversation about hiring in-house, an MSP, or a using a mix of the two was:

  • What will you need your IT person / department to do?
  • Can it be done by just 1 person or will you need to hire 2, 3, or more?
  • How will you deal with sickness, vacation, or turnover?

This would help guide the conversation with the stake holders in the company so that they could reach the right decision for them since every company is different.

Now that I’ve been in a internal IT position for a few years we have settled on a mix of both in house and MSP. We have a total of 3 employees that are focused on IT and supporting the medical software that we use and then us a local MSP to fill in the gaps. This allows us to have coverage in the case of vacation or turnover and also get help from the MSP when needed. There are still times when we need to reach out to other specialists since we don’t have the knowledge in-house or with the MSP but that really isn’t that often.

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I’d say in house. A small team of like 3-4 people could manage more than likely. This being that the individuals are experienced and not straight out of College with no real experience.

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I’ve been the sole IT resource for our company for 8 years. With all the new technology being implemented (if it has a cord of any kind, or a POWER button, it’s IT related), it’s just gotten to be more than I can handle alone. So as of next week, we will be hybrid. There’s just no way our users would be satisfied with the response time of outsourced support only.

5 Spice ups