Outsourcing allows you to create a solution to a specific problem quickly. Many of the solutions that you may want to deploy in your organization require skills that take years to develop. Outsourcing helps you leverage the time factor. For example, when a company decides that the high cost of licenses for a mail server need to be replaced with an open source solution, it is not an easy process to simply assign a Windows admin who is used to a graphical interface to build a Linux server from the command line. In addition, it is difficult to determine all of the intricate details on how to construct a mail server. There is no doubt that the process of building a mail server can provide a lot of skill set development, but often companies waste thousands in development when they could have outsourced the project and purchased training for a low cost.

Here is an example to use as a comparison demonstrating the advantages of training and outsourcing at the same time.

Company A:
Company A decides to build a Nagios server to monitor their internal servers, printers, routers and switches. The company assigns a Windows admin the responsibility and gives them 3 months to get it up and working. The company has 25 internal servers both Windows and Linux, 10 laser printers and 8 switches and routers, a relatively small number. The first problem the admin faces is which Linux distribution to use. Then once they choose a distribution they cannot figure out how to install Nagios as it is not in the repositories of the distro they chose. Finally they do figure out how to install and once it is in place the admin wastes a huge amount of time reading documentation meant for different versions and distributions without realizing it. Oh yes, this is a very common problem when using the Internet and randomly selecting information. By the time the project is completed, and it is not uncommon for this to take 3 months the first time around, the company has paid the admin for 80 hours to work on this project for a company cost of $5200, assuming the admin gets $65 an hour over a 3 month period.

Company B:
Company B takes a completely different route. Recognizing that their Windows admins are not familiar with Linux and could use structured Linux training to help them achieve the goal, they first send two admins to an virtual training course for Nagios. In the classroom the two admins have practice servers that are available and a live instructor to ask questions and get ideas. The admins build and test Nagios in labs provided by the training company. At the same time, the company outsources the Nagios server install to the same company that trains the admins and within a month they have Nagios up and running and two fully trained admins to support the Nagios server. The training cost $395 each and the Nagios outsourcing cost the company $500. Total cost for training two admins, $2330. This assumes 8 hours of training for each of the administrators.

Time is money, every organization recognizes that time spent by administrators trying to create solutions is costly. Organizations need to weigh the cost of “Googling Solutions” over structured training coupled with outsourcing.

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