Staff resourcing

[ianatkin]

Hi,

I recall some discussions in the past on how may staff people employ on the ground to service day-today IT calls, but can't find the post -so apologies in advance if this is a reposting.

I'm interested to know how many IT Staff people have on the ground to do the following,

1) Handle and resolve user helpdesk queries
2) Manage Antivirus & windows patching infrastructure
3) Package and deploy software
4) Manage, develop (and troubleshoot!) the Altiris Infrastructure

Obviously, and idea of the desktop count is good. And how do you feel (if at all) using Altiris has helped? Be honest now!

I'll kick off.... we support nominally 2,500 desktops and have ....

1) 11 FTE (full time equivalent) staff to handle and resolve user helpdesk queries
2) 0.5 FTE to manage Antivirus & windows patching
3) 1.5 FTE to package and deploy software
4) 1.5 FTE to manage, develop (and troubleshoot!) the Altiris Infrastructure

This doesn't include the network admins who keep the packets flowing, and the  Novell and Windows admins who support the user authentication site,  file services, web servers and citrix boxes etyc.

What Altiris did for us: intially it was quite the doom monger -it told us how terribly badly  we were managing our desktop estate. We lived in a world of plausible deniability until all the inventory started flowing in. Since then we've standardised massively, and have a pretty good OS and software baseline. We used to have NT, Windows 2000 (various SP) and XP (various SP) -now we have pretty much XPSP2/3 across the board.

Contrary to our initial expectations perhaps, we haven't saved any staff in this process, we are just managing the desktops more consistently & proactively. We have rolling programs in place to update things like Adobe Reader, Flash, Java, Office, IE and Firefox -something which was inconveivable just a couple of years a go.

[Migration User]

We have about 1400 systems desktops and laptops using windows XPSP3 as our primary platform. We have about 5000 students and 400 full time staff with another 350 part-time staff

1.) 4.5 FTE  to handle and resolve helpdesk issues about 1200 tickets are opened and resolved monthly
2.) 1.0 FTE to manage, package and deploy software, Security (antivirus and windows patching)
3.) 1.0 FTE Manage , Develop(Troubleshoot) altiris infrastructure

Our operations staff is also available on a limited basis if we need to add servers or change a network configuration.
We have added a lot of customer service benefits due to our Altiris suite of products we use the Helpdesk Solution and CMS level 1 we are just getting our patch management under control and hope to try using the workflow solution for some additional service desk offerings. We have lost 1 FTE due to cutbacks and have been able to provide a better level of support without missing a beat. I have a great staff and everyone really understands what we are trying to achieve. Using the remote functionality of the DS has really helped increase our ability to solve customer issues. In a timely fashion we also implemented a OLA with our customers to help set the priorities and keep us on track.

[Migration User]

 My company has ~3,200 computers and ~5,000 staff.

1 ) 4 people that answer Helpdesk calls and create tickets, 10 people that are Level 1 and Level 2 support
2) 2 people that do Altiris infrastructure, antivirus, patches, software package/deployment

[Migration User]

We have about 15,000 desktops (19,000 users)
1) 30 FTE (full time equivalent) staff to handle and resolve user helpdesk queries (1st and 2nd level support)
2) .5 FTE to manage Antivirus
3) 1 FTE to package and deploy software, patching and imaging
4) 1 FTE to manage, develop (and troubleshoot!) the Altiris Infrastructure


Usually as you grow you should be able to automate processes so you don't have to add more staff. Compare the numbers above to what we have here and you'll see the trend. If that's not happening, it might be time to visit each group and sit and watch what they are doing and how they are doing it. Get their input on how to make their processes more effecient.

[Tal Fisher]

13 years later...What is the IT staff count for packaging and deploying software, patching, imaging, managing, developing (and troubleshooting) the Altiris Infrastructure?

[Greg Zielinski]

What I'm seeing above still holds true.  As the environment grows, the "staff to handle and resolve user helpdesk queries (1st and 2nd level support)" grows.

the rest seem to remain about the same
2) .5 FTE to manage Antivirus (more if you start to include vulnerability response)
3) 1 FTE to package and deploy software, patching and imaging (I'd say 2 if you want stuff done faster but don't really need a whole lot more unless you have to repackage a lot of software vs factory .MSI installs)
4) 1 FTE to manage, develop (and troubleshoot!) the Altiris Infrastructure (You still want a backup tech.  so 1.5-2.0)

[ianatkin]

I'd say that's about right Greg. Our core infrastructure team hasn't changed *much* in size over the last decade but the number of managed clients has more than doubled. We did hire an additional FTE for software packaging and that's about it. And as everyone has noted, as you increase your user base, the 1st/2nd line support staff count has to increase to match the load there.

[Martin Sapsed]

An email reply might appear here - had to reset my password again as it's more than a day since I was last here! ;-)

We have around 3500 desktops, 12,000 users (of which about 1600 staff).

From your list, my 0.8 FTE tries to cover
2) Anti-virus including some vulnerability response
3) Package and deploy software, patching (most of the imaging is done by another team)
4) manage, develop (and troubleshoot) the Altiris infrastructure (apart from the VMs it runs on and the DB)
And add in 5) replicate a fair amount of it in Intune… 

Little wonder I'm a bit "jaded"… 😉

Martin Sapsed
Bangor Uni

[Martin Sapsed]

I'll try a reply by email because, as usual when I go back to the site, my password has expired!
We have around 3500 desktops, 12,000 users (of which about 1600 staff).
From your list, my 0.8 FTE tries to cover
2) Anti-virus including some vulnerability response
3) Package and deploy software, patching (most of the imaging is done by another team)
4) manage, develop (and troubleshoot) the Altiris infrastructure (apart from the VMs it runs on and the DB)
And add in 5) replicate a fair amount of it in Intune...

Little wonder I'm a bit "jaded"... ??
Martin Sapsed
Bangor Uni



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[Tal Fisher]

Thank you all for replying. I am impressed but at the same time, saddened. We put too much on ourselves. Has anyone worked for NASA? There are 100 to 200 people dedicated to building and launching one ship into outer space. But we have 1 to 5 people managing 5 to 15K computers daily at any company.
Thank you for your very hard work.

[Shawn Mayhew]

19,980 machines managed within 60 days - 
85 published apps to endpoint workspace and to software portal 
about 200 managed applications 
1) 1 FTE -intermediate -6 years as OS owner- that manages the OS build, updates, driver packs and does most of rollouts. Made a LOT easier by the new Patch OS upgrade process
2) 1 FTE -intermediate -9 years of IT experience- package and deploy software plus patching, along with answer level 3 help desk calls, project software rollouts.  
3) 1 FTE -Senior level- 20 plus years of Altiris- package and deploy software plus patching, along with answer level 3 help desk calls, project software rollouts. also serve as backup for lead - 
4) 1 FTE - Lead - 20 plus years of Altiris - manage, troubleshoot, develop production environment of 1 NS, 1 SQL, 1 reporting server, 24 site servers. Plus do all SQL report creation and backup both packagers.

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Altiris Admin since 2002
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