It's easy to see that a
light bulb needs to be purchased or a failed system needs replacement. But all too many times the reasoning behind why money goes into reoccurring IT costs seems to elude many.
I hope to clear up what is to be typically expected of any modern
business regarding what their annual IT Budget should include for reoccurring
IT Costs.
I break it down into
the MUSTS, the OPTIONS and the OTHER.
The MUSTS:
Anti-Virus Clients,
Internet Gateway Security, Anti-Spam, Domain Certificates, Public Domain and
Web Hosting.
If you're doing
business without any one of these components, you're playing Russian roulette
with a fully loaded gun. It's not a
matter of if it's a matter of when you will be infected. In fact, almost guarantee your already
infected, whether your aware of it or not.
Probably have slow performing systems, odd glitches, popups, tons of
spam, blocked emails, and the list goes on.
Worse is many infections sit silently collecting data about your
computer use, emails you send, websites you visit, tracking so they can sell
your info to the highest bidder for marketing purposes and more.
It's important to
note that no single anti-anything will prevent this. But through a healthy combination of trusted
security prevention systems you can block most and your IT Dept. can swiftly
mitigate should something slip through.
So how much?
The budget will
depend on how extensive the protection software/system your using. Overall here are some budget examples.
Small
40-100 User Network:
|
Initial Purchase Cost
|
Annual Reoccurring Cost
|
Anti-Virus /
Client Security
|
$30 per device
|
$25 / year per
device
|
Internet Gateway
Security
|
$1,200 - $2,400
per site
|
$600 - $1,200 /
year per site
|
Anti-Spam / Email
Security
|
$2,500 if you own
|
$2 / month per
mailbox
|
Domain Certificate
|
$75-$200 / year
/ domain
|
$75-$200 / year
/ domain
|
Public Domain
|
$10-$50 / year / domain
|
$10-$50 / year / domain
|
Web Hosting
|
$10-$100 / month
|
$10-$100 / month
|
Annual Total -
40 Users:
|
$5k - $7.5k ($150 / user)
|
$3k - $5k ($100 / user)
|
Annual Total -
60 Users:
|
$5k - $8k ($110 / user)
|
$4k - $5.5k ($80 / user)
|
Annual Total -
80 Users:
|
$6k - $9k ($90 / user)
|
$5k - $6.5k ($70 / user)
|
Annual Total -
100 Users:
|
$7k - $9.6 ($80 / user)
|
$6k - $7.5k ($65 / user)
|
The OPTIONS:
These 5 are the most
common IT operating expenses which are reoccurring annual cost that I would
consider optional.
Website Filtering
& Control is basically policing the internet use of your
staff. Mainly used to control how your
staff uses the internet and what you allow them to access when. Usually provides staff internet usage reports
and the like. About 20% of my clients
implement such a system.
VPN License are a
necessity to remote connect to your office.
Usually this is purchases in 5 packs and only as needed bases. If your remote connecting without a VPN
connection you're asking for problems.
Offsite Backup is
pretty much common place. Entire
separate blog on this topic. In general your data
should be housed on your servers and your servers should be backing up offsite. >75% of my clients take advantage of this
and reduce their risk.
Warranty usually
included with computers / servers is 3 years.
On some key systems, servers for sure, I suggest extending that to 5 or
even more years. Many things depending here.
Computer Monitoring
Software is directly babysitting your employees or more politically correct 'Employee
Investigation' software. <10% of my
clients use this.
Small
40-100 User Network:
|
Initial Purchase Cost
|
Annual Reoccurring Cost
|
Website Filtering
& Control
|
$100 / user per
year
|
$100 / user per
year
|
VPN License
|
$50 / user per
year
|
$50 / user per
year
|
Offsite Backup
|
$100-$200 / server
/ month
|
$100-$200 / server
/ month
|
Warranty
|
5% - 10% of
hardware purchase per year
|
5% - 10% of
hardware purchase per year
|
Computer
Monitoring Software
|
$100 / user
|
$10 / user per
year
|
The OTHER:
Services like Office
365, Dropbox, Box, Hosted VoIP Phone System and other SaaS (Software as a Service). Totally optional services
depending on your operation.
I'm a fan
of cloud services, when the need is right this provides awesome team synergies
and tools. At times it's a cost savings. However I will argue there's
more times than not that cloud is over hyped and over marketed because software
vendors realize the real profit is in reoccurring revenue and are changing
licensing models as such. Again case by case depending on your business needs / operations.
Apx 60% my clients
use these services or some form of it.
Small
40-100 User Network:
|
Initial Purchase Cost
|
Annual Reoccurring Cost
|
Office 365
|
--
|
$5 - $20 / user
per month
|
Dropbox / Box
|
--
|
$5 - $15 / user
per month
|
Hosted VoIP Phone
System
|
$100 - $300 per
phone
|
$15 - $30 / user
per month
|
In all this I left
out workstations, servers, switches and the like network system equipment. These are items that could go to OPEX or CAPEX
depending. As well as monthly telco
expense. With another blog I will outline
what a full Annual IT Budget should look like for these smaller 40-100 user
networks.
Well hope this
helped put some $$$ into perspective.
Again this was an over generalization of annual reoccurring IT costs and
each business needs a case by cases evaluation.
