September 16th, 2008
It's OK to outsource
DNS is not my friend. For some reason, I never get my zone’s right, I’m forwarding when I should be reversing, etc. Anytime I set up DNS or try to troubleshoot, I just end up making things worse. I’m not to proud to admit it…there are plenty of things I do well, but this isn’t one of them.
Those of us in Ed Tech, with our shoestring budgets and skeletal staff, are expected to be jacks of all trades. Sometimes, however, spending some of our modest budgets on a bit of outside help can go a long ways towards maintaining our sanity. For a grand, I can have an engineer with certifications up the wazoo spend two days with me, spiff up my DNS, clean up my Active Directory, and troubleshoot some roaming profile issues I’m having, all while I continue to work. While $1000 ends up being two computers I can’t buy, my users stay happy with improved network performance and reliability.
Could I figure all of this out myself? Sure, but my time is better spent planning, training, and meeting plenty of other user needs. Being a jack of all trades is important if I’d like to have intelligent conversations with vendors and technicians. I should even be a “master of some”. However, no matter how tempted we are to keep operations in house to save money, careful use of experts in given areas will save us time and hassle. If time is money, in fact, one could argue that using an outside expert could save money long term.
What do you think?
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Follow Chris Dawson on Twitter! Christopher Dawson is the technology director for the Athol-Royalston School District in northern Massachusetts and a member of the Internet Press Guild. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations, but always keep in mind that the opinions expressed here are his own and not those of his daytime employer, even if he talks incessantly about his day job.
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