IT consulting and infrastructure planning for your organization

IT Consulting: a practical guide

What should an IT consulting contract include?

The deliverables should be named precisely, such as an assessment report, purchase specifications or a roadmap, along with the number of meetings and a delivery date for each. A contract that just says consulting services leaves nothing to measure the result against.

A conflict of interest clause is rare in IT consulting contract templates, and it matters. If the consultant sells hardware or licenses or has ties to a supplier, that should be disclosed. Ownership of the reports, confidentiality and how the consultant accesses your systems also belong in the contract.

Server purchase advice: common specification mistakes

Windows Server and SQL Server are licensed per processor core, and Windows Server requires at least 16 core licenses per server. For databases, RAID 10 on SSDs is usually a better fit than RAID 5 on high-capacity hard drives, because rebuilding a RAID 5 array with large disks takes a long time and the array stays exposed throughout.

Consumer SSDs without power loss protection, servers with a single power supply and no iLO or iDRAC license for remote management are other frequent mistakes. In the Iranian market, also check that spare parts for that server model and generation are available before you buy.

Virtualization on your own servers or in the cloud?

Cloud servers need no upfront hardware purchase and scale quickly, but they make daily office work depend on the internet. In Iran, link disruptions or internet restrictions can cut staff off from accounting software running in the cloud. On-premises servers avoid that dependency, while hardware, power, cooling and backups stay your responsibility.

For on-premises virtualization, Proxmox VE is open source and usable without buying a license. After Broadcom acquired VMware, perpetual vSphere licenses were dropped in favor of subscriptions, which are hard for Iranian companies to obtain.

Hire an IT consultant or an in-house IT person?

An in-house IT person is valuable for daily work and deep knowledge of your users and software. A consultant is most useful for decisions made once every few years, such as designing a new office network, choosing a virtualization platform or planning a migration, where experience from similar projects makes a direct difference.

In many companies the two work side by side. The consultant prepares options and design, and the in-house person carries implementation and upkeep. When choosing a consultant, check their independence from vendors and ask for a sample of previous reports.