IT staffing level estimates [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
What is your IT-department to staff ratio?

I think Gartner publishes something but it costs around $1k.

I'm aware this is a subjective question, but I don't know where else on StackExchange to post it. If a moderator can tell me I'll be happy to move it or delete/recreate it.

I'm looking for estimates on what medium to enterprise level (500+ employees) have for IT staffing.

Things like:

1 PC Tech per 100 users

or

1 Server Admin per 50 servers

or

1 Net Admin per site

or

1 Developer company wide

etc...

Obviously I know it will vary from company to company based on IT need, market, etc. but I'm just looking for estimates of what companies staff for.

For instance, I'm the sole network admin/server admin for a company with 5 global locations, 73 servers, 26 switches/routers/firewalls, wireless, telecom. I'm curious if that's the norm or if we are understaffed in my area particularly.

Answer 1

For maintenance and troubleshooting-related tasks ONLY:

• 1 help desk flunky for every 100 users
• 1 server admin for every 50-100 servers
• 1 network admin for every 50-100 networking devices
• At least 1 spare admin for each of the above categories
• Telecom can be contracted unless you have a lot of work for it

Adjust the numbers later, the help desk position especially, based upon number of calls. Just a few problem/diva users or bad policies can easily double these numbers.

If you're adding projects on top of that (such as new deployments), staff based upon 95th percentile of the annual project load.

Answer 2

1 PC Tech per 100 users seems about right for the places I have worked. But a lot of it depends on the setup. If you have lots of people using thin clients accessing a terminal server of Citrix then you should be able to use fewer IT personal then when using fat clients where each user is local administrator and actually clicks on everything, installs every new game etc.

All of this means that yes, 1 in 100 sounds resonably, but so does 1 in 50 or 1 in 500. It all depends on your setup, your policies and the skills of the users.