Hello

Could anyone give me some advice on starting and running a business of this nature?

I currently work as Network support but have good experience of O/S migrations and hardware roll outs, and this is the area I feel I could do well in if I were to go it alone. I've worked on some major projects up in the city and I've seen just how badly they can be run + not to mention how expensive they can be. Now I've just completed a full roll out for our office which was around 50 x Desktop and 30 X Laptop. I looked after the spec and purchasing of the hardware and the software builds and testing too, then rolled out over a few weeks and provided base training for the staff on WinXP. This is the kind of area I'd like to get into with my own company.

Ideally I'd be pitching for business from the smaller companies with less than 50 employees, I see this as my target market.

I feel I could offer the following services..

Lan/Wan Config and setup - from cabling up to LAN design.

Hardware upgrades and roll outs

Windows Migrations

Data Recovery

Wireless LAN

Hardware purchasing

So then could anyone pitch in and give me a bit of advice?!

Would really appreciate any helpful comments!

Cheers

trouble is this area of the market is fairly congested already. IMO you would need to have an "in" on a couple of clients to get started. some kind of Unique Selling Point would also be helpful.

True and True :)

In - got a few ideas here but until I start I'll never know if these doors can be opened?

Unique selling point - targeting the lower end, lower spec businesses as I feel this is where the growth will be, get people bang up to spec for as little money as possible. Really guess I'd be looking at 2-20 people sized companies??

Can anyone give me any links to similar companies already out there?

marketing, marketing, marketing & sales :)

been running my own software development company now for 12 months and we are very bad at marketing and it makes your life hell. Plus to buy in marketing expertise costs an ARM AND A LEG!

don't forget that the smaller sized companies can be an absolute joke to deal with. I get less hassle from my £100K per annum client than I do from some people who have a bought a £500 web site of us, laughable :)

Good intentions but SMEs like that can be incredibly tight when it comes to IT spend. They scrimp and cut corners all over the shop. Many are running Office 97 or 2000 as they don't have or want to spend the money to upgrade. I see many sites still running 14" monitors. Ocasionally you'll find one that likes to do things properly but it's rare...

and what's work with offive 2000? I'm still running it cos there is absolutely *no value* in microsoft's endless upgrade mania. now if i was still on W95, then that would be something to complain about :p

[Edited by ProperCharlie - 11/26/2003 9:55:12 AM]

Some good advice.

Do any of you guys have a site that I could take a look at, I think a company webstite is one of the most important marketing tools available.

PS - anyone after a cheap roll out?

Would be willing to do a site around the M25 area for a small fee, I'd look after the whole shabang at cost plus expenses for the chance to feature details of the project on my website.

PC, nothing wrong with old versions of Office if they do what you need :) My point was more very few companies have the money or time to spend upgrading every 12 to 18 months. I know lots of sites running NT4 servers - it's not broken so they won't fix it.

I walked into an existing customer yesterday to discuss moving them to ADSL. First comment from them... needs to be cheap as possible. Not going to retire on deals like that.

my geeks are into all this open scource stuff - they tried to pursuade me to go to sun office but i couldn't be *rsed. They run linux on the servers and the webmail and contacts management is all done on open source stuff. plus they installed mozilla on the desktops - i like it and use it at home as well now.

idle - the people i use are these geeks if you want to have a look at one of the competition's website!

Thanks for the link - check the geeks out now :)