At what point do you consider networking to still be a core function of IT, and when does it make sense to hand it off to another team or external provider? What factors do you take into account when deciding whether networking should remain within the IT department or be managed by someone else?

Managed Services will never be as proactive and responsive as an in-house team. For most companies, Network and Firewall Security is an area that requires promptness on changes and issue resolution. The MSP will always abide to the SLA; an in-house team can take resolution down from hours to minutes. You can outsource if most of your core IT systems are cloud based or if a network/firewall outage has low impact on them.

I see commodity services as staff augmentation. If you have managed services that you trust, I wouldn’t hesitate to outsource those. But network security and firewalls should stay close, they are your bread and butter. We started out with a lot of heavy outsourcing, and now I’m trying to bring some of that back in. When you outsource too much, you lose some internal knowledge and feel less of the solution. I’m working to reestablish knowledge workers as full-time employees while still working with vendors as needed. The commoditizing of certain roles can be handled by a vendor, especially if you trust them.

Our approach is straightforward and risk-based. Some network services are outsourced, while others remain internal. For each service - LAN, WAN, firewalls, VPN, monitoring - we ask whether it’s a commodity that can be supported externally or if it’s critical to our operations. Where we’re comfortable, our global provider takes the lead. For the areas that are more critical, it’s essential to have internal staff available.

Some of our business decisions have driven us into certain clouds, and now I’m trying to figure out how to get out of that situation. For networking, I’m looking at keeping firewalls in-house, but I’m more open to letting someone else handle devices, patching, and monitoring. It’s about deciding what’s critical to keep internal and what can be managed externally.

For us, the key word is “hybrid.” You always have to look at the balance between on-premises and cloud, and I’m passionate about running data centers and combining the two. It becomes a math equation, constantly chasing numbers and balancing risk and reward, cost and innovation, in-house versus outsourced. There is never a silver bullet; it’s always some kind of hybrid. You’re constantly supplementing or staff logging, deciding what stays within IT and what can be handed off. If you’re spending more time and money on something and getting less value, that’s your sign to move it out or outsource it. But it’s a constant re-evaluation every year: does it make sense or not?