Why hire a cloud consultant?

Post date: Mar 19, 2015 9:22:09 AM

There are a few key reasons:

  • The companies that most need devops or cloud help are startups, but unfortunately startups generally don’t have the money, infrastructure, or head count for a dedicated devops / cloud person. What they generally do is look for a developer who either knows something about infrastructure or can figure it out, and commit a portion of that person’s time to sysadmin responsibilities. There are a few problems with this, but the biggest is the opportunity cost: every hour that your developer is spending on infrastructure is a lost hour of development. Also, as anyone who has tried to do this will tell you, actually finding somebody with that skill set is a lot easier said than done.
  • Designing and building a scalable infrastructure is a lot of work, but the amount of work required for maintenance is comparatively small . That means that you may spend a chunk of money in the beginning to get it done.. It ends up being a lot cheaper in the long run to hire a consulting partner than hiring an employee.
  • Hiring a consultant means that you can get started on a requirements gathering tomorrow and have someone working on it next week, rather than waiting for the amount of time it takes to hire someone.
    • Hiring a consultant doesn’t preclude hiring someone full-time – you can also hire a consultant just to keep you going until you find the right fit for a full-time position.