In-House Deployment Versus Outsourced Deployment

One of the first decisions you must make before proceeding with a deployment is whether to use your own internal IT resources or to outsource the deployment to a skilled and experienced vendor. In many circumstances, and depending upon the scale of the deployment, you may end up doing a combination of both. Some of the factors that may help you make this decision are listed in the next sections.

Internal Staff

Advantages to using internal staff for your deployment include the following:

• It is potentially cheaper for small- to medium-sized deployments.

• Your IT team can increase their wireless skills.

• Your staff has end-to-end visibility and familiarity with the solution, as opposed to your team taking ownership of a "fully baked" WLAN solution that was designed and deployed by third parties.

• You avoid potential security concerns associated with engaging external vendors to work on your enterprise network.

Conversely, utilizing limited internal resources also has several disadvantages. These include but are not limited to the following:

• Deployment may take longer due to resource constraints.

• Your staff may make common mistakes and encounter challenges that an experienced solutions provider would avoid.

• Your IT department may not already have wireless skills and experience.

• Your IT department may not have the required equipment on hand.

• Your staff will have ongoing responsibilities and possibly other projects to complete.

Outsourced Resources

An alternative strategy to using internal resources is to retain outside help. Many large enterprises choose to engage an outside vendor either for the complete deployment or to provide additional resources for the implementation phase.

Some advantages of using external vendors include the following:

• They will be wireless experts and potentially have certified wireless engineers.

• The vendor may have national or international presence in locations to which your staff would otherwise have to travel.

• The vendor will have extensive experience, often with deployments very similar to yours.

• They will not need as much time to "ramp up" and commence the installation.

• They will usually provide dedicated project management capabilities.

• The vendor can work to an agreed Service Level Agreement (SLA), often with penalty clauses for project delays.

Following are several of the disadvantages:

• The cost involved may be higher.

• Introducing a third party into the deployment creates management and administrative overhead.

• Permitting a third party access to your network might raise security concerns.

Of course, many of these disadvantages associated with using external resources, can be mitigated. For example, additional cost of using external resources may be offset by the savings you make by utilizing the vendor's local presence in a large national or international deployment. The time spent to develop and increase the wireless skills of your internal staff may pay dividends later with improved troubleshooting and technical abilities in-house. Security concerns with using external vendors for sensitive network infrastructure projects can be mitigated or entirely addressed by careful management. Carefully consider whether to use in-house or outsourced resources before you start. Many internally resourced deployments have encountered problems only to resort to calling in assistance later, while some outsourced projects have had costs spiral out of control. If you have tasked a program management office (PMO) with the implementation of the WLAN, ensure that the PMO carefully monitors and manages relationships with external vendors, and ensures smooth workflow between all stakeholders and teams.