While that rule of thumb may work well, it's also largely dependent on
the OS and hardware. Some things just require more maintenance than
others. It also depends on what you have in the way of DBA's for your
databases as well as specialized admins of other types for other
applications (e.g. SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle Financials, etc.). It also
depends on what kind of a shop you have. Are you a nine-to-five shop or
are you 24x7x365? For example, a shop that's mostly 9-5 might only need
250 sysadmins but a 24x7x365 shop might need closer to 750 admins to
cover all three shifts. Since you're writing from a financial
institution, I'd suspect that a large portion of your traffic occurs at
night. Having appropriate night time staffing for 1) your network, 2)
your systems, 3) your applications, and 4) specialized processes like
backups might be a real concern for you.
Thanks,
Ms. Jimi Thompson
Manager of Web Operations
SMU Cox School of Business
If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee --
that will do them in. -- Bradley's Bromide
________________________________
From: Rami.Prescott@frostbank.com [mailto:Rami.Prescott@frostbank.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2005 3:32 PM
To: security-management@securityfocus.com
Subject: IT Department Size
Would anyone know of a good place to find information on how large a
system administrator/ network engineering department should be?
The general rule of thumb I've heard is 1 system administrator/network
engineer for every 250 users. Is this generally true in practice?
We define system administrator/network engineer as someone who has 5-10
years experience in all OS and who is responsible for the operating
system and hardware.
Thank you,
Rami Prescott
IT Audit
