[OT] - Office IT support

["Ho Yin Ng" <architect.hoyin@xxxxxxxxx>]

My office is expanding, currently at around 30 and need to be around
45 by the end of the year.

We've out grown our current space and will move and hence this gives
us an opportunity to revamp and redo our IT system.

Currently our IT support / supplier is crap, we've been wanting to get
rid of them for years we've had countless problems with our system and
had problems we just cannot resolve. We are already their second
largest client! Their largest client does not seem to care about data
backup though!

Currently we run a linux system with outlook (but no exchange) with a
1TB NAS server with 12 x 300GB SAS drives which we are now at 94%
capacity.

We need a stop gap solution for the next 3 months, but then when we
move I want to reuse the new stuff, but put it into a new more
efficient system.

In addition we have a problem with software and licensing. Not
everyone has the same version of software and this is causing problems
as people without adobe CS3 cannot open the files.

We have a tape backup system, but it takes so long to back up we
effectively could lose 2 days worth of information should there be a
fire.

The IT solution company at the moment proposing we get another 1TB NAS
with a gigabit switch (though we are currently on 100mbit) - which
will cost us another =A314k roughly. I don't understand the real
advantage of the SAS drives.

So my questions are as follows:

1. Can anyone recommend an IT company in central London? Preferably
with experience with dealing with Architects? Or knowledge of Autocad?
2. How do you guys deal with backing up? The tape solution for us is
too slow, I don't want to go the incremental tape route for backing up
as this is prone to human error and will result in an explosion of
tapes. I am looking at doing an online backup system, but for only 1TB
of information I am being quoted =A31,700 per month, plus I will need an
additional ADSL line.
3. I will want to upgrade to Exchange server, and run windows server
(which would also allow for immediate file recovery). At the moment we
have no shared calendars due to linux - we must have this. I would
prefer to run a separate email server and storage server.
4. I don't see the advantage of SAS drives, I'd rather go to SATA
drives in a RAID 5 which will give us much more storage. I don't see
the performance gains of SAS being relevant to us we are not editing
video etc all we do is read and write cad files. If we run a render
farm as well I don't think it will affect us either. But we cannot
afford downtime.
5. Software licensing - is there a way of improving how licenses are
distributed. At the moment they are tied to computers rather than
users. When a computer is upgraded the machine with the software gets
passed down, or if a new person joins they just get when is on the
computer. I want specific people to get specific software depending
what they are working on. Can we get the software tied to a user?
Perhaps using Virtual Machines? What are the requirements of doing
this? Is it feasible? OR too expensive?
6. I will want full access to the network - email and files remotely.
At the moment we only have access to webmail
7. Everytime a computer is attached to our network it needs to be
automatically distributed with the relevant templates and settings
from the server.

Is there anything else I need to consider?

Really appreciate anyones help.

Thanks

Ho Yin

------------------------------------