"The rule of thumb for managing devices is.."

[Edu-IT]

The rule of thumb for managing devices is one IT Administrator for every 100

computers or devices.

According to this blog post on Avast. Is that true? Rule of thumb of who?!

 

https://blog.avast.com/2015/07/24/how-one-it-guy-gained-control-of-500-devices-with-avast-for-business/

[Geoff]

Kinda depends. But that would be the upper limit in my book unless you had some serious automation / devops going on. More complex and manually intensive the environment and the number should be more like 1:50 or lower. Edited August 7, 2015 by Geoff
spelling

[halbaradkenafin]

I suspect in a business environment where all 100 devices are in use all day there will be different demands to education where only staff devices are in use all day. Here the ratio is around 1:250 but we've got a few IT suites that are only used a handful of times per week.

[Steve21]

I think originally that was the US DOL back 10 years ago~ they did a report that said it was something like 2 million professionals with 200million machines, thus 1:100

 

Steve

[GeekyPete]

It depends, If you have a call centre say where all they have access to is the Comms app and a database you might be able to get a ratio greater than 1:500. On the flip side I've seen a college IT dept with 20 computers used to deliver Cisco, N+, A+ etc where they've had a full time tech to themselves because there's no restrictions as such. They used different virtual machines depending on the class.

 

In most schools with tools like Imparo, CC4, spiceworks etc you can certainly get close to 1:500 if you are given the time to set it up properly in the first place.

[PotNoodleTech]

I think Becta used to recommend 1 technician to 80 computers?

[mthomas08]

I don't agree, far too situational.

 

100 Student owned Netbooks is far more hard work vs 100 Domain PCs.

 

Last job had around 1000 devices x3 Staff, this job has around 1500 devices x4 Staff. Last job we was able to dedicate our time to planning which was why things worked.

This job though we are still fire fighting but no where near as bad as when I first started (which my techy reminded me).

 

We are not spending so much time in the classrooms, if you don't include day to day Student damages..