Enterprise VS Service Provider vs Vendor-Partner?

Leaving aside been a consultant/managing your own company which is what i think the majority would like to do/become one day in the life.

What type of company/role you prefer? and why?

The in house tech saavy (net admin, sys admin, infrastructure admin u name it) that manages only the company XYZ(u name it) network.

The engineer working for a service provider, managing a network that provides services to other companies/users.

Work for a vendor like juniper/huawei/vmware/cisco/hp, supporting their products, implementing ther products for a certain part of a country/region?

Or work for a partner, the most popular are the Cisco partners, supporting usually enterprise customer that have a support contract or that are looking for a solution, i would call this field engineer role.

I just want to read the different opinions and experiences of the users around here.

What has been your experiences working for either one or the other?

If you would have to choose(same benefits, money, location, etc), which type of role/company you enjoy more?

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Comments

networker050184

Service provider is my top choice for sure. Vendor or VAR second. I like the scale, new technologies, and most important I prefer my position drive the business and not be seen as a cost sink. I'd only work in house IT for an extremely large enterprise and even then it'd have to be a great gig.

kohr-ah

@networker which is what I am doing now is the extremely large great position

Otherwise I agree SP or Vendor/VAR. I know lots of people very very happy at Vendors.

Only downside is when they do layoffs if you are in that cut list.

(Sent from mobile)

shodown

I've spent most of my time in VAR world which is pretty cool as you are always on the latest and greatest. SP world was the most technical as your changes have huge impacts, but it had much lower stress as changes were very organized and labs were always available. Enterprise was just a waste of time unless there as a consultant. If you are early in your career enterprise is good, but eventually you want to get to a VAR or SP.

Or you can open up your own business and work all 3

OctalDump

Consultant. Come in, tell them what they are doing wrong, get a fat paycheck and never have to worry about the politics involved in actually implementing anything.

Working for an MSP as an Engineer might be second, if it didn't involve driving. You generally get brought in to solve a reasonably well defined problem, and then move on. The decision to fix the problem is already made by the time you come in, so you can focus on the problem. You also have much wider exposure to technologies and also to fixing them. So you tend to get a lot better at things, a lot quicker. But the travel, early starts to fly interstate, driving for hours a day to get to clients...

The downside of MSP is that you rarely get the chance to build the whole solution, only some part.

The vendor role would be similar, in that you can go very deep with a technology and get exposure in a range of contexts. The downside would be drinking the koolaid and not being free to recommend the best options if it is against the vendors interests.

In house you get to be involved in the whole solution, be able to get things nicely integrated and stable, and align things nicely with the business. That is, you could do that if you are allowed and there's enough money in the budget and you have a business plan and the CEO hasn't just been off on some junket and where he heard all about the latest fad and how it will revolutionise IT and all the usual politics.

The partner role is a bit like the MSP role or vendor role, but a lot more selling. And sometimes the selling gets in the way of delivering the best solution. Great partners can actually do a lot of good and produce a lot of value for their clients, but sadly most aren't great, and the imperative to stay afloat can overwhelm the desire to do the best job for the client.

TLeTourneau

I tend to prefer large enterprise and consulting but I have been in a vertical market for some time so I have a skewed perspective.

BradleyHU

Corporate/Enterprise...i've done the service provider gig, and yeah, thats not for me...

kohr-ah

@Networker I know you are all about SP. If I may ask, do you prefer global ones, mid sized ones , or small ones ??

Dojiscalper

I've done the, MSP, vendor support stuff mostly for the past twenty years and am sick of driving. I'm looking now to be the in-house IT systems guy for a small to mid company.

networker050184

kohr-ah wrote: »

@Networker I know you are all about SP. If I may ask, do you prefer global ones, mid sized ones , or small ones ??

Mid-small sized I've had the most fun at. Less corporate tape, flying by the seat of your pants type stuff. Make it happen type attitude. Building the network at break neck speeds. The stress in that type of atmosphere can catch up to you though.

chmod

I work for a vendor in the SP division, so i do some pre sales for service providers, i handle many projects and part of the O&M post sales of our solutions.

I worked for a cisco partner for like a year and a half when i was like 21 years old.

I worked as an independant consultant for some time also, i definitely loved it.

I was the net admin for a big company with 3 offices in 3 different countries, also the in house IT for a small casino, for a big casino and i prefer the vendor because you can act as a consultant, field engineer and sales engineer in one role. Also the vendors work with many customers, so you get to learn a lot of technologies, in my case i have worked with many ISPs, so i have learned a lot more than working for just one ISP, also the experiences learned with oneh help me when i have to work with others in similar projects.

Usually the ISPs rely a lot on what the vendors/consultants(some ISPs hire external consultants to work with the vendors during roll out and audit the solutions offered by the vendors).

Based on my experiences, vendors/partners is what i prefer, but it means a lot of travel time, a lot of stress, long hours working on customer datacenters, preparing demos-trials, planning and son on.

UnixGuy

I got the most experience in the shortest time possible working for a vendor partner...I was underpaid and overworked but boy did I learn!

chmod

networker050184 wrote: »

Service provider is my top choice for sure. Vendor or VAR second. I like the scale, new technologies, and most important I prefer my position drive the business and not be seen as a cost sink. I'd only work in house IT for an extremely large enterprise and even then it'd have to be a great gig.

I agree with this part, i think the biggest partners and leading vendors will provide more benefits and more rewards to the engineers than a regular in house IT.