WTB Advice for Small Business Consulting
darkerosxx
Banned Posts: 1,343
Hi guys,
I have a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit and I'm looking at starting a business to provide small business consulting on IT infrastructure planning, design, and implementation. I'm wanting to start this business within the next 10 years. I have another person I'm looking at starting this business with that has experience working with Windows Server in a small business environment(he runs the department).
So I'm looking at learning all of the in's and out's of networking infrastructure to complement the other person's Windows experience so that we can provide networking and server infrastructure consulting mainly. I do have a good bit of experience working with Linux(RHEL) and Windows Server 2008 networking services and concepts, but I want to focus on the networking infrastructure aspects(switches/routers).
If any of you have experience in this area or simply in the area of running your own consulting business, do you have any tips or advice on what subjects to learn? What major steps I should take over the next 10 years to be ready to tackle this?
Thanks.
I have a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit and I'm looking at starting a business to provide small business consulting on IT infrastructure planning, design, and implementation. I'm wanting to start this business within the next 10 years. I have another person I'm looking at starting this business with that has experience working with Windows Server in a small business environment(he runs the department).
So I'm looking at learning all of the in's and out's of networking infrastructure to complement the other person's Windows experience so that we can provide networking and server infrastructure consulting mainly. I do have a good bit of experience working with Linux(RHEL) and Windows Server 2008 networking services and concepts, but I want to focus on the networking infrastructure aspects(switches/routers).
If any of you have experience in this area or simply in the area of running your own consulting business, do you have any tips or advice on what subjects to learn? What major steps I should take over the next 10 years to be ready to tackle this?
Thanks.
Comments
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dynamik
Banned Posts: 12,312 ■■■■■■■■■□
You could easily have 2 or 3 CCIEs in a decade
I think you're on the right track with your Cisco studies. A lot of what you learn with that will also be applicable to other vendors. You may want to pick up the new CCNA specializations as well so you can provide basic wireless and voip services too. I'm not sure what the wireless specialization covers so you may want to look at the CWNA as well.
How small are these business? You may be spending a lot of time with smaller SoHo routers and switches. I know a lot of places that would balk at spending thousands on routers and switches.
Another big thing I'm seeing around here is monthly maintenance/monitoring contracts. You may want to look into something like that too. There were some great suggestions in this thread: http://techexams.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=35326