IT consulting is a group of people made from experienced individuals that provide expert advice for a fee. Hence, a person might work as an independent contractor and in that case, they would be referred to as an independent consultant. An IT consultant might also be an employee of a company that offers such services and they typically charge the customers an hourly rate for the services they provide.
Types of IT consultants
The job of a consultant is to help businesses or individuals make technology purchases or strategic choices when it comes to resolving any technical challenges that they might be facing. The consultants might serve as a short-term virtual CIO who’s job is to provide advice on IT strategies to a business that lacks IT expertise.
IT consultants usually work for value-added resellers, or for short VARs, system integrators and other providers that offer consulting services with a wide range of offerings. A business implementing a new ERP system might hire someone who was recommended by their vendor, rather than train their employees or hire new ones. VARs sometimes partner up with specialists in the sales engineering capacity. The consultant will then examine the client’s business and technology need and they will recommend products, IT solutions, or services that can address the needs they have.
Managed service providers, or for short MSPs usually use experts to work with customers that need to create an IT strategy, technique, or plan to manage their projects. According to an IT company in Pittsburgh, MSPs are often created by engineers or technicians, hence the consulting help them connect their technical services and their customers. If you want to learn more, click here.
Consultants who’re focused on cloud computing will help clients select public cloud services, define their requirements, build private cloud networks, manage the company’s data, and they will also take care of the application migration. They are also able to create cloud strategies that aim to keep the overall cost of the cloud in check, as well as help businesses, get the most out of the investment they made into the cloud. Keep in mind that some consulting companies specialize in specific cloud platforms, such as Google, Microsoft Azure, or AWS. Additionally, a consulting firm might focus on only one or more SaaD providers such as ServiceNow or Salesforce.
Other areas include IT security, information management, and e-discovery and compliance. An IT consulting company can be hired to evaluate the security risks, recommended strategies for fixing some problems, or to identify vulnerabilities that a company might have in their system.
Related fields
There are other consulting jobs that might intertwine with IT consulting. Strategy and management consultants can provide useful advice for a wide range of business matters and problems. However, management consultants that work with clients to redesign an old office space might need the help of IT consultants to automate their whole process.
The benefits of working with an IT consultant
One of the biggest benefits of working with a consultant is that they will have specialized knowledge of specific things. Hiring a consultant makes sense when it is too expensive or impractical to hire a full-time employee for knowledge that is only needed for a specific period of time. For example, you might need on for major business system upgrades that only happen occasionally.
Conclusion
IT consultants are hired to give advice on specific technological matters, as well as to help troubleshoot problems in the systems that are quite complex. Hence, the next time you are having technical problems at your company, you know whom to call.
