I think that would be a cool job to get to use a variety of MS product. On the other hand i would think having to user their products all the time would suck everything of theirs is a big pain in the butt, sometimes i wonder why I even stick around to deal with them prolly be alot easier being a unix or mac admin instead of MS lmao
well. I started in this place on a first line help desk.
the I moved to second line, dealing with networking and linux machines, with some windows admin stuff.
then I moved to a Microsoft based team doing third line support.
I don't really do any desktop support besides creating GPO objects to control the desktops.
the kind of products that I deal with are active directory, Sharepoint, exchange, SQL server, Citrix, Blackberry enterprise server and SMS.
we take care of network attached storage and storage area networks for some customers too.
I work for a company that provides managed services, too. I'm part of a team of three and we cover three schools in total. There are about 800 computers, 1200 people and I'm starting to dislike it immensely >.<
the team I work in has 10 in it, the networking and unix type teams that compliment our team has five.
underneath us there are about 20 desktop support people who go to customers sites to actually provide support, underneath them there are about 40 first line guys answering the phones and doing basic trouble shooting etc.
I have no idea how many machines and users there are.
But then it changes, for one customer we manage a single proxy server in a library providing internet services.
another customer we take care of just 25 servers as a section of their business,
another customer has about a hundred servers, and many hundreds (possibly thousands) of desktops and users stretched across about 20 UK sites, (they are a education provider).
then another company has thousands of desktops and servers stretched over the world.
(we do 24 hour support). -working on call.
which means on days like today I am tired since I was called at 4:30 in the morning UK time since an office in the Philippines lost it's internet connection.
We've also got quite a big web hosting business that our company just 'acquired'. and host a load of high profile websites. (well, we host the origin site and akami replicate from us to do world wide hosting).
we used to be an anti spam provider as well, (doing mail filtering). which was also something a bit different, (having server farms stretched around the world doing multi layer filtering using linux/unix and sendmail to transport stuff about), but the company has since moved out of doing that
it's kind of cool, most days there is something new and different. plenty of customers each using different technologies in their own ways. and our company is growing too. (we're recognised in the "Times Tech Track 100" the the "Deloitte Technology fast 50" as being one of the fastest 100, and fastest 50 growing companies in the country).
unfortunately, being as I do work for a large multi national company with headquarters in the city etc, I'm not going to write on here what company I do work for.
-why? because on here I tend to speak my mind, across a broad range of subjects (drugs/politics/religion). and won't always offer the technologically best solution, it might be one that works now, rather than one that works long term etc). and I don't want my personal views to be affiliated with the company that I wok for...
I think that the only downside to my job is:
working on call, (upside still get to work with networking and linux/unix, and I get paid more for doing it, downside, getting woken up in the night because for one customer the world has stopped turning, and you need to fix it, now).
the other downside is because we work for county councils, police forces and financial institutions each year I have to be CRB checked, and have a bank of England "anti terrorism check" -i'm not even sure what that is!!
I guess all in all I've got it pretty sweet really!
