The Linux consultant: The Maytag repairman of the IT world

The author is right, Linux hardly needs any support. But that doesn't mean you can't earn money from it. You just have to structure the support plan differently. I have a few clients that I support on a fixed-fee basis. They pay me a fixed amount per month and I keep their system running. Every once in a blue moon something happens that causes me to have to spend some time to fix something and I loose money that month, but most months I have to do nothing at all while still getting paid.

Play to your strengths. A Windows support consultant wouldn't use fixed fee because it would be too expensive. It would either cost him too much money or the fixed fee would be sufficiently high to scare off clients. Clients like fixed fee a lot, because they know exactly how much they are paying, no surprises.

Quoting: A Windows support consultant wouldn't use fixed fee

We do fixed fee on a ton of Windows systems and make good money. You really have to know what you're doing, and we do imaging on workstations so we don't really chase down virus problems, we just reimage to before the problem occurred and get them rolling. If we didn't do the imaging, we'd have a lot of problems because it's a very common thing for someone to hose up their workstation even when they're not looking at pr0n on their machine, if it's a Windows machine.

A good monitoring system and monthly preventive maintenance is the key when working on a fixed-fee basis. If you can catch problems before or as soon as they happen, you have a big advantage.

Keep in mind we are a consulting firm with about 10 really good network engineers on staff, so someone is usually available to help a client on short notice. If I was doing this on my own, it would drive me batty and it would be a monetary bloodbath.

And clients do indeed love fixed fee, even when they wind up paying more than they would have had the work been done on an hourly basis, they like not getting surprise invoices in the mail.

Sounds like selling insurances to me?

@Hans: Essentially it *is* insurance for a company's network and systems. Insurance boils down to piece of mind and a guarantee of not having a catastrophic bill at some point. Oh, and yes, customers love support contracts with fixed fees.

@rijelkentaurus: Imaging is indeed a solution. But still, if you have to restore images every few weeks or so, that's going to cost time and this result in higher fixed fees (compared to the Linux alternative where you basically do nothing but rake in the cash ;-)

@Hans: Pretty much, yes. It's pretty much a win-win all around. The client gets predictable billing with no surprised. The contractor gets paid for quality. The higher quality he delivers, the less work he'll have to do for the same money. You completely sidestep the whole "FOSS doesn't need support so I can't bill hours" issue. If FOSS contractors are smart they start pushing for fixed fee support contracts and educating clients on the benefits of it.

Of course, as a contractor you do take a certain risks because if the goop does hit the fan then you need to fix it. Even if you loose money on it. So, either you need to either exclude certain risks or you need to raise the fees to cover it. For example, one of the applications I support has a lot of outside dependencies (i.e. various Google and Yahoo APIs). I don't cover breakage because they changed their API underneath my application. I'll fix it (of course) but I will bill normal hourly rates for that.

@ Sander: and others: Would your also exclude hardware failure?

What these articles miss is that support isn't just installing something once and walking away. When your customers are free of the burden of insane licensing fees and forced upgrades you can focus on improvements. They grow, they shrink, their needs change, and when you take the time to sit down and ask the right questions, listen carefully, and watch how they do things, you can make good suggestions for improvements and additions. They still save money, are more efficient, and the ace geek picks up more paychecks.

That depends what you are supporting. In my previous example it's excluded. The hardware and bare OS is the responsibility of the on-site sysadmin. I support the application stack on top.

Personally I would only include hardware failure if I have some control on what hardware is used, so that I can pick decent quality hardware. But I am primarily an application developer. I develop and support business applications. I am a better developer than I am a sysadmin so I prefer to let the company's own IT department manage the hardware and OS. I simply spec out the server they're going to need and what base applications need to be installed and I take it from there.

It really depends on what kind of service you deliver. Application support? Full-service IT? Black-box applicances?

Hardware support, in our case, requires a warranty with the vendor. We sell Dells and never have a problem...that's with the business line, of course, which is a different beast than their pathetic home support.

@Sander, we seldom have to resort to images because we lock the workstations down so that it's difficult to mess up, and there is content filtering on the firewall to keep them away from undesirable sites. Not 100%, but it does a good enough job. If you're going to do fixed fee, you have to stack the deck in your favor and put stuff like that in the contract. You can't let them beat the house.

And it is similar to a casino...someone can come in and have a great night (which would be like a bad month in this case), but if they keep coming back they will eventually lose (all the other months where you make money).

If you could beat the house, there wouldn't be a house, right?

tuxchick nails it.