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> Now, these prices from GH can make sense if you are a team of 10-50, but I wonder what would be the point where it wouldn't take a bean-counter to say "can't

by Beldin 4y ago

> Now, these prices from GH can make sense if you are a team of 10-50, but I wonder what would be the point where it wouldn't take a bean-counter to say "can't we just hire someone else do that in-house, part-time? It would cost as much or less, $250/user/year; for $50k yearly salary is 200 users. I don't think $50k salary is a lot. On the other hand, I've heard you should roughly double salary costs to approximate cost to employer (including all overhead). So then a $50k/yr local gitlab (or somesuch) admin only becomes viable salarywise at 400 paying users. And if you have 400 users dependent on that one employee for their daily work, you need backup. At least another .5 FTE - so 600 users before the business case makes sense salarywise. So that's not really soon - if you're reaching that size, you want professional support, not what a team of 1.5 employees can cobble together.

rglullis 4y ago
There is another thing that goes in favor of SaaS: Capex vs Opex. Most of these expenses are tax-deductable, so from a bean-counting point of view the number would have to be a lot higher than the sticker price. But when I say "hire someone else to do it", it wouldn't have to be an employee. It could be a consultant, it could be a third-party IT support service. I really don't think that this kind of work would require a FTE. You'd be hiring someone to get the initial setup and you'd just run a support contract for the solution to ensure that things keep going. I think such a system you could be paying less than what the vendor charges and you also get more control over your operations.
krab 4y ago
The level of risk and needed effort also scales with the user base. So supporting local Gitlab or similar for 20 users is more like a 0.05 FTE, whereas it can easily be 0.5 FTE or more for 100 users.

by Beldin 4y ago

rglullis 4y ago

There is another thing that goes in favor of SaaS: Capex vs Opex. Most of these expenses are tax-deductable, so from a bean-counting point of view the number would have to be a lot higher than the sticker price. But when I say "hire someone else to do it", it wouldn't have to be an employee. It could be a consultant, it could be a third-party IT support service. I really don't think that this kind of work would require a FTE. You'd be hiring someone to get the initial setup and you'd just run a support contract for the solution to ensure that things keep going. I think such a system you could be paying less than what the vendor charges and you also get more control over your operations.

krab 4y ago

The level of risk and needed effort also scales with the user base. So supporting local Gitlab or similar for 20 users is more like a 0.05 FTE, whereas it can easily be 0.5 FTE or more for 100 users.