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Am I getting ripped off? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 4 days ago by appauled@sh.itjust.works to c/homelab@selfhosted.forum

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Hi everyone! I've got a question about some guys at work who are pitching that we need a server. This is mostly a sanity check, but I'm pretty sure they're full of shit

The law firm I work for uses a CRM that doesn't have an open API. This is important. You can access a daily updated copy of your data from an S3 bucket with an API, but it's essentially read-only for that reason.

They said they want to set up a server for the firm for " automation" using n8n. We can't use n8n because it doesn't have a native integration with our CRM. They also set up Dropbox for the firm (prior to my time starting) and the firm pays for OneDrive with Microsoft suite already...

Then they said they want local ai for automation so they'll

"Just put a 5070ti in there" For an ai agent for the entire 15-20 person firm. They also never specified what said ai would do. I also think it's completely not viable

Then they said all 3 locations can just use tailscale to access the server simultaneously. All of these people minus me and one other are completely non-technical. I help them restart Excel once a week non-technical.

I cannot possibly think of a viable use case for what they're describing. Am I cinical or are they just looking to make some cash off whatever project they don't know anything about?

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[–] jacksilver@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

So to play the devils advocate, this really comes down to:

Are these internal people or contractors
Are they looking to test out a Workflow or implement small automations

If they're contractors, always be suspicious. If they're internal, it sounds like they may want a server so it's a one off cost to setup some work flows. You can burn through hundreds to thousands of dollars per month using LLM APIs, but if you self host you've basically got a fixed cost.

If they're just looking to create some work flows that crawl the data dumps and give some insights, this approach could work. Although, as others mentioned, the hardware they're talking about would be somewhat limited. Small LLMs can be quite functional, but this server might not be a long term fix if the automations they set up gain traction.

[–] appauled@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They're contractors, I'm supposed to approve/deny said contractors

[–] jacksilver@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Yeah, then that's a weird ask. They could have a legitimate plan, but it's weird to not start with a mvp using an API or similar before buying dedicated hardware. If they can't articulate what they're going to do, then they shouldn't know what hardware they even need.