One thing is that a technology architect/developer is needed regardless of the solutions, whether saas, commercial in-house or open source in-house. Someone will need to invest time to install, configure, connect to active directory, etc. When a new version comes along or when active directory stops connecting after an upgrade are all examples of when a technologist is needed. There are lots of scenarios that require technology support.
The second piece which wasn’t clear in the discussion I had with David was that the intern and part-time technologists supporting the wiki were also helping add content and format the wiki. Sometimes I would give the intern a directory full of documents that I was getting tired of sending around and ask them to upload. A time consuming activity regardless of which tool is being used. The intern would also help support people with activities such as, where do I click the edit tab, how do I rollback content, etc.
Lastly, a lot of the work invested was installing and configuring plug-ins. For example, we’ve added a plug-in that allows people to protect content. The nice part of working with a tool like mediawiki is that there are lots of plug-ins being added on a periodic basis.