Macs Ostracized on Capitol Hill

jonerik writes "Wired News has an article today on the last Apple holdout on Capitol Hill, Ngozi Pole. Pole, the office and systems administrator at Sen. Edward Kennedy's (D-MA) Boston and Washington D.C. offices, argues that the Senate Office of the Sergeant at Arms (SAA), which makes technology recommendations to senators, wants to make its job as easy as possible by pushing Windows-based applications as much as they can. According to the article, 'The SAA allocates $250,000 per six-year term to each senator. The department had hoped Pole would use the budget to replace aging Macs in Kennedy's offices. Instead, Pole will spend the remainder of his budget through 2003 filling Senator Kennedy's Washington office with new flat-panel iMacs.' Unsurprisingly, the SAA declined to comment."

Comments

Asking the wrong questions

[Niherlas]

Far too many admins focus on the process of being an admin, rather than on serving customers. On platforms and products rather than solutions.

Far too many Windows-only admins have been trained as MCSEs, and that training emphasizes a one-world homogenous platform. Products and platforms. "Here's Windows - and the things you can do with it," rather than, "What do you need to do, and how can Windows help you do that?" The thought processes of these admins (and I've seen this time and time again in 14 years of being a sysadmin) takes the cant of "how can I convince my customers to work this way?" The way that the MS tools provide.

It's the wrong question. The wrong approach.

The user is the customer, not the enemy. They pay you to solve their problems, so give them solutions. It shouldn't matter what platform - Mac, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD - what should be at issue is what provides the best solution for the customers needs.