What Would You Like to See in an Ops Center?

binaryspiral asks: "I work in a network operations center that has a fair amount of tours and escorted customer traffic. We (the ops employees) have been given the option of submitting ideas for a redesign that would upgrade our ops center to something more functional and visually impressive to potential customers who visit. I'm also looking into software applications that monitor our systems and put them on large displays but a lot of it looks ho-hum. Unfortunately, one of the criteria is that this redesign be functional and visually appealing. I would ask the Slashdor crowd to share with me the things you hate or love about your ops center. Any suggestions or ideas from this crowd might actually be what I'm looking for!"

Comments

Why are you bullshitting your customers?

[CyricZ]

Why are you intentionally misleading, if not pure out bullshitting, your customers? The intelligent ones will see right through your flashing lights and other such faggotry.

Show them a clean, functional environment. That means you don't have cables all over the place. That means your staff are well dressed, well groomed, and act with the utmost professionalism. Make sure all servers are mounted in their racks with the correct number of screws. Make sure any PC-style servers aren't badly scratched and have their cases on. Keep PC servers lined up evenly. Sweep the floor very often. Polish it, too.

But please, don't try to awe your customers with flashing lights and spinning fans. Don't insult their intelligence so obviously. If I were shown such a fanboy facility, I would politely say, "Take me away from this shit," and I would proceed to never deal with them again.