Computer Makers Cater to Big Business, IT Depts.

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "By some estimates, twice as many computers are in the hands of individuals and very small organizations than are in the control of corporate IT departments, Walt Mossberg writes in the Wall Street Journal. Yet the computer industry caters too much to big businesses and their IT staff, Mossberg argues: 'The computer industry loves, and caters to, the IT segment because it buys machines in large quantities and is run by a geeky priesthood that speaks the industry language. By contrast, the non-IT camp, even though it is larger in the aggregate, buys one, two or three machines at a time and tends to be nontechnical. ... This focus on the corporate world can have real, and sometimes negative, consequences for consumers and small businesses. For example, some of the big security problems in Microsoft's software in recent years came because the company included features used only by corporate IT staffs in the products it sold to everyone. One was a communications feature, meant for network administrators, which sleazy operators misused to bombard people with ads. Why was that on my PC in the first place?'"

Comments

Messenger

[doofusclam]

I take it by 'communication service' the article was on about the Messenger service. I agree with this completely, but the reverse is true too - I installed Windows Server 2003 on a new server at work last week and IE has all the usual MSN radio links built into the favourites. WTF? And why is the indexing service built into a consumer OS when nobody uses it?

I usually don't care for Microsoft bashing but they especially need to learn how to differentiate a consumer and corporate OS rather than through having different splash screens.

Public vs Private

[king-manic]

Home computer:
price: $1100
retail profit: $150
wholesale profit: $100
manufacturers profit: $50
cost: $800 (includes warehousign and shipping)

Office desktop:
price: $1100
retail profit: $0 (sold directly)
Wholesale profit: $0 (sold directly)
manufacturers profit: $300
cost: $800 (includes warehousign and shipping)

net result: The manufacterers care lessd about you.

Totally incorrect

[dbarclay10]

That the hardware and software vendors cater to IT departments because "they're geeks and they speak the industry language" is bullshit.

They cater to IT departments because the vast majority of them are run by total incompetents who have no idea what they're doing, and have no idea how to value hardware and software. I run a small business' IT department. Hell, I *am* the IT department. 40 some-odd servers, 20 or so desktops, 10 or so laptops. I do all the purchasing, and let me tell you, they sure as heck don't cater to *me*. They cater to the people who're willing to spend $80,000 on a crap piece of software which could be done by one of our dozen in-house coders (we're a software development shop) in a weekend. Or by me for maybe $2500 worth of time.

They cater to morons who think that "Fibre Channel" drives are better than SCSI, and so are willing to spend $3000 for a 150GB drive. They cater to people who think that there's something magical about SCSI, and so think that even if 10kRPM 300GB drives were available with SATA connectors instead of SCSI, the SCSI drives would still be worth $1500. (Here's a hint - the differences between Fibre Channel drives and SCSI drives is the connector. They may do some extra QA on FC drives, to up the MTBF, but this is what RAID is for.)

Vendors do NOT cater to IT departments because IT departments "know the language". They cater to IT departments because they tend to be massively over-funded for what they provide, and they're willing to piss away huge quantities of money.

That's the thing I hate most about the IT industry right now. Prices aren't set by competitive pressure between the vendors, they're set by twits not knowing that it's silly to pay $50,000 for some shared storage they don't need. Why should IBM sell me a 10kRPM 150GB SCSI drive for $500 when they can sell it to an idiot for $1500? (They'll sell them to me for $1000, and that's the lowest they'll go. I still think it's horribly overpriced.)

Remember these guys write for the masses

[xmas2003]

Walt Mossberg at the WSJ (his counterpart David Pogue at the New York Times) write for the masses with columns targetted at consumers. Typical stuff is a review mid-priced consumer digicams, cell phones, printers, etc. In fact, long-time readers joke that the templates are often the same ("I reviewed X, Y, Z ... X and Y were good, but Z was the standout ... although it has a few issues that company ABC needs to address") - just replace the product names. This does serve a useful purpose ... but I'd keep in mind that these guys don't have a lot of exposure/experience with the nuts-n-bolts of a Corporate IT department beyond talking to their PR flaks ... and IMHO, often over-simplify things ... although there ease-of-use comments on consumer devices is often spot-on.

BTW, noticeably absent from this Mossberg column was the "Katherine Boehret" byline - she has done a lot of the heavy lifting for a while (older columns often said "contributed by") and glad to see that not that long ago, she moved up to the byline.

Re:Ignorance and selfishness are a bad combination

[Hiro Antagonist]

I think the difference here is that you are a sysadmin. Even if you don't run a Unix desktop, you likely keep up with the worms, viruses, and vulnerabilities on a daily basis; I know that one of the first things I do when I start in on a sysadmin gig is to sign up to every security mailing list related to the software that I administrate. You also likely know what trojans are, take care to not use insecure software, and also, use your computer for work during working hours, with occasional posts on Slashdot.

The 'average office user' is nowhere near as attentive to any of this; they don't get why it's a bad idea to install a screensaver they got in an email from someone they don't know, or why they shouldn't look at that 'funny picture' that some random person sent them over IM. The idea that they can cause millions of dollars in damage through their carelessness never enters their mind, because a computer is nowhere near as dangerous-looking as a forklift or scalpel.

Being a programmer doesn't make you immune, either; at my last job, one of the senior coders brought in a CD with some software from home, including a screensaver...yep, trojaned. Because he was senior, he had access to a lot of data, and it took us (the IS staff) about three full-time days to assess and deal with all the damage; I'm just happy it was a Unix shop, with tight security (we found the worm because it was banging against our firewall trying to phone home). If we had been an all-MS shop, there would have been a months' worth of damage control.

The way I usually handle this is that I provide a Jabber server for internal users to chat amongst each other, and limit outside IM access. If I can get them, I ask for computers in the employee breakrooms, lock those down tightly, and then allow both IM and unrestricted Web access so that people can chat with friends and check their personal mail on break. This has worked fairly well, both with management[1], and with the users[2]

[1] It's a 'no-cost' option that adds an employee 'perk' *and* increases system security.

[2] People want to do this at their desk, of course, but usually respond well to the argument of 'Well, it's either the kiosk, or we have to monitor and log all of your IM conversations...'.