Slashdot Mirror
Barrier to Web 2.0 — IT Departments
jcatcw writes "Wikis, social networks, and other Web 2.0 technologies are finding resistance inside companies from the very people who should be rolling them out: the IT staff. The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) in London had to bypass IT to get Web 2.0 technologies to end users. Both Morgan Stanley and Pfizer are rolling out Web 2.0 projects, but it took some grass roots organizing to get there."
Perhaps it's because IT departments actually know how complicated, messy, potentially insecure and how awful support of such "projects" are going to be. As a general rule of thumb, tech-types don't usually give into the hype about things like Web 2.0 that columnists, marketers and your usual assortment of weirdos do.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Might this be a hint, maybe? If I had to bypass my doctor for a certain type of treatment, wouldn't I also wonder if I was doing something stupid?
Web 2.0 is not the sudden computer solution to every business problem. You would have thought that businesses would have learned the dangers of over reliance on computer 'solutions' after the Dot Com Crash.
IT doesn't want Web 2.0 but end users do. Too bad! End users typically don't know what is good for them when it comes to computers and networking.
... opinions are not trolls or flamebait. Please don't mod me down because I'm testy, you don't agree, or you think I am being "stuck up". Reply instead.
Web 2.0 is a bloated, risky, pointless waste of time, money, bandwidth, and electricity.
Or at least that is my opinion.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Of course the IT 1.0 staff is causing trouble, companies need to upgrade them to 2.0 first!
Am I the only one who read this as:
"IT departments are wisely refusing to spend uneeded man hours and money on technological buzzwords that will not help, and will likely hurt, the business. Management foolishly decided to override them instead of listening."
Maybe I'm just jaded.
How did the end-users get to bypass HIPPA, Sarbanes-Oxley, Regulation FD, and general GAAP auditing, management control, and business continuity requirements? If they could teach the "IT Departments" how to do that I am sure there would be great appreciation.
sPh
Executive/marketing people are following the "hip" hype (reminds me of apple people) - just to make more flash and bang on user interface end and creating work equal to actual realization of a non web2.0 site, out of nowhere.
and not even having the vision to realize that all those nitty gritty stuff like ajax with highly exploitable activex, javascript, xml components are going to be summarily blocked by security software in near future. (some already creating problems)and the it peoplew will have to redo the thing all over to suit the security software producers' tastes this time.
no sir, it doesnt matter if a decent menu opens when you click a webpage, or it opens by turning and flashing and banging in some corner of the webpage whilst you were doing some other flashing and banging in another corner. data is the same, service is the same, exploitable security potential and work involved in realizing them are NOT.
Read radical news here
Well I read both stories and while it's hinted at. I'd think that legal would have as much difficulty with Web 2.0 as IT.
Wow. I never thought I'd see something this ridiculous even given space on slashdot.
"Web" 2.0 is the biggest marketing farce that's ever been created. It's NOT a technology!
It's a name for a subset of existing technologies used to make things "more interactive."
This is, hands down, the most idiotic claim that I've ever seen; okay, so maybe Al Gore takes the cake, but this comes close...
A company I work for has started to offer next-gen video hosting services (w/ one-to-one tracking, etc.) to customers who heretofore thought they simply could not have due to the intransigence of their own IT departments. So far, it's been interesting to hear the stories of the people who feel trapped by the people they hired to make this sort of thing possible.
Advocating good sense never got anyone far. Advantage: Stupid shit
Let me get this straight. You want to make the IT department pick up the slack for all the half-assed projects that some newb MBA deploys because he's a big fan of Kevin Rose and thinks it's cool? And that's a problem? The "resistance" mentioned in the lead-in exists because responsible parties within the organization don't want to follow behind the puppy cleaning up the dog poop.
If the MBA doggies had to clean up their own poop, the IT staff would be all in favor of the new projects. It's easy to be cavalier when you aren't paying the bills with YOUR time and effort.
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
I still don't get it, so don't even get started about web 3,0 and web 4,0 either
The same Pfizer that just announced yet another loss of identity data and has been fingered as having compromised hosts that are sending out Viagra spam? (I am not making this up!)
Something tells me that these guys need to be working more closely with their IT department, not less.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
The company I work for is a VERY large tech company. We are JUST NOW starting to roll out things like Wiki and forum based support for applications, social networking software, etc. It's quite sad. I am sure this is the case in most IT departments in most large corporations. I have some theories as to why:
1) the obvious, resistance from upper management. Upper management is afraid of being "bleeding edge". New stuff, and especially open source stuff, is scary. PHBs fail to realize that the F/OSS community operates on a different set of values than corporations. Corporations only offer free stuff if it gets them good PR or creates a bunch of indentured customers. There is much FOSS that is quite viable, but it usually gets turned down in favor of proprietary crap.
2) complacent IT staff. In many large companies, the people who make decisions have promoted to their level of incompetence. In turn, they just phone it in, just do the minimum they need to do to get by. This precludes their actually learning anything new. When the decision makers are victims of FUD, what do you want?
3) red tape. Where I work, if you want to use non-standard software you have submit an exception, which then has to get approved by the people in bullet point number 2 above. It also has to get sent to upper management. Some supervisors are afraid of that and so strongly discourage you from submitting these exceptions. So people just use the same old software in the same old ways and nobody actually keeps up with the industry.
Case in point: on my intranet, AJAX use is still pretty small scale. Maybe for certain internet sites, AJAX isn't always appropriate, but on the intranet, where you can ensure that everyone is using a somewhat modern browser, it's an obvious choice for certain things. Yet, you still have people developing sites the same way sites have been developed for ten years. I use AJAX heavily, and you'd be surprised how people are still amazed by it. But now there is a push to call libraries like prototype "software" and thus make them subject to regulation and corporate standards. Standards committees cannot keep up with the industry, so you have a situation where you cannot, by decree, use anything *too* new. I can see disallowing joe service rep from installing webshots on his PC, but disallowing a developer from using his software of choice is pretty shortsighted.
blah blah blah
Not that many days ago it was an article about how our equivalent of the NSA had found sensitive information in plain sight on Facebook. The IT department don't want everyone and their mother blogging on the net because they'll also be the one getting the blame when shit hits the fan. And they'll also be the ones tasked with the impossible mission to create a magical filter that'll only let good things through and bad things not. Among several groups, the general opinion is that if they say nothing at all, they can't say anything wrong. It's not that terrible as it sounds, I'm not talking about whistleblowers here. I'm just talking about people that so desperately want to tell everyone else what they're doing. For the most part internal business is internal business and has no place in the public domain.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Unfortunately, most companies see IT as a "cost" that should be minimized. Any extra expenditure for any extra features needs a champion, a proposal, a business case, documentation of ROI, prototypes, roll-out plans, risk reduction documents, etc. etc. IT departments live under this constant cost-avoidance mandate and become quite averse to anything that might create more work (= more costs) because they know they'll have jump through hoops to justify the extra cost.
If the IT department in your company is an obstacle for your job, realize that it's because the people that control the purse strings for IT (e.g., the CEO, COO, CFO, et al) don't understand that IT can provide a huge opportunity to boost productivity, revenues, and profits. But until someone goes to them with a solid business case and demonstrable ROI for whatever tech du jour, the C-level suits and the IT dept will stay in cost-avoidance (vs. opportunity-seeking) mode of management.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Management: "Hey, programmers and IT people: One of us Management people read this great article about 'Web 2.0' and how it's revolutionizing the business world; so, we want to implement a Wiki, a blog, possibly a user-driven news site, and it should all be done with... ah... *refers to napkin* A-Jax."
IT department: "But... we're a consultancy firm. We have a small client base that would never utilize any of those things, and a lot of them are on slower computers with restrictive security that would make an AJAX interface more cumbersome and generally unwan--"
Management: "STOP STANDING IN THE WAY OF WEB 2.0! YOU CAN'T SEE THE VISION!"
... Actually, that sounds a lot like my last job.
Tell me something...it's still "We, the people"... right?
That's the nice thing about virtual companies. There's really no one to "bypass" (except maybe the CEO and there's nothing one can do about that). Plus it's easier to offer services to other, traditional and new.
As a disclaimer, here, I am not a web developer. Sometimes I have to do web development because of a project, and I can get done what I need to, but I don't enjoy it or even remotely like it. I spent most of my time doing desktop application and database development, which is where I like to be. :) I have a lot of respect for the serious web developers, compatibility and such can be a nightmare to work with in that field.
:)
Sorry if any of this is inaccurate; let's just call it a perspective from a little bit further out.
In the beginning, we had plain standard HTML and the HTTP protocol, and it was good. That really wasn't even the true beginning, but lets start there. Gradually, everyone began to see the need to do more than just displaying pictures and text; we wanted animation, we wanted applications, we wanted interactivity. All of these are good things, in my opinion. The problem is, along the way, no clear standard really emerged on how to do these things; we got many technologies built on top of what we already had, which really wasn't particularly suitable.
Like some other internet protocols (I'm looking at you, SMTP), they were designed in the infancy of the internet, long before anyone knew what it would become, and that has exposed some security issues. The "needs" of the internet have changed, but the base of what makes the internet from a user standpoint has not. I know it will never happen due to the red tape and the amount of market force needed, but it seems like what we really need is a version 2.0 of the mid-range protocols that make up the internet, designed by an open group, with security and modern needs in mind.
It's all too much of an idealist standpoint to take hold, and trying to get everyone to switch would be extremely difficult, but one can always dream.
Wow. I know this is Slashdot, but this is getting ridiculous. IT departments have one job and one job only:
Support the elements of the company that make money.
That's it. That's our job. If the elements of whatever company we're working for wants a "Web 2.0" app, instead of immediately jumping on our pedestals and saying, "Whoa there, mister! That's insecure and NEW! Put that thing away," we should instead be asking ourselves, "Hey, what problem are they trying to solve with this, and can we find a better solution?" When the employees are using Gmail or Facebook for inter-office communication, it means we're not doing our jobs, not because we're not locking down outside communication paths but because the communication paths we're providing are inadequate. When our customers start firing up MSN Messenger without our permission, we should be asking ourselves what we can use that's better, more secure, and easier to manage in an enterprise. When our customers come up to us and say, "We're tired of chasing Word docs everywhere - we're getting a wiki to manage our information", we should be looking at their problems and figuring out if a wiki is the best solution, or if they really just need a document management system.
Get it? WE are at the disposal and discretion of our coworkers, NOT the other way around.
Some ten years ago I did some web development for a real estate company that wanted to have 3D panoramas of their listings. It had to work seamlessly (no plugins or installs), be simple enough for the brokers to update and had to work with AOL. I put the brakes on that one quicker than I can say 'Jiminy Cricket'. Mind you, this was a company where they would print out listings and rekey them to move them from computer to computer. And yes, they were networked.
The article almost seems to suggest that IT personnel are lazy.
Perish the thought.
Perhaps IT staff aren't keen on implementing it because they don't buy into The Silliness. Call it "Capitalism Meets Social Engineering 2.0" and perhaps the guys in suits with MacBooks and artistic mohawks might have takers in IT.
As Mark Pilgrim so eloquently put it: For those of you wanting to make a proverbial killing of this 'phenomenon' I refer you to a vital dictionary of terms.
Remember, the users that want Web 2.0 are the same users that wanted animated gifs and midi.
Um, yeah. I am one of those "technologists" who cringes when I hear someone say "we are planning to install a wiki," because to me this roughly translates into "we're going to play with it for a couple of months, and then leave it sitting there, because something shinier will come along by then."
Me, I'm left with rotting carcases of abandoned wikis, which get rapidly taken over by free viagra lesbians.
*grumble*
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
I work for a government organization, and I would have to say the biggest barrier to using many of these features is accessibility. There are huge challenges in making Web 2.0 accessible, which we are required to do.
There is definitely some complacency there as well, as well as a lack of 'customer service' attitude, but in the case of Web 2.0, why bother if it takes so much effort or is almost impossible to make it WCAG and Section 508 compliant.
"The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right." - Henrik Ibsen
Web 2.0 just doesn't exist... no one seems able to give a definition of exactly when Web 2.0 did, or will, start. Instead it seems like it will forever be "just over the horizon".
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
> resistance inside companies from [...] the IT staff.
That's because they know it's a passing fad, and will be superseded by Web 3.0 or whatever, and they don't have the resources to commit to projects that are not going to contribute to persistence and durability.
Of course, if their source data were in a persistent and durable format to start with, it wouldn't matter so much, because engineering a Web 2.0 interface wouldn't create structures that would inhibit subsequent interfaces.
He added that he began his Web 2.0 quest by working closely with the company's 10,000-member IT department. "Nothing gets done without the IT department," he noted.
Wow! 10,000 member IT department!! That's a bloody legion of IT workers!
No wonder they had resistance to change, their bureaucracy is simply huge. Are the 10,000 geeks serving 10 million workers? A huge company that must be!
--
P.S. It looks like this web page changed its text when I loaded it a 2nd time. What's up with that? It think someone edited it.
Uninformed users request features that they neither understand nor are qualified to implement. IT says no.
News at 11.
discover computer bulletin boards! Will wonders never cease?
"Web 2.Oooh isn't a technology, a thing or even a classifiable approach to client-server engineering. It's the term given to a fad whereby users freely contribute content to increase the bankable assets of entrepreneurs that generally use impossibly complex and dubious EULA's for their own gain."
Try reading the story next time. A lot of the Web 2.0 is for internal use. That's why IT is being discussed.
"Perhaps IT staff aren't keen on implementing it because they don't buy into The Silliness. Call it "Capitalism Meets Social Engineering 2.0" and perhaps the guys in suits with MacBooks and artistic mohawks might have takers in IT."
Or, perish the thought. IT is as human as the rest of us, and either needs the benefits explained to them. Or maybe they're comfortable with the status quo and don't want anything upsetting that.
""Praising companies for providing APIs to get your own data out is like praising auto companies for not filling your airbags with gravel. I'm not saying data export isn't important, it's just aiming kinda low. You mean when I give you data, you'll give it back to me? People who think this is the pinnacle of freedom aren't really worth listening to.""
The problem with the above is that it over-simplifies. First places like Facebook and other sites (blogs, wiki's, etc) are more than just about posting data and others "getting it out" aka reading it. The data is not only presented in a way that's easy for people to deal with. Other people's data (not just yours) is presented the same way. And yes it is a good thing companies are trying these API's, because there's a risk that what they do (other than just hosting raw data) will die out, and that may not be a good thing.
I'm not sure if Mark Pilgrim's analogy is quite fair. But it is quite funny. I can imagine the surprise of someone who finds gravel in their face instead of a comfy airbag. The thought is really quite priceless. Think about it.
The article didn't really give an examples other than 1000 people signed up for LinkedIn to prove a point.
I work in IT and we occasionally get requests from the business to do something in PHP, MySql and AJAX and they have no idea what they are even talking about other than they see it mentioned in a magazine article or a blog somewhere so they think they need everything done in PHP and MySql. These are the same people who think that if an icon isn't on their desktop the application isn't on their computer.
'Same speed C but faster'
One of several recent hacks at Pfizer
IT departments have learned caution the hard way.
What, the same people who put Windoze on desktops and increasingly into the server room don't like Wikis and other very cool free programs? Shocker. There are plenty of exceptions, like the CIA, but Windows inertia is a good part of this problem and established IT departments are something that have to be circumvented to get things done. The solution is radical removal of the problem. Doing that removes all sorts of networking problems and frees up staff for productive use. It's sad that users have to push this kind of change onto the IT departments instead of the other way around.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Looks like IDG (ComputerWorld, ITWorld, NetworkWorld...) is really hitting Slashdot HARD, either that or they have a deal with Slashdot. Here's a partial list of the shills that regularly show up and have almost 100% article acceptance rates:
Ian Lamont
Lucas123
coondoggie
inkslinger77
narramissic
jcatcw
Looks like they spread out the work over a few shill user accounts, which is to be expected. If it's all OK and everything with the corporate ownership of Slashdot to be played by IDG, I suppose that's their business, but one would hope that they are actually getting PAID for being part of IDG's advertising program. And of course there should be disclosure so that visitors to Slashdot realize they are reading advertisements and not an article submitted by a "real" user...
So the company I am at just blocked a large online free web mail application, because of 'ActiveX', which is used by IE for AJAX.
They also block, youtube, myspace, flicker, and several other site, and anything that comtains music or video. It is beginning to suck working here.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
When Adam Carson, an associate at Morgan Stanley, first began pushing the use of Web 2.0 tools, he faced a major obstacle in the New York-based investment bank's 10,000-member IT department. "Most of our IT department didn't get it," he said. "This was all new to them. They had just been stuck in the world of enterprise IT."
... people liked using them."
So, the IT department would have prefered to do their job (enterprise IT) instead of building something just to use the tools.
However, he said he worked closely with IT team members to convince them of the merits of Web 2.0, which led them to implement Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) technologies, a key requirement for building and supporting Web 2.0 tools
He didn't stop nagging until they told an intern to cobble something together and paint the relevant acronyms in two feet letters on it.
Once IT was convinced of the value of Web 2.0, he said, the organization was "really good at making sure that [systems] worked really well and didn't break, but they weren't really good at making sure
So, people don't use the new-fangled stuff. Obviously this is the fault of IT, and not because they don't see the need.
Carson noted that the company now has about 80 Web 2.0 projects under way, including an effort to create social networks for its clients.
Now we have 80 unused projects. Even our customers refuse to use theirs so far.
During the education process, Carson said he also had to find a manager that would require the use of a Web 2.0 tool for a specific project.
He had an hammer and was looking for a nail. A screw would probably work as well.
That would help spur employees to use the new tools, he noted. The effort also faced cultural resistance from some users clinging to the use of e-mail and other traditional tools rather than switch to new Web 2.0 collaboration tools, he added.
So, with hard work he managed to have something implemented that nobody else thought necessary. Now he is looking for a way to make the users use it.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Technology is chasing itself in cruel circles at everyones expense.
People are building abstraction layers on top of technologies that are best off standing alone only to reintroduce the same set of problems solved by the very things they were abstracting.
Web 2.0 is to me is a rediculous and sorry joke. Hello WTF do you think the Internet is for if not to communicate ideas with each other? Information was a hell of a lot easier to find and process when everyone used *usenet* for chatting with each other. Now with all the phpbb's data that can be used and archived gets lost when some mod gets a wild hair or a disk drive crashes. How is wading through commercial upon commercial just to find what your looking for or using a cheap textbox vs a real editor online any sort of an improvement??
Collaboration tools are used to colloborate and share ideas they are not new and have been around since people first started linking computer systems togeather even before the Internet ever existed.
Marketeers and those who follow them are just not confusing people but unwittingly doing real harm to the network and innovation in the process.
Any production IT shop these days is already stressed to it's limit and underfunded. Then the MBA knotheads say: "Sure we know you're underpaid" "We know you work 60 hours a week" "Here's your pager so we can wake you at 3AM for any reason" "Keep all our production systems running, and SECURE" "Oh, and in your spare time we'd like you to learn this ephemeral new tech and implement it!" Yeah, resistance is surprising.
Oh wait, 'Erris' is actually twitter's sockpuppet. I thought that tone was familiar.
BTW, can you explain what you mean by "GNU demand"?
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Twitter, for the sake of humanity, please just get it over with and slit your wrists now.
The article isn't really about web 2.0 it's more just along the lines of any web based technologies for communication and interaction.
As an IT guy I am rolling out web based stuff. I have found:
- A lot of canned stuff (even some OSS apps) just aren't a fit for what we do (most businesses aren't a one size fits all business).
- Many of the hottest things to do are not all that flexible when it comes to integrating with other apps or data conversion, web 2.0 integration is cool as long as you keep with one co.'s products (assuming you can find one that can offer it all).
- I'm very leery of the SAAS companies - if the service company takes a dive all my work and data goes with it and then I'm really screwed (so most stuff will be hosted in-house).
- Those I can't I am reworking what we do (part from modified code other parts from scratch). A lot of this is truly very flexible and powerful, but compared to what tools I used before it is surely more complex (in a good sense) and takes time to get it right.
- Nothing is stopping you from rolling out a web app tomorrow but until you have your business (more importantly your data) on it it just will be a struggle in the transition. I find it takes a lot of work (or just time) to get to the tipping point where it becomes commonplace. When it does, it's great - but it surely doesn't happen overnight (unless that's the same time you start your business).
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I'm posting this so that you (the moderator) have some context to consider twitter [hyperdictionary.com] and not mod him up whenever he posts his filler preformatted rants about installing Knoppix or Mepis or whatever that unfortunately get him karma every single time and allow him to continue posting his trademark toxic crap (read on) day in and day out. You may consider this a troll - I consider it community service. And I ain't kidding.
If you're a /. subscriber, I invite you to look through some of his posting history . I guarantee that you'll be hard pressed to find someone that is more "out there" than twitter. You'll also probably notice he's got quite an AC following. Don't just read his posts, make sure you go through the replies.
To get an idea of what I'm talking about, check this post out. This is an article about email disclaimers. The parent of the post is complaining about the ads in the linked page and so on, and twitter actually goes off on a rant to blame it on Microsoft and recommend Lynx, because "is teh free".
Here's another. In this post twitter not only calls the OP a troll but attempts to "tell it like it is" while making some vague argument about "GNU". Yes, if you're confused, you're not alone. The reply (modded +4) proceeds to simply destroy his bogus argument. You will notice he did not reply. This is what some people call "drive-by advocacy". A sort of I'll just leave you with my thoughts here and move on to the next flamebait kind of deal. In fact, he almost never replies because he knows that his fanatical arguments simply do not hold up to any sort of discussion. It's not that he's chosen the wrong cause - he's just going at it in a completely wrong way.
Here's that drive-by advocacy and FUD in motion: twitter goes on about some topic and then drops the usual "oh and M$ is teh evil" because "WMP phones home" or some such. Called on his FUD, he then claims that WMP stores every song and movie you've ever played in a file, somewhere. Pressed further, he just sort of slithers out of sight, his FUD-spreading complete. This is not about some Microsoft technology that nobody likes anyway; it's about lying for the sake of lying. Way too many of his posts are exactly like this one.
More? Just read though this post and the subsequent replies. I guess this stands on its own. Or these two . Or this one . Or this one .
Still not convinced? This is what twitter considers "humour" while go
Haha, that's so true.
What happens is these people think that there's some new miracle computer technology that magically solves their problems. When they find out that behind the shiny new Flash/JavaScript/ActiveX user interface they've really just got yet another information storage and retrieval system like their old one and making it useful requires real work by real people, they stop being interested because, heck, they could have done real work with the LAST system.
Where it gets really fun is when just enough work goes into the new thingy that the low-level office droids end up using it regularly and can't live without it BUT upgrading and maintaining it to sane levels doesn't get funded because the shiny exciting part that appeals to management is long gone.
It's *all* just another symptom of management's love of short-term/free-ride thinking. I'm surprised we don't hear more about these same people losing money to perpetual motion machines.
Web 2.0? Social networking??? Right, just as soon as we roll out the ping pong tables and arcade cabinets.
Listen, this isn't 1996 anymore, thank God. Unless you can make the case that we will recoup the implementation, training, and operating costs in productivity gains, it isn't going to happen. This is what is known as a BUSINESS CASE. Businesses exist to make money, not to coddle and pamper you. Did you mistake your cube farm for the Hilton?
You should be thankful you have Web 1.0. Because if it weren't for the fact that Java is most cost effective to maintain and operate, you would still be doing data entry and form processing on COBOL terminal screens.
And talk about insane, if you have so much free time at work that you think we should deploy a social networking system for you, you have got another thing coming. Which would you prefer? We can either cut you down to 20 hours and drop your benefits, or we can just reassign your job to an existing employee who is interested in working in exchange for monetary compensation?
NO WONDER the economy is in a slump. Do you think your counterparts over in India have the time to whine about lack of social networking software on the job? No, that's why they're taking your jobs.
You (PP&GP) are both right, because the IT department people are just that people. Some are morons some not.
Where I worked before we had a UNIX network (most servers running Solaris) but my department had a Windows subnetwork for several reasons. And that was the pain in the ass for the IT people (mostly security related problems). And I could fully understand them.
But now I'm working in a pure Microsoft faculty, I mean everything is Microsoft - really everything. And don't get me started on all the problems here, disk space, email, network, name it we had it in the last 14 months. But the point is, this is the will of the IT department. All problems are of course the fault of the user (which is really bullshit, believe me). And they block every change - even the most reasonable. I mean a lot of users are programming in Prolog, are using Emacs, write their papers in LaTeX, use Perl, and... and... and... - why Windows?
I know users can be annoying but not every PEBKAC is really a PEBKAC. In the first job users where the problem - in the second job I assure you it's the IT department and they are shooting the messenger.
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
Dude, I own your web 2.0 thingie.
Show me a publicly traded company that's implemented a web 2.0 solution for nearly anything without IT department support and I can show you a company that I could run up the flag pole on all sorts of FTC violations.
It's really not that difficult a concept. Has anyone tried saying "please" and "thank you" to any of these folks? Or tried to find out what they do with their time? I'd bet you a paycheck that they're so busy putting out fires that idiot users or executives (but I repeat myself) are setting that they don't have TIME to do anything else. If you treat IT half as badly as it sounds, I think you're lucky they haven't dragged you from your car yet.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
"You can call me lazy if you like, but you're damn right that I don't like jumping into things just because it's the kewl, sexy new way of doing things."
Well I guess cybersex is out for you.
Don't be so harsh on yourself perhaps you're just insecure.
Installations are a good portion of an IT goon's job. Take away that and you put that job in jeapardy. Do you still need IT staff in a Web 2.0 world? Of course, you just don't need as much.
Case in point: our IT department is farmed out to IBM Global Services(read: evil, greedy charlatans). Each trouble ticket is at least $50 per incident, and MS Oulook / Exchange issues constitute well over 50% of their ticket volume(and this is just on the client side, they do our server ops too). If you swapped outlook for Enterprise Gmail accounts you effectively would cut their revenue stream in half.
Are you happy with my testy reply?
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I'm sick of that crappy attitude. IT does not work for other employees in the company. IT works for the same people they work for. Other employees are not customers to IT, they are co-workers. And when the guy that sits around making asinine comments on Digg all day decides that he knows more about doing IT than then guy that works 10-12 hours a day doing IT, then spends a big chunk of time outside the office learning about new technologies for work, IT should not respond "yes, I'll do that immediately". IT workers work on the same principles that other employees do - in other words, let's do the best thing for the company. Add to that, at least in public companies, financial companies, and health companies, the massive number of compliance requirements that an IT department has to deal with, and you begin to realize that IT doesn't just say "no" to spite you, or because they are lazy, but rather because they are doing their jobs, which in the technology realm are probably far more complicated that you can imagine. Remember, they don't work for you, they work with you. Keep that in mind, and you'll have a much better chance at working for a successful company, rather than one that tears itself apart from lack of vision, planning and teamwork.
I'm posting this so that you (the moderator) have some context to consider twitter [hyperdictionary.com] and not mod him up whenever he posts his filler preformatted rants about installing Knoppix or Mepis or whatever that unfortunately get him karma every single time and allow him to continue posting his trademark toxic crap (read on) day in and day out. You may consider this a troll - I consider it community service. And I ain't kidding.
If you're a /. subscriber, I invite you to look through some of his posting history . I guarantee that you'll be hard pressed to find someone that is more "out there" than twitter. You'll also probably notice he's got quite an AC following. Don't just read his posts, make sure you go through the replies.
To get an idea of what I'm talking about, check this post out. This is an article about email disclaimers. The parent of the post is complaining about the ads in the linked page and so on, and twitter actually goes off on a rant to blame it on Microsoft and recommend Lynx, because "is teh free".
Here's another. In this post twitter not only calls the OP a troll but attempts to "tell it like it is" while making some vague argument about "GNU". Yes, if you're confused, you're not alone. The reply (modded +4) proceeds to simply destroy his bogus argument. You will notice he did not reply. This is what some people call "drive-by advocacy". A sort of I'll just leave you with my thoughts here and move on to the next flamebait kind of deal. In fact, he almost never replies because he knows that his fanatical arguments simply do not hold up to any sort of discussion. It's not that he's chosen the wrong cause - he's just going at it in a completely wrong way.
Here's that drive-by advocacy and FUD in motion: twitter goes on about some topic and then drops the usual "oh and M$ is teh evil" because "WMP phones home" or some such. Called on his FUD, he then claims that WMP stores every song and movie you've ever played in a file, somewhere. Pressed further, he just sort of slithers out of sight, his FUD-spreading complete. This is not about some Microsoft technology that nobody likes anyway; it's about lying for the sake of lying. Way too many of his posts are exactly like this one.
More? Just read though this post and the subsequent replies. I guess this stands on its own. Or these two . Or this one . Or this one .
Still not convinced? This is what twitter considers "humour" while go
Son, we live in a world that has firewalls, and those firewalls have to be maintained by men with root access. Whose gonna do it? You? You, with your blogging buddies? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You whine about port blocking and you curse the administrators. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: That blocking ports, while frustrating, probably saves bandwidth... And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves packets. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at LAN parties, you want me on that firewall, you need me on that firewall. We use words like source address, port 80, destination... We use these words as the backbone of an access control list. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain why I block access to YouTube to a man who points and clicks on the very network that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a whitepaper, and create your own web 2.0 app. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
...on the one side I had users clamoring for things that they often didn't really understand or have any use for, and on the other I had my co-nerds who obviously relished denying things to the users no matter what the reason.
IT is the janitorial strata of technology work.
Yeah, OK. My Favorite story of the year. Human resource dochebag "a" decides that outlook is an ugly complicated app, that slows down movement of large files (full of user data, ssn #s, sales data, etc) to HR douchebag "b". Their solution? Install bitorrent, and post files back and forth to each other. No shit. And this was Pfizer. People were outeraged that their ID had been compromised, and wanted to know what we were doing about it. Then they wanted to know why admin priveleges were revoked. Can't have it both ways, kids. Either it works (mostly) and it's old and ugly, or it's hot and flashy and takes a shit-ton of resources to deploy and support. Give us the dollars and we'll hook it up. P.S. I wonder how many of these "web 2.0" idiots realize that you can run winchat from the os? Or that simply creating a shared folder can take the place of youtube? Zero. All these marketing dudes have bought somebody else's marketing schpiel. Which is why desktop linux doesn't exist outside the IT department.
The "cool digital media lady" went down the IT section and asked:
- Hey, could you install some MediaWikis with capacity to five thousands access per minute by friday? I read it's super simple and light, just as Web 2.0 is supposed to be, so it should be very easy to do!
And the "boring IT guys" replied:
- You know we can't, we need to deal with all other emergency priorities you set last week about mail and the new Vista boxes. Besides, it's simple to install in one single machine for amateur use, it's complicated to prepare it for the security and load we'll need.
- You IT guys can't deal with changes. You complicate everything. I'll have a smart consultant friend to come over, install it for a few thousand bucks and hand the maintenance over to you.
- Gahhh...
Weeks later, she gave an interview boasting her boldness in "bypassing IT to get Web 2.0 technologies to the group's end users":
- IT started to realize it was happening without them anyway. They weren't interested until they started to get multiple requests from around the business. Eventually, they came on board.
The "boring IT guys" couldn't be interviewed. They were overwhelmed by client's support requests of system configurations, security alarms, the same old email problems and configuring tens of new servers with load balancing.
Next on "The Daily Buzzword Bugle", the folksonomy is being slowed down by the users.
^[:wq!
This article ...Makes it sound like Web 2.0 is some sort of basic human right. And that we should be up in arms when we hear about people being deprived of it. Web 2.0 is a jumble of technologies, many of which are not very well defined or secure. Go ahead and bypass your IT department so you can roll out the latest and greatest buzzword. I doubt that will be a very sustainable process in the long term.
I'm sorry but that's the biggest crock of bull I've seen so far on this discussion. You seem to completely ignore the fact that the OS choice is usually mandated by management. What IT wants to use is irrelevant. It's *management* that chooses the OSes cause that's what THEY are used to. It's *management* that chooses the other flavours of corporate software like CRM and whatnot. The IT department is simply stuck having to deal with all the pain.
And you just stated it perfectly. IT departments are *already* dealing with all sorts of pre-existing crap. Of *course* they don't want to add to that. It's hard to keep up as it is!
I have seen this time and again. Not all IT departments are perfect, I'm sure. However based on my own personal experience, if there's a cock up somewhere I will always put my money down on it being a direct result of management, or users bypassing IT to do their own thing.
You're right, Wiki is great for dev teams but not for normal users, especially in environments that use Microsoft Office. The race to start using Wiki has hurt more than helped in the cases I've seen.
Someone will go to a lot of work to make a great wiki, then no one else will ever update it because it's so much more difficult to edit than it would be in Word. They can't do it offline on their laptop, they can't use WYSIWIG formatting, there's no access control, etc. So no one bothers, or a lot of key information is still in Word documents that are passed around in Email because with a Wiki, now there's no way to share Word documents with Windows access control.
Feel free to disagree and tell me why, but this is what I've seen happen.
It's *management* that chooses the OSes cause that's what THEY are used to. ... The IT department is simply stuck having to deal with all the pain.
It's sorry management that makes IT decisions without regard to the expert opinion they pay for.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
In my experience, IT will happily install and maintain anything they are funded to do. Better yet, get them in on the ground floor of the decision making process and you'll have a smoother running operation when its all done. This assumes that you have management support for these kinds of networking systems, Web 2.0, Web 1.0 or whatever.
The primary resistance management gives toward these kinds of information sharing technologies is the evolutionary change that they can produce in the managers' responsibilities. If you have managers that are looking forward to making it to retirement in the same corner office with the same staff and the same set of rubber stamps, forget implementing anything new.
I used to work for a company that has one of the worlds largest intranets. Back in the '90s, IT was more than happy to install and maintain things like Usenet and web servers (internal to the corporate network) for use by various staffs for information sharing. This was before non IT managers knew what these things were and how they could be used to streamline internal communications and information sharing. This is another way of saying that they could bypass unresponsive management and get answers to problems or identify knowledgeable people between different groups. Once management realized what was up, they locked down this kind of innovation. From the point of view of groups like engineering, manufacturing and others, the scapegoats for this lockdown was IT. Now, with Web 2.0, its the same sh*t all over again.
Have gnu, will travel.
So earlier this year we had a conference call with the various remote site operations and networking and help desk We had a bunch of customers saying "Why doesn't the company use Web 2.0? Why is Instant Messaging discouraged? Why is there no Wiki on the Intranet?"
While this wasn't a priority, we had a small server sitting idle from a failed project. So we built a MediaWiki server, gave it a catchy DNS name, and configured it so anybody who can authenticate to the company LDAP server has an auto-created Wiki account. Even preloaded the server with the Help: namespace and some documents from IT's old file share. I also contacted the biggest site's help desk and inquired whether they would be interested in importing their "how to" documents, but only got a snarky "I know what a Wiki is, and we don't want any" reply.
After some testing internally, about two weeks ago we send out a preliminary announcement about the new Wiki to 100 "power users", including the specific individuals who were complaining about the lack of a Wiki. The response?
Deafening silence.
Perhaps fifty users bother to click on the link, a dozen of those logged in, and four go so far as to create a personal "User" page or make a test edit to one of the existing pages. You can lead users to a wiki, but you can't make them contribute.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
I think both sides are right to some extent in this case..
I can see users wanting to use wikis and social networking, and if the users want it, IT should do it. I suppose in some companies the corporate structure makes it impossible or unwieldy, but IT is a support structure -- they can formally note that some request is useless, but if it has much demand should do it anyway.
On the other hand, there's absolutely NO business for people to tell IT "do this with Ajax". NO! IT should be treated as a utility -- people can request they want an app that DOES something, but should have no business specifying how it's done. They simply should have no say if the app uses AJAX, Perl or C CGI, Ruby on Rails, PHP+MySQL, or even some unholy mash of Visual Basic, ASP, and Cobol. I don't tell my (cable company) ISP "Hey, you should get an all-IP backbone. Oh, and I don't know what brand of routers you have, but dump them and get Ciscos instead. KByethx." I don't tell Verizon Wireless that they should ditch the (I think) Motorola, Lucent, and Nortel phone switches, and buy all Nokia switches. IT should essentially be a utility, providing the computing needs the customers (rest of the company) need. But they shouldn't be told how to do it.
I've been trying for the past year to get Skype/EBay to talk to us at all, to even begin to have a conversation about how to securely enable internal clients to make and receive Skype phone calls without also enabling any and all other encrypted peer-to-peer applications.
Because that is what Skype really is, on the wire -- an obfuscated, encrypted peer-to-peer tunnel in which anything can be exchanged between the internal PC running Skype and a random workstation in some former soviet block nation which it appears to be using as a supernode. Any network where you can reliably use Skype, you can use the same network and host security holes to run P2P filesharing, botnets, or anything else your dark little twisted heart desires.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Yes, it is sorry management. Most business management I have experienced in three completely different careers is sad. Those who manage the actual work, the people implementing the latest "process from above", do know when to listen. The worst managers think that technology replaces people rather than multiplying their effectiveness.
IT is not the same as janitorial or mechanical positions, but IT's relationship with business management is similar to a mechanically challenge customer's relationship with a vehicle repair facility. When the cost, estimated or actual, is high, they complain even if the service is great. When the work that they get for the lowest price is not high enough in quality, they complain.
Some shops get it though. The smart shops realize that the customers (all other functions in a large corporation are ITs customers, right?) want "good enough and not too expensive or takes too long". Notice that IT is the one adapting. IT is the provider while business management is the customer. Business management never really got IT and made them a partner. IT is still the place that just makes technical stuff happen, like the mechanic just fixes the car.
And yes, it sucks at times. The wonders that insist that internal documentation be written at at 8th grade or lower level comprehension level are somehow the ones with seven plus figure salaries that determine the direction of the company. Then when they want the company to be included in the latest fad, Web 2.0 or whatever it is this year, IT is responsible for implementing it without breaking anything existing, without an increase in budget, and without being given a vote regarding IF the new technology is a wise decision.
"What luck for the rulers that men do not think." - Adolph Hitler
I mean, come on, there actually were some words in that summary that were not "Web 2.0"!
How do you expect to get anywhere with this emerging technology if only a quarter of the words in your text are "Web 2.0"?
sic transit gloria mundi
Hey, corporate suit - remember when you were rolling out metrics so you could determine which IT staff you'd keep and which you'd fire (for questionable reasons - no layoffs, don't want to pay unemployment). Now you think you need to make some significant changes - but the remaining IT staff is already overworked doing their jobs, plus the jobs of all the people you got rid of (and got a nice bonus for reducing IT payroll).
The chickens have come home to roost - time to pay the piper...
first a personal aside - web 2? web smooo more like all this web 2 yammering just sounds more like web 1 beta before its corporate dot com boom.
well like DUH!!! these are our geek toys and you can't have them you plebs!!!!
more seriously I work in IT supporting an educational institute that teaches, among other IT related things - online business and marketing which requires academics to use real world examples and students to work on projects that produce examples (online video, web pages etc etc) yet the very same IT department that I work for and supports them it telling the school's administrators that "the academics only need 2.4GB of network/server storage, that they only need a couple of hundred MB of internet download quota per year, that they don't need web servers for anything other than hosting the intranet services and "corporate website" , routinely block sites like YouTube despite these being used in several units that staff are not allowed to purchase computers with built in video cameras (like many ACER and Apple models do) etc etc etc... no irony is lost in the fact that most of the IT staff have machines on their desk with web cameras their own server with a TB of unused storage, and unrestricted downloads because "we need it to do our job" and actually their right we do need it to do our job but we have to realise that these days THEY need these tools too.
so what we have is a small group of people in IT pretty much dictating to administration terms that cause very serious restrictions on what academics can teach, and what students can learn.
After being labelled troll above, I'm offtopic now - but even an AC deserves an answer.
Prolog: I don't know who else uses Prolog but here (some) computer linguists do. They have a parser written in Prolog. Seems still very common, don't know, not my subfield.
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
When did Slashdot start doing gossip-articles that made broad generalizations about IT professionals?
I suppose anonymous cowards aren't sent the memos.
Hmm, a vendetta against a slashdot user. Cyberbullying?
If you don't like what someone says, ignore it, or disagree.
I quite like twitter's posts, but then I grew up in the UK where we have good journalism and alternative comedy, so I can see where he's coming from.
I'm noticing so must pro-Microsoft sycophancy and astroturfing on here of late. For a while, here on slashdot, to avoid being modded down, one had to give M$ the benefit of the doubt. Now, things are just getting silly.
Microsoft's empire is starting to crumble at long last. The fanboys, astroturfers and M$ themselves are getting desperate. So are you by the looks of it.
Anyway, it's slashdot: Cmdr. Taco's blog. Don't take it too seriously.
My final words of advice to you are to get out of mummy's basement, wash, put on deodorant, brush your teeth and go and meet some real people. You might even meet a nice girl.
Stick Men
Do you know on what all the troubles of IT departments come down to? An incompetent CIO who fails to understand and communicate the purpose of IT department to rest of the company (and also relfect it back to the IT department itself). There is no way a lowly system administrator or a developer can influence the whole company. They can bitch and moan but without any real power it is all pretty useless. It is up to the CIO to understand and implement the policies for smooth operation of the IT department. If the CIO guy (or lady) does not deliver then chaos, blood and tears will follow. Simple as that. It is pretty weird that system administrators seem to operate in some sort of a power vacuum that in fact is created by themselves. They want to have it both ways -- things to be their way and the protection of management. Unless they go and work for a software company, they can't have it both ways.
Found the book to be an interesting take, especially when he talks about an experience at an O'Reiley event with folks talking about "Web 2.0" and how it was going to change everything.
At any rate, I hear a lot about "We want a web 2.0 website" without people having a clue what that means. Some get damned irate when I say, "That's just a buzz word, what do you want it to do?" Most of the time their idea of web 2.0 is going from an HTML static site to one based around Joomla or some other CMS or they need some type of support ticket solution installed.
I don't tend to get into buzz words, my question is always straight forward: "What the hell are you trying to accomplish?" Then, "Okay. Here is Option A, B, C. My recommendation is A because:..."
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Selling increased services to meet the client's increased needs is always a challenge, whether you're an outside vendor or an inside department. There are three paths here:
Good salesmen will do #3 and thrive; poor salesmen will do #1 or #2 and eventually be out of the game. If you see outside vendors succeeding better than inside departments at this game, it's because they generally have better salesmen.
The key to shutting up all the marketing bimbos and "tech" columnists is to tell them to RTFM and build it themselves. Invite them to spend a week or two siting at a desk handling thousands of users who forgot their password, lost a file or couldn't use Outlook if their life depended on it. And on top of that, tell them to read up on AJAX and code a fully functional, production-quality corporate site within the week.
IT has been pressured into adopting numerous immature products and "solutions" (I despise that word) on the path to "corporate success" (another buzzword) I'll help all the buzzword bimbos out a bit by tipping them off to effective "solutions".
Chat: What the fuck did you want VOIP for if you're not going to make internal conference calls and use personal mailboxes? If you want to talk to 5, 10, 15 people at the same time... use your shiny new VoIP phone.
File Collaboration: Central FTP server and E-mail attachments. End of story.
Live news ticker/Dynamic information: PHP. Read up on "includes". If you really feel like it... throw in one little JavaScript application, but don't junk your web servers for "innovative technologies".
At the bottom of the
The IT team was managed poorly, they get the sack, the management? Got a bonus for sure, for their wonderful people management skills.
You outsourced to a company with good management (more by chance than by planning for sure) and, ho and behold, now things work.
In a properly managed company IT people have specific tasks and can't get so out of whack in regards to the objectives of the company.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Only one version of each OS, otherwise you don't support it. Is the least you should ask from your users.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Better to be safe than to be sorry.
Somebody needs or wants to access a website, he can ask, no problem.
Surfing the web in the office is not a right, it is a privilege.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... legal requirements, supportability and other little nuisances that affect software deployment nowadays.
Companies are not there to be cutting edge just to give their employees a warm fuzzy feeling. Cutting edge is untried, untested, and as such a business risk that should not be considered lightly.
And who will vouch for the security of your FOSS applications? If you have an internal team checking security issues for FOSS applications, then you should be OK, but how many companies have the resources to keep an internal FOSS support team or equivalent?
I have worked in many big companies and only one could afford to keep a team that actually checked the FOSS code (things like OpenSSH, perl, sudo ant other utilities) and added changes to comply with proper security and even legal audit requirements.
Some of you see IT as a nice shiny thing to be tinkered with, other people see it as a vector of attack against corporations (and very often this people are your colleagues, having somewhere in the Intranet does not make it any more safer, who really thinks the Intranet is intrinsically safer to the wider Internet is naive on extreme), IT department's work is to strike a balance and the balance by obvious reasons is normally not in the side of "cutting edge".
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
But if the group of people with overall strategic control decide that users must not use instant messaging, then the users have to suck it up and it is our job to make sure it gets done and implemented.
If we know it can be useful then it is certainly our position to inform the people in positions of decision about the benefits of a given technology, what would not be admissible is to ignore the overall policies and use "submarine" applications.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Pray tell us, why do you need those websites to work?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Those guys are prepared to put 12 hour days or longer for peanuts, I am pretty sure they don't care if they can access facebook or other time sinks like this venerable site....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
How did you get subscriber? Curious if you got it as a gift.