The Perils of Ramming Products Down IT's Throat

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Paul Venezia takes issue with the all-too-familiar practice of management dictating IT solutions to admins savvy enough to know the fiat revolves around far inferior products, in this case Nissan North America's embracing of Microsoft's Hyper-V. 'Very rarely do unilateral decisions by CIOs make for solid IT infrastructures, and they are generally at odds with what the admins on the ground are communicating,' Venezia writes, noting that upper managers who succumb to vendor tricks face a far worse fate than an infrastructure based on inferior technology — one devoid of the kind of expertise necessary to make the best of their flawed purchasing decisions. 'If continuously faced with the specter of having to implement and support clearly inferior products due to baffling, uneducated management decisions, top-flight admins will simply head elsewhere.'"

Comments

What if your admin is clueless?

[spiffmastercow]

At my work the sysadmin refuses to upgrade from SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition (which had its support discontinued several years ago, though he still hasn't installed the latest service pack from 2004 or so), despite the fact that we have a budget (and need) for a high end clustered system with a nice pretty SAN. The execs are now pushing it because we're getting deadlocks constantly, but the admin insists that if everyone would stop using the database to do anything, we'd be fine, and refuses to upgrade.

Re:Rant

[SatanicPuppy]

Here's the best/worst example I've ever seen.

I used to work for a company that had a huge managed information infrastructure built up of a number of XML feeds from various business units that went through a custom, in-house, processing system, were categorized, databased, and aggregated out to various parties. The in house system was huge and idiosyncratic, but it worked. There were a number of people (2) who maintained it, and were well paid.

So the old company gets bought by the new company, and the new company derides the old system as worthless, fires all the developers, and discontinues the use of the code. The developers ask for, and are granted, the right to open source the code (who's going to want it, right?)

So the new company shops around to a bunch of third party people, and finds someone who is willing to take on the whole infrastructure for a nice low price. Managers are patting themselves on the back so hard they're getting shoulder problems, "This is so much better than that old crap system HA HA HA!"

Well, as I "migrate" all my information stuff it quickly becomes clear that no one at the new 3rd party company understands their processing software, but that all our old codes, all our weird categorizations...All that stuff still works. Well, that's damn peculiar.

The old processing system used to send back an acknowledgement if you sent it a certain series of codes, telling you receipt time, process time, etc, etc. So I sent up the codes, and got back a response, complete with software version information. Fuckers had taken our OWN CODE and SOLD IT BACK TO US, and like a bunch of morons, the goddamn PHBs had PAID for it!

There is a tendency to trust a 3rd party just because you don't know the problems they're having. Be wary, however, that they don't just turn around and make you pay for what you already had for free.

Re:Had a chuckle at this.

[DrVomact]

Contract workers don't have rights.

That clarifies the scenario. I suspect that your PHB-of-the-moment got this fecal matter dropped on him from on high. If you'd been listening at his door you probably would have heard him muttering to himself: "Get out that circuit board design by when?...oh noes...what to do? Ah! This calls for a human sacrifice!"

See, your PHB had to have an excuse to cover his butt. So he handed the brown mess to a contractor—i.e., somebody who doesn't even work for the company, and whom nobody cares about. Then he told his boss: "Man, that contractor from Dead Body Shops really screwed us over! What a totally incompetent idiot! But you know how those body shops are...man I certainly would never actually hire anybody like this!" At this point, all the upper-middle managers in the meeting are nodding sympathetically, because this is a well-known and efficacious ritual. They work themselves into a state of sincerely believing that it really wasn't your boss's fault, that you were a lazy, incompetent, crack-smoking moron (people will believe anything about a contractor once he ceases to exist in the local frame of reference). They will then absolve your ex-PHB of his sins, "cut him some slack", and "give him time to get the new guy (and future sacrifice) up to speed".