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

Re:Nothing to worry about

[ArhcAngel]

I want to set up a Hackintosh in Hyper-V so I can run parallels.

Re:Poor admins

[TooMuchToDo]

You're correct. It's much more fun to watch an inept manager make a poor technical decision you're forced to implement. The fun part is when you get to tell the CIO your boss is a moron for his decision(s), you walk out, and watch your old boss get the shoe a month later due to said decisions.

Not that I'd know from experience or anything =)

Re:It's all doom and gloom...

[initdeep]

HERETIC!!!!

Stop applying logic and instead fall into the groupthink herd of the slashtards!!!!!!!!

Re:Had a chuckle at this.

[mick88]

Totally agree - a pattern of bad decisions should be enough to send anybody out looking for a new job. But I gotta say: most of the best IT people I know don't run from a job because the boss wants to change the platform / put it a new one- however crappy it may be. The best ones out there usually find a way to learn something new, work around the limitations, and maybe add another valuable skill to the resume. And then if life is still sucking, they hit the bricks.

In my own experience - it's been the crappy, do-the-minimum, the-world-is-so-stupid, IT people that throw the biggest tantrums when the boss or anyone decides to implement a solution that they didn't personally back.

The best IT people seem to be ones who got into IT because they love learning something new and are usually up for a challenge. Most of the garbage ones are just collecting a paycheck and don't like work - which is required to put in a solution you are unfamiliar with or don't like.

All MS's success due to monopoly by /. definition

[ClosedSource]

"I can't think of anything outside of the windows and office monopoly that they've really won on."

Don't worry. If MS search eventually beat Google you could blame it on MS's monopoly without skipping a beat.