On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 10:09, Ben Schorr <[email protected]> wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Kurt Buff [mailto:[email protected]]
>> Sent: Monday, February 07, 2011 10:54
>> To: NT System Admin Issues
>> Subject: Re: OT: desktop network switches
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 09:39, Ben Schorr <[email protected]> wrote:
>> > Indeed – we’ve been down that road ourselves a time or two. I’m not
>> > sure you’ve dealt with a difficult infrastructure environment until
>> > you’ve had to provided data and telecom on a battleship (yes, really).
>> > Running 200 feet of cable to the nearest managed switch -- which may
>> > involve drilling new punch-thru holes in steel (and occasionally
>> > armored) bulkheads -- in that environment is not something we undertake
>> > lightly (or cheaply).
>>
>> That's not business, that's military, and it's a completely different world.
>> And,
>> because of that, using unmanaged small switches is even more of a sin there.
>
> Actually, no, we're civilian contractors working on a decommissioned ship
> that is now a memorial.
>
> We've had similar experiences, though not quite that extreme, in
> manufacturing and warehousing environments,
> though. In one case running additional cable was going to require drilling
> through a concrete wall and the staffers
> in the new office started work an hour before we got the phone call that
> they'd even been hired.
Which doesn't absolve you of the responsibility to go back and fix it
at some point.
>
>> Again, as a temporary measure, I don't have much of a problem with it.
>> The catch is that it really must be *temporary*. All too often they are not,
>> and
>> become embedded in the environment, and forgotten for just long enough to
>> be a big problem, when someone creates that layer
>> 2 loop, or the switch goes beserk.
>
> Sometimes "Temporary" turns into "Permanent" when the guy who signs the
> budget requests doesn't agree that there's
> a need to replace the temporary switch ("Which is working just fine, isn't
> it?") with an expensive managed one. Too often
> those guys are accountants and not IT people and while they're redlining the
> budget replacing stuff that's working now
> isn't often on their list of priorities. Especially when they think their
> aunt has a Spanning Tree in the backyard by the patio.
> Luckily not every company is like that and as the economy gradually improves
> so does their willingness to loosen the purse
> strings on the advice of IT. But it's still the rare environment, at least in
> my experience, where IT has the final say on what
> gear is getting replaced. We've spent many an hour standing in the CFO's
> doorway with our metaphorical hats in our hand.
>
> In a perfect world we'd have only knowledgeable and patient users, honest
> vendors, generous CFOs and complete budget
> authority. In most real environments we have few, if any, of those things.
>
> My $.02. Keep the change.
>
> Ben M. Schorr
> Chief Executive Officer
I have gone hat in hand to the CEO and president myself. In various
companies I've reported to either the CEO/president or the CFO/COO,
and had to justify my purchases. I didn't always win, but I made the
case, and I have always specified what I thought would be needed to
get the job done well, so that I didn't have to go back and do it
again. And, I've had to go back and do it over again when I didn't win
- it's not really all that fun saying "I told you so", and I avoid it,
or use more subtle ways of saying it, if possible. I've also watched
at least one company implode because they didn't do it right the first
time. The other one I can't say for sure, because there was lots of
other mismanagement going on.
Emergencies crop up, and IT is almost never given the resources to do
the job well, because it's always easier to do it over than to do it
right the first time, but it's incumbent upon us to try to do it right
the first time, because doing it over costs more in the medium and
long run, and if it bankrupts the company in the short run, the
company isn't going to survive anyway.
I'm not talking million dollar projects with managed vs. unmanaged
switches. I'm talking differences in the hundreds to low thousands of
dollars, but it's true at whatever size project you're running.
Kurt
~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~
~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
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