Tam McLaughlin wrote:
>I apologise if this is too much off topic and too long as it involves
>company politics.
>
>I would be interested to know from other sys admins how much control and
>say
>they have in the decision making processes of new hardware/systems.
>Although I have been in my present position for about 5 years, I do not
>have
>experience of how other companies support/sys admin departments work.
>
>Recent events at my company have made me seriously question whether I am
>in the
>correct place and using my skills to their fullest.
>
>Our IT dept is structured as follows:
>
> Head of operations (not an IT man)
> | |
> support mgr development mgr
> | |
> 2 support/sysadmins 7 developers
>
>I am the sysadmin guy in charge of our linux/unix servers, network,
>firewall,
>informix database servers.
>
>The company have been talking of setting up a small internal call
>centre. The
>development mgr has been involved in this and support have been given
>little
>info on this. I was on holiday today but found out that we got 5 mins
>notice of
>delivery of 2 NT servers for the call centre and wanted a space in the
>server room.
>Another example is that the company are looking into remote working for
>salesmen.
>I only got asked into the project team 'cause I made a fuss about It
>implications
>but the IT aspect has been put under control of the "telephony/comms
>track mgr"
>who happens to be the property services mgr. I am increasingly finding
>that IT
>are not taken seriously enough (ok my boss just agrees to do what is
>asked).
>
>Surely this is the wrong way to run a company?
>It are very important to remote workers e.g. pgp, access to servers.
>How can u bring in a call centre without consulting the people who know
>about the network infrastructure etc. How can a development mgr who was
>a
>mainframe programmer and does not keep up-to-date on technology have
>control
>of the IT aspect of a call centre project w/o involving sysadmin?
>I believe the call centre project will download data from our informix
>db each night
>onto the NT servers which will run SQL server. Surely me, as dba should
>be consulted
>and not just expected to look after NT, SQL server which i know nothing
>about>
>Ok, I can learn, but who is going to look after the 6 unix/linux
>servers, firewall,
>tune the database engine, set up proper network IDS/monitoring etc.
>
>Is this normal?
>Do you have input into projects?
>Ok, if our company want a call centre and the NT choice is the best,
>then fine,
>we cant really complain as we are here to support the companies business
>but we
>should at least be given a bit more warning that 5 minutes for a server
>delivery
>and config. I will say that I will not be responsible for the servers,
>but I cannot
>say that I will have nothing to do with it. I obviously have to supply
>IP addresses,
>domains etc but is it reasonable for me to insist they do not get
>connected to our
>network until I know what software will be running and what service
>packs have been
>applied etc?
>
>Apologies if this was not the place for my rant, but I do not personally
>know
>any other sys admins to discuss this with.
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>
What I found working directly for a company was that the non-technical
staff made the decisions, before the call center was automated, i made a
proposal for the 'ideal' environment, most of which was ignored. I was
asked to review and assist in chosing the call routing systems, my
advice (get the open source system with good developer support and
code base, which had the potential to be useful) was completely ignored.
We ended up with a proprietory system with closed source activex's
which had half the functionality of the activex's, c libraries, delphi
components, java classes that came with the os system. Every time I
said we should change something or asked for permission i was told it
would be considered, usually it just got 'forgotton' about, i did have
a lot of freedom to change and implement as i saw fit as long as it
didnt cost money directly however. I could change what i wanted as
long as nobody noticed so to speak.
Since the company went bust and i'm now working for myself things have
changed, i submit proposals and the companies generally agree to them
or at least follow the general suggestions. Major changes to systems
and infrastructure are run by me for approval and opinions before
being implemented if i'm not responsible for them.
It really depends on the company and how much they value their it systems.
HTH
David
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