Re: Mid-sized companies not interested in Linux - report -- lack

[Aaron Kenney <awkenney@sbcglobal.net>]

Bryan J. Smith wrote:

>On Wed, 2005-04-06 at 08:59 -0500, Aaron Kenney wrote:
>  
>
>>"Mid-sized companies not interested in Linux - report"
>>http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20050405_184728.html
>>Check out this short article from Tom's today.
>>This is pretty much the boat that I am in with the company I work for. 
>>There is a small IT staff, including myself. There is usually no time to 
>>develop anything that would make the company more efficient, and even if 
>>I am able to produce something positive overnight, the director of IT 
>>shoots it down, fearing that the change could cost more of his time 
>>(maybe he is even afraid of being shown up).
>>    
>>
>
>There is a good argument on "mitigating risk" in that regard.  It all
>depends, but in _every_ case, you have to put it in terms of the
>business case -- _not_ technology.
>  
>
Quite frankly the system that is in place where I work now is not the 
best for getting the most work done. I believe that getting more work 
done is probably a good indication of how profitable the technology can 
be. Unfortunately, our company refuses to put any money into IT 
whatsoever unless it is critical to making the wheel turn. If the wheel 
turns slowly, no one cares.

>Again, put it in his terms then.  When I evaluate/propose solutions, I
>give several and list the costs involved.  One is "supporting."  If you
>have a staff that is 100% Windows knowledge, then that's a "cost."
>  
>
Perhaps I should have also said that the director of IT does not think 
it is my place to propose anything. My job here is basically to do 
things that neither the director nor the network admin have time to do. 
This pretty much means that I have no job description, although I 
believe that gives me some freedom to make suggestions, since I am the 
one who is out in the work area the most and can see the kinds of things 
that are, from an operational standpoint, stupid. When I asked for a 
written job description when I was first hired on, my director gave me 
this look like I was wasting his time. He told me he would do it, and 
then never bothered. So there is some dishonesty there as well.

>>Sometimes the "technology for technology's sake" should be left.
>>If a company is working smoothly, then it's doing something right.
>>    
>>
Smoothly is hardly what I would call it. Running FoxPro for DOS across 
an IPX link on Windows XP is counterproductive. There are just too many 
issues with the programming for the DOS emulation to be smart enough to 
run it how it used to be before the Windows network got thrown into the 
works. It was assumed at some point that when the domain went up, 
Netware would come down. However, there has since been no agreement on 
what would replace the FoxPro stuff, so we continue to run the Novell. 
All because someone is too busy to make a decision or do some research. 
That is just one example of several very ineffective things that go on 
here. The FoxPro works, but some things in the program are flat-out 
broken, and other things lock up the PC.
-Aaron Kenney


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