[Tfug] TUSD Tech Nightmare

[Bexley Hall]

--- George Cohn <gwcohn at simplybits.net> wrote:

> Bexley Hall wrote:
> >
> > I don't believe the problem is confined to schools
> > (both "secondary" and university, etc.).  I've
> rarely
> > encountered a *business* that spent its IT dollars
> > wisely.  For me, the test is:  "If this was MY
> > money, is this how I would spend it?"
> 
> I worked for a non-profit corporation for over 32
> years.  During that 
> time frame, I saw them buy some really stupid
> hardware.
> 
> Remember the IBM micro-channel?  They bought a
> semi-load of PS 40's, 
> 60's, and 80's back then.  The guy brought them in a
> semi and dumped the 
> pallets on the sidewalk outside an unsecured
> building and left.

I guess your problem was that someone (from your
organization) found them and brought them inside
BEFORE someone *else* could haul them away!  :>
 
> Then there were all the Compaq Evo's that they
> bought.  What a POS. 
> Then they started buying the cheapest Dell's they
> could find.
> 
> And the politics was unreal.  We needed a server for
> a network 
> application and because the manager hated our group,
> he took the machine 
> we bought for his desktop and gave us his desktop
> machine to use as the 
> server!  We never could use the application as the
> machine was just too 
> bloody underpowered for it.
> 
> Finally they outsourced the IT department to a
> vendor that does 
> military-industrial accounts and it just got
> weirder.  Since they 
> weren't making any money on the account, they just
> kept cutting staff 
> and not replacing hardware.  It got to the point
> that they sent all the 
> spares back to use in other accounts and if someone
> had a broken 
> machine, it had to wait for the parts to come in to
> fix it.
> 
> At that point, I bailed out.

I think too many people who are clueless actually
have a say (for some reason or other) in the decisions
and, as a result, the decisions aren't really that
smart or grounded in their true *needs*.

I suspect most corporations, nowadays, could do well
with browser-based tools (e.g., like google is
trying to deploy) for most personnel -- the 2007
equivalent of X terminals  :-/

--don


 
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