November 18, 2015 at 10:02 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Shrinking the Budget
November 19, 2015 at 1:44 am
The article brings to mind the phrase false economy in general, though it does have a few good ideas. Not sure why but I get the impression that such articles relate to larger companies. We're much bigger than we used to be but we're far too fluid and responsive to do anything but shake our heads at the idea of moving people between departments or whatever. For us, definitely having people with domain knowledge and that can solve problems and deal effectively with all the agents we need to work with is infinitely more of a priority.
November 19, 2015 at 1:54 am
I think sometimes new people come in (management) and they have their way of doing things. What I don't understand is why they don't explain the justification. As an example, a company I used to work out hosted all the servers, with DR at two different data centres. You could easily work from anywhere in the world providing you are on the network. This cost around £565k per year. They have since moved everything to the cloud. Seems like this was done as it's the new buzz word. The cost being £2.25m per year. Plus the head guy there left his job. He'd been there around 15 years and knew the business very well.
November 19, 2015 at 1:55 am
I agree with this editorials stance.
However, anyone who took 10 ways to shrink your IT budget[/url] too seriously hasn't looked into the author much. He is an ex-actor turned author. I can see no experience in IT nor in management. He may be a knowledgeable enthusiast but I doubt he has real world experience of working with IT or IT budgets. I may be wrong but just follow the link to his own website (available from the "10 ways to shrink your IT budget" page) and see if you would take it as evidence to the boardroom. I wouldn't.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
November 19, 2015 at 2:10 am
Gary Varga (11/19/2015)
I agree with this editorials stance.However, anyone who took 10 ways to shrink your IT budget[/url] too seriously hasn't looked into the author much. He is an ex-actor turned author. I can see no experience in IT nor in management. He may be a knowledgeable enthusiast but I doubt he has real world experience of working with IT or IT budgets. I may be wrong but just follow the link to his own website (available from the "10 ways to shrink your IT budget" page) and see if you would take it as evidence to the boardroom. I wouldn't.
ROFL good catch Gary. Can you really eke out a living churning that sort of article out? His zombie schtick looks entertaining enough but ... perhaps I should start doing some work for Tech Republic?
November 19, 2015 at 2:26 am
call.copse (11/19/2015)
Gary Varga (11/19/2015)
I agree with this editorials stance.However, anyone who took 10 ways to shrink your IT budget[/url] too seriously hasn't looked into the author much. He is an ex-actor turned author. I can see no experience in IT nor in management. He may be a knowledgeable enthusiast but I doubt he has real world experience of working with IT or IT budgets. I may be wrong but just follow the link to his own website (available from the "10 ways to shrink your IT budget" page) and see if you would take it as evidence to the boardroom. I wouldn't.
ROFL good catch Gary. Can you really eke out a living churning that sort of article out? His zombie schtick looks entertaining enough but ... perhaps I should start doing some work for Tech Republic
I am certainly not questioning either his acting abilities nor his penmanship. Just his qualification to advise anyone on IT budgets.
For the record I once did a Christmas season as Michael in Peter Pan at Worthing Connaught Theatre circa 1978 which has never been seen as relevant in my IT career so far...but who knows!!!
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
November 19, 2015 at 2:34 am
For the record I once did a Christmas season as Michael in Peter Pan at Worthing Connaught Theatre circa 1978 which has never been seen as relevant in my IT career so far...but who knows!!!
Sounds like management material to me.
November 19, 2015 at 2:52 am
"I am certainly not questioning either his acting abilities nor his penmanship. Just his qualification to advise anyone on IT budgets.
For the record I once did a Christmas season as Michael in Peter Pan at Worthing Connaught Theatre circa 1978 which has never been seen as relevant in my IT career so far...but who knows!!! "
No indeed. Sounds fun (Peter Pan).
(OT) BTW I'll be crossing my fingers for the Albion to finally reach the promised land, make next season a bit more fun 😎 I'd be delighted to meet up for a pint beforehand if a new south coast derby came off. Poor old Cherries eh?
November 19, 2015 at 4:45 am
Personal experience of senior management's lazy and unimaginative 10 ways of shrinking the IT budget:
1. Redundancies
2. Redundancies
3. Redundancies
4. Redundancies
5. Redundancies
6. Redundancies
7. Redundancies
8. Redundancies
9. Redundancies
10. Redundancies
November 19, 2015 at 5:24 am
Gary Varga (11/19/2015)
I agree with this editorials stance.However, anyone who took 10 ways to shrink your IT budget[/url] too seriously hasn't looked into the author much. He is an ex-actor turned author. I can see no experience in IT nor in management. He may be a knowledgeable enthusiast but I doubt he has real world experience of working with IT or IT budgets. I may be wrong but just follow the link to his own website (available from the "10 ways to shrink your IT budget" page) and see if you would take it as evidence to the boardroom. I wouldn't.
To me most of the article smacked of Linux/open-source fanboy-ism than a serious discussion of IT budgets.
From a Google search I ran across this elsewhere on TechRepublic:
Get Jack'd is a throw back to my old column from the days of LinuxRepublic and TechProGuild. It's all Linux and all attitude. So if you want to read the point of view of an old-school, world domination Linux user, you've found the right place. Plenty o' Micro$oft bashing and plenty of penguin petting. Oh, and you might learn a thing or two in the process.
____________
Just my $0.02 from over here in the cheap seats of the peanut gallery - please adjust for inflation and/or your local currency.
November 19, 2015 at 5:57 am
About a decade ago I was working on a project that used MS servers and an MS-SQL database. Pseudo real-time data related to this was collected on a Red-Hat server and processed before being transferred to the MS server. As the project grew two new Red-Hat server licences were required. In comes cost cutter and a freebie Linux was the order of the day. The cost saved was less that a week's charge out rate for me and it took many weeks to resolve some of the issues this caused and some were never resolved. As happens so often the cost saving costs far more than it saves! 🙁
November 19, 2015 at 7:02 am
Has anyone tried serious licence-saving activities like transferring those DBs that can be transferred to SQL Server Express Edition instances and re-writing SQL Server Agent jobs for the windows Scheduler? I can see it making sense for a cash-strapped startup or charity where things are being set up from scratch, but, to what extent is it sensible for running systems, or rather, how many systems would need to be moved for the migration to make financial sense?
I would think that it would make sense for companies to have a mix of RDBMs and let the DBAs, developers and analysts get used to them over time. Once they are comfortable with them and are used to their strengths and weaknesses, the option of, say, migrating an SQL Server to a PostgresSQL server (and, in the process, saving money by not having to buy new licences from our favourite company) becomes a real option. This is a medium-to-long-term strategy. All of the affected parties — system-administrators who would be running the Linux servers, DBAs and analysts who would be working with the DBs, developers who would be maintaining and developing the application — would need to be comfortable and experienced in their new systems.
Simply deciding to migrate with little to no experience of the new system is akin to madness.
November 19, 2015 at 7:38 am
Great article Steve and the comments on this thread are fantastic.
My consultant advice about *ux: If you have onboard Unix staff, consider it, otherwise no. The reason has nothing to do with technology, it is staffing. Good luck hiring enough engineers to convert you.
Whether you are involved in budget decisions doesn't matter. All IT professionals should constantly consider how much value they bring to the enterprise and seek to maximize it. This is just business 101.
November 19, 2015 at 7:40 am
Gary Varga (11/19/2015)
I agree with this editorials stance.However, anyone who took 10 ways to shrink your IT budget[/url] too seriously hasn't looked into the author much. He is an ex-actor turned author. I can see no experience in IT nor in management. He may be a knowledgeable enthusiast but I doubt he has real world experience of working with IT or IT budgets. I may be wrong but just follow the link to his own website (available from the "10 ways to shrink your IT budget" page) and see if you would take it as evidence to the boardroom. I wouldn't.
Good note, but I wouldn't disparage someone as an actor meaning they have no knowledge. A certain former guitar player from Queen is a PhD working in the space program in the UK. After all, I'm an economist by schooling.
November 19, 2015 at 8:23 am
I think Steve is that Gary's point is that the Author of the article was an actor and is now a writer and hasn't acquired any knowlege to qualify him to pontificate on either business Administration or IT - our Former rock star now space scientist put in a lot of hard work acquing his PhD he didn't decide just to write a book on the subject fresh off of the stage
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