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Walzmyn writes:
"The company I work for is not a tech company. We are, however, a multi-national, multi-billion dollar company that claims to be the largest of our kind in three industries (and second largest in a 4th). And yet, our company network sucks. There is a mishmash of Citrix and SAP, multiple web-portals, and none of them work with each other. The several thousand non-technical people that work for this company are routinely asked to interface with this system and end up spending time with the helpdesk or with a supervisor looking over the shoulder for something that was supposed to be private.
I've heard of similar situations with other companies, so I wanted to ask the folks that live and breathe the tech sector this: Why can't a company this size get something so fundamental done right? Why can't they at least hire a third party to do it right for them?"
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Geezer on Thursday February 20 2014, @07:26AM
A lot of us here are professional engineers. With that goes discipline and due diligence. I can't in good conscience let my inner little-boy-in-the-toy-store drive my proposals and recommendations. No good engineer does.
Sure, we've all got horror stories of epic failures in IT deployments, and it's always fun to poke sharp objects at the MBA's and CPA's.
But let's face it, we live in a real world of business. I'd love to upgrade my systems every time a new shiny comes along because it's new "the state of the art" or "current best practice." Who wouldn't? The thing is, most businesses can not, or some will not, spend money on Cadillac IT infrastructure and maintenance.
On the other hand, we often get garbage rammed down our throats due to cost considerations or idiot decision-makers. Either way, we can stroll into the bar after work with a clear conscience and crack jokes about it all night.
The happy medium is all you can hope for at most mid-sized companies, especially manufacturers where I work.
Sometimes good enough has to be good enough.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2014, @04:05PM
Exactly. The truth is sometimes an organization has an IT department because they have to, not because it gives them a competitive advantage. If they didn't have an IT department, they wouldn't go very far. As long as the side of the company that actually makes money is executing, they aren't going to really notice until dysfunction is costing them business.
(Score: 1) by Walzmyn on Thursday February 20 2014, @07:36PM
That's a very good point. In this care I'd define well as: Works 90% of the time.
And I'd call freaking spectacular as : separate parts working together.
A healthy dose of common sense would be removing lots and lots of duplication and letting single pieces of software or at least single vendor solutions do what is now being done by dozens. No more than I interact with this system (I avoid it like the plague) I have 3 different username/passwords I have to keep up with for 3 different systems.