On 6/17/2014 4:40 PM, Andrew Fildes wrote:
Or…if your organisation is running Windows, you need an IT department. :-)
A lot of comparisons of zebus to Cebu to eagles to bananas going on in this
thread.
Just for a little perspective, consider the situation of a large company. The one I have been intimately familiar with
was a Fortune 500 supermarket company.
It's almost mind boggling to see how much data they must process every day. When we first got scanners, many of the
potential benefits couldn't be realized because of limitation in the data handling of the computers of the time. For
years after we were capturing the data at the check stand, we couldn't use it against inventory to drive automated ordering.
Thousands of stores, tens of thousands of SKUs, warehouses larger than small cities. The complexity of just one of the
millions of daily transactions is amazing.
The computers eventually caught up, allowing things like no backrooms in stores with daily, just in time delivery of
product.
HOWEVER, therein lies the danger, as well. If any of the real time operating
systems fails, the business could, too.
For this reason, development of software systems is tediously detailed, spec and meeting ridden and slow. Once a system
is developed, it runs in parallel with the one it is to replace/upgrade, then it goes live, while the old system runs in
parallel, ready to drop back into primary. This may take months, until detailed electronic audits show no problems.
None of this, of course runs on desktop PCs, but they are the gateway for those operating and controlling the operating
systems and many getting stuff out of them.
Security and stability are not just 'mission critical', the are survival of the company critical. And thus only
computers running the currently tested and approved version of the current OS are allowed on the heavily protected
internal net. They just started late last year the slow, careful conversion from XP to 7.
They have IT because they can't run the business without it, and couldn't before PCs appeared. But in the old days, much
smaller amounts of data was batch processed, overnight or less often. Now it all happens in real time, and the need for
IT is even greater.
I was never in IT. Sitting out in my skunkworks, I could snipe at them, make fun of them and mostly go my own way. When
I did have to 'interface' with them, it almost drove me mad (Year 2000, oh Lordy.) But if I had to run the business, I
wouldn't have changed it.
The situation for individuals is different, as it may be for various sorts of
small businesses.
Another Perspective Moose
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What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
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