[DUG] In case you're interested (or buy stuff)

[Dennis Chuah]

It is with this attitude that, in my past companies, the help desk got a 
call because the printer is broken.  We are software vendors, not IT 
departments.  If the company is too small to have an IT department, then 
they should outsource it.  Its not so much a question of what it costs but 
what it will cost if you do not have quality IT support.  I can think back 
to instances where companies tried to rough it themselves because a member 
of staff knows a bit but it all ends in disaster.  Examples:

1.  A call came in about a database crash caused by a lightning strike.  We 
suggested they restored from backup but they had problems, and so in the end 
they posted to us their backup tapes.  On the tapes, it was neatly labelled, 
Monday's backup, Tuesday's backup, etc.  But upon closer inspection, all the 
tapes in box were cleaning tapes!  Yes, they had the cleanest tape drive in 
the country but no backups for 6 months!

2.  A call came in complaining that our software crashes too often.  This 
client's power supply was notorious for micro blackouts during 
thunderstorms, and we had suggested they purchased a large UPS, which they 
did.  When we visited the site, we discovered why our software crashed so 
often.  The server was not plugged into the UPS, but instead a small heater 
was.  The IT person said, the air conditioned room was too cold for him to 
work in, and he needed to be warm during the outages!

Go figure.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jeremy Coulter" <vss at vss.co.nz>
To: "'NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List'" <delphi at ns3.123.co.nz>
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 9:56 PM
Subject: RE: [DUG] In case you're interested (or buy stuff)


>I think  for small businesses, an IT person/s are seen as a business
> liability. i.e. they chew company profit without bring anything $$ into 
> the
> company. In some cases, this may be right, but then, what happens when 
> their
> server crashes, or someones PC has issues. At least they can get is fixed
> quicker and have less down time. It all adds up after a while these time
> savings, so they SHOULD be seen as an asset, but as I am sure we all know,
> those of us who work for companys who have an IT/in house dev. team, we 
> are
> quite often not seen that way......or is it my place of work ;-)
>
> Jeremy
>
>   _____
>
> From: delphi-bounces at ns3.123.co.nz [mailto:delphi-bounces at ns3.123.co.nz] 
> On
> Behalf Of Paul A Norman
> Sent: 4 May 2006 21:22
> To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List
> Subject: Re: [DUG] In case you're interested (or buy stuff)
>
>
>>"Push the problem back to the client and let their IT dept
> sort it out themselves.
>
> Some one once rang me and asked "we have a message on screen that says - 
> ask
> the system administrator - who is that?
>
> I answered  - its you!
>
> So many small NZ businesses have no IT dept, can be a major problem! 
> Unless
> someone wants to charge out for it - and such things are often too time
> consuming.
>
> Paul
> ---------
> On 04/05/06, Kyley Harris <HYPERLINK
> "mailto:kyley at harrissoftware.com"kyley at harrissoftware.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Integrate with active directory and you never have to worry about
> passwords,
>>etc. again.  Push the problem back to the client and let their IT dept
> sort
>>it out themselves.
>
> Kind of depends what you are writing.
> If you are storing thousands of clients and passwords for a webbased
> system then this is obviously a no go ;)
>
> I do think that the safest mechanism is for the computer administrator
> to somehow be integrated with the application to allow them to logonto
> the app for adjusting forgotten passwords etc.
>
> This all depends on the type of system that you are writing. Most of
> Rohits clients are simply not going to have Active Directories. And are
> similar to my fathers clients I would guess in their ability to ask what
> the power button is for :-P I guess having a backdoor password to a
> semi-secure app is better than having an app with no security at all.
>
>
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