Lately, there have been a # of discussions on new technology being developed and ways in which IT departments can intergrate with business. One new technology is “cloud computing”. Another example is Jason Hiner’s article on Service Catalogs for IT departments.
These two articles seemed geared to the mfgs of hardware and software to sell to business. Not to those of us who once the damn think is bought, have to deploy, manage and maintain it and our imput to execs on the up sides and down sides of the new technology.
I’ve had some heated arguments in executive offices lately between developers and the sales guys of new stuff vs old stuff and how the new stuff will do all this good stuff.
While I say the old stuff works just fine, is only 3 years old and everyone know it well to do their jobs, the sales guys and developers all argue, quite vehemetly, for the new stuff which typically costs a fortune, takes months to intergrate and train users on to get them working as well with it as they did with the old stuff. I had one developer call me old,inflexible, not able to learn new way, and accused me of basically being incompetent in my job because I refuse to go along with his idea to incorporate new hardware and software because its the new cutting edge stuff. Were it not for the bean counters, and I used to hate those guys, I think the exec would have bought the dog and pony show and spent hundreds of thousands of $$ on a project that wouldn’t do much better than the old stuff and I’d get the blame by the developer when it failed because I didn’t want it to succeed[based on my imput during those meetings].
While I am all for new stuff, I’m not for new stuff simply for the sake of new stuff. But I dislike being labled the naysayer and having the finger pointed at as the problem when in fact the real problem was it was a bad idea to being with. Thank god the bean counters showed how financially bad the idea was or I probably would have blamed for a bad idea when it wasn’t my idea in the first place.
Anyone else run into this where they work?
