I am looking for ideas as to how to effectively approach the management of a small business to consider an infrastructure upgrade. I work for a small publishing company (around 25-30 employees I think) and relatively soon I’m probably going to be transferred from the production dept. (where I do graphic/layout work) to the MIS department (which is where my background is, anyway).
Now, I don’t want to come off as an arrogant know-it-all who frivolously spends the company’s money (after all it IS a small company) but the existing infrastructure is sorely outdated. I’m talking more than half the PCs running Windows 98 (at least one runs MILLENIUM); in fact the computers seem to run a mishmash of OSes.. a few run XP, quite a few run 98, I think one runs NT Workstation 4.0, etc.. Office 2000, you get the picture. There’s also around 5 servers, I think. Our main in-house software program is written in Foxpro for Windows 2.5 (or 2.0, or something like that). We run Pagemaker 6.5 for layout, which as I understand it is no longer supported by Adobe. In short, I feel that the company would be better off with a complete infrastructure overhaul.
The problem, of course, would be explaining this to upper management since they’re going to be reluctant to shell out the mega-bucks to do a complete revamp like I feel is needed. Also, they subscribe to the “If it’s not brokeen, why fix it?” metality. There may or may not be legacy application issues as well; I am relatively new to the job and company so I’m not sure. In a case like this, should I just keep quiet or subtly suggest the upgrade, so I don’t come across as wanting to overstep my bounds and end up getting fired? I *really* feel the company would benefit in the long run by reworking things from the ground up, but I doubt management will see it that way.
Any thoughts/suggestions for this neophyte?