@Pete-S said in If you were to start all over, knowing what you know now.:

Hiring smart people sounds like a great idea but if they're smarter than you, why wouldn't they run their own business? Why would a smart person work for someone dumber than they are? I'm not saying they wouldn't - I'm saying you need to figure out a reason why they should.

Everyone who works for me is smarter than me, I'm the only one dumb enough to own the place. 😉

@IRJ hrm it didn't when I looked will check again

@krisleslie said in IT Helps the Business; Does Management Agree?:

I disagree on the idea that magement shouldn't understand IT. We shouldn't expect them to have a Ph.D. in IT and all the various flavors but they should be able to comprehend what's going on at a basic level.

Problem with that line of thought is that you cannot understand IT at a basic level and make any decisions whatsoever that have value. To make decisions of value you have to understand all the implications of the technology you’re in going to be dealing with. President or CEO should not be expected to know that kind of detail that’s why they hire IT.

@Dashrender said in Disconnected: Why Companies Encourage Bad IT Decisions:

@scottalanmiller said in Disconnected: Why Companies Encourage Bad IT Decisions:

@Dashrender said in Disconnected: Why Companies Encourage Bad IT Decisions:

@scottalanmiller said in Disconnected: Why Companies Encourage Bad IT Decisions:

@Dashrender said in Disconnected: Why Companies Encourage Bad IT Decisions:

The one place the presentation doesn't really hit on is reliability of the circuit. Of course to wit Scott will say - US carriers of old school telecom are horrible, and most ISPs are equally as reliable, if not more so than carriers. And unlike carriers, you can likely more easily setup redundancies with the ISP, when was the last time typical businesses setup redundancy on their phone service?

Not really a place where the CEO should care. In a healthy organization, Jared's presentation would be from the telecom person or team to the CIO. The CIO would just inform the CEO of what they are doing, if he even needed to know. A CEO should not be stuck in the weeds of demanding to understand why modern infrastructure is more reliable than legacy infrastructure.

Right, but in that case the case is made to the CIO, not the CEO, because what you stated.
So the CIO would need to know these things, I would think.

Correct, the information is good, but is for "inside IT", not for "the business".

So question - where do you see that CIO person fitting? You've already said they were IT, but are they more an executive - or more IT? or do you not see a difference in this case?

To me, there is no difference. Anyone making IT decisions has to be a business person to do that job. The CIO has to be completely in sync with everything in the business and be thinking completely within the holistic business context. But they must also be a generalist with a deep understanding of nearly every aspect of IT.

This is why a CIO role is rare and expensive... you need someone who would be reasonably expensive in their business role OR their IT role, then the overhead of putting those two roles together in a single human.

And this is why so many CIOs are terrible, they often only have tech skills or business and are unable to bridge the gap which is their role.

@Dashrender said in Consultancies Advertise People; VARs Advertise Products:

@EddieJennings said in Consultancies Advertise People; VARs Advertise Products:

This may seem simplistic, but if I were in this scenario, on which side of the MSP / VAR would I stand?

A person hires me to help spec out a server for their office. I'm paid to help them determine how much RAM, storage, processors, etc. they need.

This part is clear, I'm being paid for advice; thus, MSP.

A point of clarity - advising only this is not being an MSP - you'r not managing anything (managed service provider). ITSP or Consultancy would be better terms for this portion... heck - the whole thing, including recommending a hardware vendor, because again, you're not managing anything.

True. I ought to have used those other terms.

Smart switches are cheaper than managed switches, normally by quite a bit. And they are way easier for a small business to manage as they normally just use a web browser or a simple utility instead of making you use expensive and complex central management tools for SNMP.

This just came up in an IT buyer's community and I think it is really important:

IT Practitioners get their knowledge from IT peers, industry training, logic, math and experience. Same as any other technical pursuit like civil engineering.

IT Buyers should get their knowledge for IT Practitioners

IT Buyers who believe themselves to be IT practitioners use whitepapers - a quasi-technical sales tool that looks like technical advice but is actually vendor sales advice. Whitepaper is an IT industry term for a marketing brochure with technical information used to guide customers to what the vendor wants done - which is not necessarily bad, but is not the same thing as industry advice. The vendor's agenda is not the same as the customer's agenda in all cases. IT works for customers, whitepapers represent vendors.

Similarly, Gartner could be considered the same as whitepapers, without the technical benefits.

@coliver said in Why the SMB Still Needs Hardware RAID:

@scottalanmiller said in Why the SMB Still Needs Hardware RAID:

@coliver said in Why the SMB Still Needs Hardware RAID:

@scottalanmiller said in Why the SMB Still Needs Hardware RAID:

@coliver said in Why the SMB Still Needs Hardware RAID:

@scottalanmiller said in Why the SMB Still Needs Hardware RAID:

@coliver said in Why the SMB Still Needs Hardware RAID:

@travisdh1 said in Why the SMB Still Needs Hardware RAID:

@dafyre said in Why the SMB Still Needs Hardware RAID:

@scottalanmiller said in Why the SMB Still Needs Hardware RAID:

The most common RAIN approach that I see is taking all disks in the pool, noting their nodal presence and using mirroring to distribute the data so that data mirrors never go to the same disk and/or the same node. So a little like a networked RAID 1E but with more flexibility and the option to add nodal separation and performance testing so that data moves to where it is used.

Are you aware of any open source RAIN systems?

Gluster and Swift

I think Ceph and Lustre may be two others.

Lustre is RAIN, but is closed. Gluster was the open replacement for Lustre.

Just a quick search showed that Lustre was GPL 2.0, not sure if that is new or not.

Oh wow, must be new. It was crazy expensive in 2006 when we were really investigating it. That's awesome.

Ah looks like it went open source in 2010.

Oh cool, so I remember things well then. I'm just out of date. Gluster probably forced their hand, why would anyone consider Lustre when it was closed source? The answer was probably... they wouldn't and didn't.

Yep, I'd assume that was the case. Especially when it is a such a specific, and at the time, niche market.

And when Gluster went directly after them, even in name.

@scottalanmiller said in ITs Big Secret:

@Dashrender said in ITs Big Secret:

The whole reason for my post was the notion that the employee would go running to their boss because IT is making them unproductive, at least in perception, if not in reality.

That's for them to do, not IT. IT would verify it if needed, but not by default be the tattle tales just for the sake of reporting on employees.

which was exactly the post I was responding to above.

@scottalanmiller said in IT is Complex:

@Dashrender said in IT is Complex:

management - you mean anyone who it's IT. For most it seems if you say you are IT, then they assume you know anything/everything to do with computers. Plus they lump things that aren't IT into IT.

And not just broad knowledge, but historic and insanely current, too. That computer from thirty years ago that is nothing like any machine today and for which there is no documentation; you know all about that thing, right? And this new technology that just released this morning while you were busy in a meeting and haven't even been to your desk yet, you've already studied it and have years of experience on it, right?

Here Here!

I'd put NTG in that category. Year after year growth. But it's still very slow. But it is not a steady state, it's annual improvements. Two steps forward, one step back, but still more forward than back.

In some cases, understanding when you are or are not may only be important for understanding your own scope and responsibility. Knowing that you are not responsible for data loss when someone in management above you refuses recommended backups is important for sleeping at night or telling a future employer about a previous role.

Knowing that you do (or do not) actually run IT could be potentially important for explaining in a court case who is responsible for decisions leading to breaches, data losses or violations. Titles do not matter in court, roles do.

But in a more day to day, practical sense, explaining to management "above you" at your job that they have decided to take over as the head of IT and that that impacts how you and they need to think about your job. Maybe this can make your job better, maybe this can help management understand business failings. But if we can't put these things into words, we cannot begin to address them.

This really follows along well with this discussion: https://mangolassi.it/topic/11852/why-it-builds-a-house-of-cards

It's far easier to avoid the "house of cards" motivation problems with an MSP than with internal staff.

@John-Nicholson said in The MSP Model fails more often than not.:

@Carnival-Boy said in The MSP Model fails more often than not.:

I'd argue that the more complex it is, the more having good structure and support is important.

I agree and that's where I think internal IT wins. MSPs tend to be very good at IT, but lack the business understanding, because they don't work in the business, they work in IT. Good internal IT staff have both IT and business expertise.

Depends on the MSP If it's one that specializes in a given field (Say Education) they might know how other companies in the same vertical solve a problem.

And value to tackling things from other fields, too. So often you see companies that have the "our industry is special and has special needs" like video processing. But if someone from another field looks at it without that attitude they realize that their needs are very basic, simple and standard.

Yeah, I would totally hate my job without resources like SW and MangoLassi.