January 20th, 2009
Converting to Sun Ray, instead
Yesterday I suggested that IT managers working outside recession proof arenas like government data processing could, and should, look at using the slack introduced by the current recession to prefer Lintel and open source over Wintel and licensed applications.
So why not go the whole nine yards? blow out the client-server nonsense and put in Sun Rays with larger SPARC servers?
You don’t have to look far to find testimonials that say this is worth doing: basically you can kiss the help desk contract goodbye, forget most security and ever green issues, empower your sysadmins to work for users instead of IT, and save a hefty bundle while providing more flexible services to users - but there are two big problems.
The first is that doing this takes cash up front and, of course, the usual perversity of Finance means that a current cash crunch triggers a credit crunch -which then rules out any attempt to reduce cash consumption by investing in better technology.
Sun could, of course, address this by re-inventing the corporate infrastructure rent to own idea in which your employer buys cloud computing services delivered by on site infrastructure until the equipment is fully depreciated, and then buys it at that value - but that would require Sun marketing to break a clue, and their track record says that’s just not going to happen.
The second, and even worse, problem is that most people haven’t the first clue how to even evaluate, let alone do, a project like this - and the dumber (or more pre-committed) they are, the less they’re going to be willing to learn.
And, in that context, here’s what I think will happen: depressions can be seen as malthusian cures for economic fevers brought on by increasing separation between reality and beliefs among economic decision makers - meaning that those willing to look this mess straight in the eye and rethink their own behavior are more likely than those who won’t, to be among the winners and survivors when this mess is over.
Paul Murphy (a pseudonym) is an IT consultant specializing in Unix and related technologies. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 01/20/09
