On Wed, 19 Nov 2008, Dave Caplinger wrote:

> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>> the bulk of these are firewall changes. As such we are not comfortable with 
>> the self-service approach.
>
> Wow, an average of 2 production firewall changes a day (and I'm sure there's 
> quite a bit of +/- variation around that number)?

more like 10 changes a day to production firewalls, with another 10 
changes a day to less critical systems.

> Is it possible that you're simply being asked to "do the wrong thing faster"? 
> It just sounds odd (without more of a context) that there would be a need for 
> that many changes that frequently, but who knows -- maybe this is required by 
> internal policy.  (I'm certainly not trying to judge.) Maybe your internal 
> client is making this large volume of last-minute firewall change requests 
> because their upstream client is asking something strange of them?

there really is a need for about this many changes on average (we are 
working to simplify things, but part of the problem is that we are so busy 
fighting allagators that we don't have much manpower to spend draining the 
swamp). there is not a need for so many of them to be with such short 
notice, as I noted in a prior message most of these are for new 
implementations that those teams have been working on for months, but 
don't bother to tell us about until they become the blocking factor.

> Perhaps you can have a discussion with management of your upstream provider 
> under the auspices of "I'm having a hard time meeting the SLA for this type 
> of request, and I want to work with you to find a solution we can both be 
> satisfied with."  Just be sure not to portray it as "you are harming me." 
> They want good service; you want to give them good service, so they will 
> hopefully welcome the opportunity to work with you on that common goal.

we are working on this, but one of the questions that came up is 'how do 
other companies deal with this', which is why I am asking the list.

David Lang
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