On Tue, 1 Jun 2010 09:58:06 -0500, Glen Gasior <glen.manages....@gmail.com> wrote:
>*There is theory and there is reality. If you have a shop where the software >management process is essentially whatever was a good idea at the time, >software and hardware upgrades will be painfully time consuming unless you >are willing to accept outages.* >*If the system has been designed to be easy to maintain and has implemented >simplification, standardization and automation, then software and hardware >upgrades can be surprisingly economical, except for the person with the >vision and knowledge to accomplish this, that person will probably be >expensive, so throw your corporate salary schedule out the window.* Spot on. The question becomes analagous to the entire mainframe (big server) vs "chickenplex" question: "Would your rather plow with an Ox, or with 10,000 Chickens?" Said another way: Pay a small number of highly skilled technicians to build and maintain your environment to a higher RAS standard, or pay a larger number of trained firefighters to keep the shop from burning down. I argue a shop needs both skill sets, but with an emphasis on developing a fire-resistant architecture. I'm willing to pay decent money for contractors that understand and meet fire code specifications for connecting my garage, so the firefighters have ample time to prevent a garage fire from taking my house, but I'm also glad I have a fire station within two miles (and I'm as willing to pay my taxes to keep them close). Regards, Art Gutowski Ford Motor Company ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html