I think that it will be interesting to watch, I don't know about fun. I am glad I won't be participating in the project, as it will probably not be very fun at all.
Since we are revealing personal opinions, I'm not all that shocked to hear that my state government has 31 data centers. This is a big state, after all, spread out over a lot of land and with a lot of people living here to serve, and with a lot of employees. Now, I know you can have a centralized data center and have remote connections - in fact, the company I work for does just that. (We have 6 warehouses that connect to our mainframe here in Fort Worth; when someone in Little Rock uses his wireless scanner on a barcode attached to product in the warehouse, it reads & updates VSAM files here via a CICS transaction.) However, we are one company doing essentially one thing. The state government has many missions, and, while keeping costs under control and cooperating on security and DR are good things, they are not the most important things -- successfully serving the public is. It might not take 31 data centers, but it just might require more than 2. Who am I to judge? I doubt all the IT employees will still be employed when (and if) it is all said and done, and it seems likely there will be some number less of mainframe shops. More sysprogs out there looking for work, I fear, and less places to find it... My two cents, Greg Shirey Ben E. Keith Company -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List On Behalf Of Timothy Sipples Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 11:56 PM To: IBM-MAIN@BAMA.UA.EDU Subject: Re: News : IBM and outsourcing in Texas AP had a story about this IBM Texas outsourcing contract today (or maybe yesterday, depending on time zone). The wire story said that the 31 data centers will collapse into 2. It does appear Texas agencies will learn to get along and work together better. (I hope.) There were also some comments in the article that Texas will greatly enhance security and DR capabilities by assuring that their focused efforts on two data centers will result in a higher quality operation. Makes sense to me. The story said that the state's IT employees will enjoy a minimum 5% pay raise. That's another thing we sometimes forget: efficiency gains can benefit both taxpayers and staff salaries. Somebody also had smart politics in mind with that 5%+ raise, I think. :-) This Texas case is really interesting, and it will be fun to watch. Personal opinions. ######################################################################## As of January 1, 2007, Ben E. Keith Company will no longer accept emails addressed to our "bekco.com" address. Please change your information for all Ben E. Keith contacts to our new email address, "benekeith.com". Thank you. ######################################################################## ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
