I see so much fighting vs cooperation going on in the industry. (Let's
keep this technical and in the spirit of this community.)
SOX compliance:
Ok, I think it sucks. I feel that it adds a bunch of cost, fear, etc for
little benefit. However my boss has decided to embrace it and use it to
push through a bunch of stuff that he believes should have been done
awhile ago. A sample might be not retaining email which may have personal
stuff in it for over a certain period of time. As I type this we are
archiving someone's email file off. 46GB. They've been gone awhile.
Can't get management to make a decision. Their belief is there just may
be something important in there they might have to go back for and here's
a check for more disk - we have other priorities. Sure we've created a
lpar just for this using 1.7TB spinning disks and our operator is
dedicating a few weeks of labor getting the terminated email moved over to
it. Last I checked is that Domino directory alone (of just terminated
archived email) was 0.7TB and we're only about halfway through. Boss is
hoping the SOX requirement may help.
IBM maintenance:
Some people think it's too high and say they rarely use it. Me, I
probably open a new issue with IBM on a weekly basis, if not sooner. Sure,
I will do the necessary research before opening a ticket; sometimes above
and beyond. But, by golly, I don't have to have a gun pointed at my head
before I'll open a ticket with IBM. And some tickets can be "how to" type
of questions. I also stay current with PTF's and the OS versions. I've
seen people fight ever opening a ticket, putting on a PTF, putting on an
OS upgrade, etc.
Perhaps the date of your last cume and some related issues should also be
audit questions?
Vendor software maintenance:
Sure, if you modify the snot out of your software it can make it tough to
apply upgrades. But establish a relationship with your vendor anyways.
Join any community site they have. Maybe even have some of your expert
users do so also. That can be used as a resource for questions like "How
do I get GL to...", "How do submit one of their programs from the job
scheduler and not have it halt on a security check?" and so on. Keep
track of what they do new. It may be something useful. It may help you
to convince management to upgrade.
And, as many are finding out the hard way, dropping maintenance can have
some serious financial repercussions when it comes time to do a hardware
upgrade, OS upgrade, etc. Another thing to think of, what good are all
your tapes, backup plans, etc if your machine dies and you restore it on a
new box but can't run it without a key from the vendor? To me, this
should be a reason to fail any audit. I can't believe that a big 8
accounting firm would be more concerned about the value of QLMTDEVSSN than
whether or not you have a maintenance contract.
If you feel the vendor software maintenance is too high and you are truly
getting little benefit from the vendor, like they don't support the latest
OS for far too long, replace the vendor. I have.
Lease vs buy:
I recommend leasing because it allows you to say "if we upgrade to this
new box it will only raise our lease costs by x dollars per month".
Sometimes it may be minimal, and it's not out of the realm of
possibilities for it to lower it. Now if someone says it makes financial
sense to buy vs lease ensure that their plan includes an upgrade plan.
Does it still make financial sense if the machine is replaced when
amortized? A little give and take is permissible. Like a year or two
after amortization, depending on the length of amortization.
http://tinyurl.com/FightingVsCooperation
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/fighting-vs-cooperation-rob-berendt?trkInfo=VSRPsearchId%3A193617941485958788714%2CVSRPtargetId%3A6232561060663091200%2CVSRPcmpt%3Aprimary&trk=vsrp_influencer_content_res_name
Rob Berendt
midrange.com
