Quote:
Originally Posted by BetterRed
@Dennis - in the past, employees would put a lot of pressure onto IT departments to give them the latest version of Windows, Office etc because they had them on their home computers. This was a particular issue if they were 'expected' to work from home. In particular I recall users, usually senior execs, wanting an email system they could use at home or on the road. Installing a 3270 emulator on their luggables and offering dial up access to Memo on the MVS mainfame didn't cut the mustard 
I don't think those pressures exist to the extent they did 20-30 years ago. |
No, but they still exist. I once brought in and installed on my workstation at a former employer personal copies of Word and Excel. Our West Coast office had bought newer versions than the ones we had installed, and we couldn't handle the Word and Excel files they sent us. I was able to Save As to a version my coworkers
could handle.
Lack of actual corporate standards was the underlying issue. My company had been built by acquisition, and there were all manner of legacy products in use at acquired divisions we in IT were expected to support.
When my office got relocated to corporate HQ, I found myself supporting Windows versions including Win98SE, WinNT Workstation, Win2K Pro, and Win XP. I was primarily the *nix admin, and faced the challenge of getting all of those things to communicate with the *nix boxes. (I had to say "Sorry, but the98SE machine
can't connect via Samba!")
The
we got merged and acquired, and the new corporate parent decided standards and upgrades were in order. Everyone got WinXP and the then current version of Office.
Doing the upgrade across the company was a major PITA, but I was all in favor. One of the things I had previously done was burned the midnight oil remediating a virus infestation. The virus got in through a vulnerability that had been patched a while back, but applying patches was not mandatory and the machine it got in through never got the patch. (It was the 98SE box, which figured.) The company rethought its attitude toward patches after that.
The upgrade effort was grimly amusing. It would take place in stages over a period of three years. And strenuous efforts were made to put as much of it as possible into merger and acquisition costs. Stockholders expected M&A to cost money, and M&A costs wouldn't affect the price of the stock (assuming the shareholders thought the M&A was a good idea in the first place, which they had.) Heavy spending on IT outside of that context would be a pure large expense that
would affect the price of the stock. I read the Wall Street Journal for fun and snickered. Most of my coworkers didn't understand what I found funny.
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Dennis