legacy and procedure
I'd have to heartily agree with all of the above, and to cite precedence of absolute adherence to procedure leading to absolute failure to deliver on any front, simply phone up your major ISP with ANY request, from a simple billing change to a connection issue ever-so-slightly more complex than the cable not being plugged in.
I left a major multinational simply because the corporate environment of beurocracy and inflexability made my job a living nightmare.
On a more positive note, I am now working in a much smaller scientific institute, and the inter-departmental cooperation is wonderful. We have a number of products that we sell on to outside parties, which were all originally written in VB6 and C++.
It's truly suprising just how many software developers understand little to nothing about coding correctly within the windows environment, including the big names (Adobe, Google, and Mozilla to name but a few).
Raising a pint for our fabulous five, You know who you are!
The dev team were already keen to move into the .net development environment, but when we had a sit down, and I descibed some of the horrors of deploying legacy software in a networked environment (incorrect usage of profile folders, configuration files in the program folder, sometimes even in the windows folder, proprietary installer executables...) They were truly shocked at just how much the windows environment had changed without themselves noticing. We're still talking XP here, not 7.
I am pleased to say that our product line is now completely windows compliant (including 7), and some of the most sysadmin friendly software you will ever encounter, with full support of network deployment (using a distribution method of your choice msi/group policy, SMS/SCCM, or command line scripting) complete server/client managbility (can be from group policy OR our own management software if you don't have a windows DC).
But, most importantly, you can install a centralised update server ala wsus for patching (which uses and complies with BITS bandwidth throttling) or even incorporate our updates into your own wsus server.
As you can imagine, I'm bursting with pride for our lads. All of the design and architecture discussed over coffee and cakes without a single formal meeting, or having to go through 7 layers of senior management.
So, Adobe. Considering your software has opened up massive security holes in networks across the globe, where's YOUR centralised patching and reporting management server software? Come on, if a dev team of 5 programmers and 2 sysadmins can build this from scratch in 6 months, what's YOUR excuse?