Desktops are seen as unimportant until...

Don't Even Try

If you approach bosses as an extortionist you should be fired. You can keep records of failure rates but until the boss's PC dies, he will not care.

A much better approach is to persuade bosses to convert to thin clients for half the cost of an upgrade of PC hardware thick clients. Then you can upgrade the software on a few servers and let the thin clients last a decade with fewer problems with bosses. It is much easier to persuade bosses to upgrade/consolidate a few servers every few years than hundreds or thousands of thick clients and the bean-counters will be impressed with reduced power consumption and maintenance cost.

This recipe is doubly cost-effective if you can run GNU/Linux on the thin clients and terminal servers as there is no per-seat licensing costs. There may be a few apps or users who are difficult to move this way, but the overall system will be in much better shape operationally and financially using a mixture than using the expensive solution everywhere.

Short answer is,...

I don't know/care, I sit at my unix terminal playing with the SAN and looking smug.

Longer answer; I give diagnostic support to the Desktop guys to assist in eliminating specific causes and analysing any wider issues, only if a) I get on reasonably OK with them, and b) I get on reasonably OK with the customer who is trying to get the problem fixed. Otherwise, see short answer.

OK, probably not directly answering your question but highlighting why some problems take longer to fix than others. (I just require courtesy - you'd be amazed how little is out there)

No persuading necessary

We use a well-known International brand of hardware manufacturer which fail often enough that the users get regular reminders of what happens when their desktops fall over.

If you have a turnover policy for the PCs

The company should provide capital to each group to actually DO it. It sounds like a brain dead "DUH!" statement, but more often then not, computer equipment turnover policies state generally 3 to 5 year replacements but due to budgeting cuts and bottom lines, they tend to go 8-10 years before replacing the old junkers. It has always boggled the mind that company say to do you best and make the customer happy... but don't spend any money to do it. It doesn't make sense. Every small business owner I know spends the money needed to get the job done so they can MAKE money over and above their spending. Large companies seem to loose sight of this since they're on the stock market and have to please overfed, brain dead analysts that think tax write-offs are more important than proper acquisitions for greater profit margins. Sometimes a loss one quarter due to expansion and capital expenditure will lead to more profitable quarters to follow, but analysts will kill a company for such "nonsense" because they had a down quarter when they could have maintained a smaller increase in profits. And then they'll kill the company if it maintains only small gains. To fix the IT issues (as well as ALL equipment turnover issues) we need to fix the stock market analysts and re-school them on proper understanding of business tactics in the LONG term and tell them to stop trying to analyze anything that hasn't taken more than 6 months or a year to accomplish and preferably 5 to 10 year trends. Their job could be much easier focusing on 30 year trends for older companies and for younger companies, focusing on their build up and expansion and comparing it to how they're managing their income and bonuses. Let the company accountants deal with the tax issues and focus more on how the company is doing as a whole in managing their assets instead of focusing on how big their tax write-offs are for a given quarter.

Well heres my plan of attack

Typically managers don't want to part with their cash let alone spend money on overtime so I can come in on my weekend off to complete routine maintenance. I would make the boss aware of the finance involved with upgrading the machines / maintenance on the machines. Then forecast losses made through destruction or elimination of certain terminals and typically 3 day waiting period for a complete resolution. Or you can buy the new equipment pay me my overtime and have more productive staff?

Licensing in a small business is by far the worst thing to convince them to spend out on. So break out the IT law and keep dropping hints by printing off cases where companies (and more specifically directors) were getting spanked by failing to make sure their software is legitimate. They soon relinquish the Directors new cuban cigar fund and hey presto licensed machines.

As for disaster recovery there are plenty of cases and reports on data failure leading to business failure. Presenting the facts gives you a none biased way of well presenting the facts. I don't get involved with money I don't know how well the companies doing and how large the directors fund for the 4 weeks in the Algarve is but I present the facts and let them make their own minds up. You may say I'm pressuring them by leaving hints of cases around but quite simply everyone gets bored by IT and talking IT to directors you may as well be talking dutch for all they care or understand. So a longer campaign may be able to fire their interest. Especially as licensing is in their interest!

Widen the lens

Disclaimer: Events and conditions in this post were inherited; don't blame me. :)

Standardisation is the core issue, and the hardest, particularly with SMB's. How many times has a new employee or project required a quick jaunt to Best Buy because Der Management didn't want to wait and / or pay the costs for overnight shipping? After a couple years, you have a right proper hodge-podge of different models, even if you can convince them to stick with one manufacturer instead of "the cheapest that will do the job".

Thin clients are one way of reconciling this (and using those oddballs), but that also requires standardisation of the network, what with that gawd-awful daisy chain of D-Link and Linksys mini-hubs looped through the building because Der Management believes, against all evidence, that the 8-port Bay Networks (THAT old) is just fine to support 80-100 workstations (semi-seasonal)... as long as the Corporate Directors (4) each get their own directly cabled port out of the 8.

Utilising the random mix of computers as thin clients is a good solution, but you have to make sure you are ready for it - one good 24-port switch and some planning (and some weekends, unfortunately) can provide a much needed boost to productivity and stability. Once you have things working reliably, THEN go to Der Management with the paperwork that shows NOT going to thin clients is stupid (and is costing THEM money)... but give it a couple months after they get used to the faster pr0n.

Note: I don't know if they ever finally got their act together; I left a little after a good friend and network engineer I hired from MCI (there WERE a couple of 'em) got the network up and running on a good switch and we fixed all the cabling and ripped out all the mini-hubs. He was fired the week after for going $34 over the $5000 invoice limit... that was signed by the Pres' son. And then they congratulated me because of whatever I did - no one got kicked off the UNIX box anymore. I put out my CV and never looked back.

BOFH

First forward the CEO's private email to ALL, you know, the mail from his mistress.

Then when you are fixing it, let slip that it was caused by a virus that got in through an unpatched windows bug, and out of date virus software.

Bonus points if you can get the CEO to OK overtime for you and a few mates to correct the problem.

Tough Challenge

It is, as stated above, virtually impossible to get the right investment in internal IT. As there's no direct revenue generation from the expenditure anyone with their hands on purse-strings will keep them tight.

In my experience, in organisations of various sizes, the key to driving a successful preventative maintenance strategy is to self-start it. it's 1st & 2nd line staff who most desperately need the standardisation and consistency across the desktop infrastructure, there's no pain greater than attempting to implement a universal update or change only to be felled by a wealth of machines which require varying levels of patching and mainetnance beforehand.

Beginning by auditing all the machines, filling out the asset database, reviewing your case management processes for opportunities for improvment, you will lay the groundwork for the holy grail of a standardised desktop environment, once you're doing all you can with all you have and can prove it you can then begin to approach management.

I've found some success is to be found by keeping good relations with the rest of business, put up a forum or website so everyone can give you feedback regarding which systems work and which don't, what the rest of the business want from their IT. If you can prove that your ideas and proposals have merit and wider support among other businesss units you're more likely to succeed. For instance if by implementing a WSUS server you can demonstrate a percentage increase in the efficency of the sales divison you're more likely to get the approval.

**DISCLAIMER: WSUS servers may not nessecarily improve sales effiency and/or returns, the accounting team may overload your tech forum with unreasonable demands during month end and the techies you've charged with auditing and asset management may attempt mutiny!**

Thin clients are nice

And they work. They work especially well in discouraging users from browsing youtube.

Of course, thin clients do wonders to bills (power, but also air conditioning), and savings scale very nicely with the number of users.

As for thick clients, you can always anticipate problems. Hence monitoring software. Most system vendors provide free tools for their systems which are able to log system events and forward them to a central repository (including SNMP traps, or more commonly, e-mail notifications).

So if any component starts operating only marginally, support people get a heads up on the problem.

Now, it's a wholy different problem to persuade management (or the beancounters) to actually okay system repair costs, so the support personnel can either risk their budget and run preemptive repairs or wait until the part breaks -- at least then they'll magically know which part needs to be replaced.

Paris, because she knows the difference between thick and thin.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't...

The main problem I usually face is that the better a job I do, the less I appear to be of value. In most cases I am lucky enough to have inherited a sloppy job, and slowly spend the next year making sure it all works, and putting contingency plans in place, even if they are not explicitly asked for.

I always say that what the client wants and what the client needs are two totally different things, and often are mutually exclusive. My favourite was being asked to install Blackberry Enterprise software on a server (at a client's with a single server) back in the days it needed to run on a separate server. It doesn't matter how many times you refer them to the documentation, it is still your fault.

As far as desktops are concerned, it simply comes down to productivity. The more time their staff waste waiting for their desktop to respond, the less time they spend doing real work. With the better clients I eventually get to a rolling replacement program, swapping desktops every three or four years, but even then it is a fight to persuade them not to always give the newest computers to the bosses. Some poor buggers never get a brand new desktop.

Wrong approach

You don't say "We need to protect these desktops from a theoretical exploit that might happen but out network defenses should stop because We Have A Firewall (tm)".

You say, "Man those employees sure do waste time checking personal email and watching stupid online videos (buy a proxy server), installing unsupported, unnecessary software (buy AV, anti-spyware, anti-malware), keeping up with Microsoft's latest gaffe / patch (buy patch management), running local web servers for development / local databases for development when we have perfectly capable enterprise solutions already in place (buy host firewall / IPS)

"If only we had an infrastructure in place to keep the bean counters counting!

"If only we could make sure that everybody could do their job without mindlessly handling tasks that someone else is already being paid for!"

You need to sell it as a way to increase productivity and profitability. That is the only way to get any non-technical C-level executive to buy in (willingly).

Voting system? Where? I don't see it.

"You may have noticed that today we started trialling a comment voting system in select stories (including this one)"

Where? I don't see it. I even went and logged in, thinking that was why the "voting system" was not in evidence, but same diff.

Is the "voting system" one of those things that requires Javascript? If so, shame on the Reg! Javascript should never be a requirement for basic functionality of a respectable site... oh, wait, maybe that's the problem ;)

"...upcoming forum system that we plan to launch in mid-November."

Well it's about time! Aside from the "let the melee begin" aspect (more so than it is already), it ought to be interesting - and probably will increase page hits and ad revenue too, one would suppose... at least, among viewers who don't automatically block all non-Javascript ads :)

But will the forums still allow AC posts? Hmm... if not, I guess I'll be creating a new online persona for myself for, er, infrequent controversial/troublesome posts ;)

The machine that goes ping!

One approach for ensuring a reliable upgrade cycle is to not own the equipment, but to lease it & include a refresh component to the agreement.

That way, equipment becomes an known operating cost rather than a capital cost & can in many places by used as a tax offset without having to fiddle about with depreciation.

(beer - because it's only rented, too)

desktops - pah!

My company 'solved' the desktop problem by going entirely virtual. No real PCs any more, just VMs running in some honkin' big server, with each person allocated a personal VM they can login to from any thin client. Sounds great - but now of course we have two 'new' exciting scenarios:

a) the server goes belly up and nobody can work

b) your VM dies and you can't even work at a spare desk.

Took me 4 hours to get someone to 'reboot' my VM last week, and when they had to do an emergency patch to the server, the entire office had to down tools for half a day.

Welcome to the nineteen sixties.

You dont want to do it like that

The issues that cause these "IT" problems relate to bad working practices and planning

1. Vulnerabilities in the software due to bad developement practice and implementation

2. PC users not being responsible or interested in their equipment as it keeps changing

3. Lack of proper planning when the network was designed.

4. Lack of IT proficient staff.

(1) It is possible to code software without bugs / security holes, however as the software vendors are not held responsible for the failings in their products they do release without the product being "finished". The myth that it is so complex that it cannot be done is just an excuse for pushing rubbish out the door so as to get the money in faster.

(2) As software vendors continually move or change the interface so as to continue making money for a product they have already developed, IT skills depreciate rapidly over time. Most users are not interested in having their computer working properly as it "isn't their problem". If you were to compare their attitude with other workers who use tools as part of their job, you would see how strange this is. "I can't make my screw driver work" is not really an acceptable excuse for low performance outside of IT. "The manager ran amok with his screw driver stabbing his colleagues because he had been sent a letter laced with LSD" would be front page news but when it is malware its just one of those things, not a total failure of site security and foresight.

(3) Most networks are not designed but rather just grow until their performance / security becomes an issue. If a network designer was brought in earlier then a consistent policy for infrastructure modification / expansion would control the explosion of kit that occurs when departments are given a time limited budget for new kit.

(4) Most jobs now contain some element of IT so why employ someone who doesn't know how to do all the job. If they are highly skilled in some other area but not IT then they will need to be trained sufficiently for them to be able to do all their work rather than having to employ someone else to do what they will not. The premise that lots of semi-skilled workers are a financial saving is false, yes 90% of the time a monkey could do any job but they are paying skilled staff rates for the 10%. The old adage "pay peanuts, get monkeys" is the current working status of most companies and the reason why consultants who can do the 10% are able to get contracts.