Posts by Alex 6 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Dec 2008
If you will insist on contorting standards for decades its not exactly fair to expect the whole web world to throw budget at undoing all the workarounds when u are standards compliant in the middle of a credit crunch no less especially when most users wont adopt the browser for ages yet.
Ok sorry that sounds a bit sarcy, Yes I agree that a balance needs to be struck between people and processes vs Technology. However DAtabases, Document management systems Single sign on, cross applicaton search the underlying technology is there we just need to impliment it correctly with apps such as sharepoint, xerox docushare, atlatissan JIRA allow us to manage documets etc but the best prctice from an IT pointof view has not been carried over from database design. To avoid stale data we all know every data item or file should be stored once (or if it needs editing once centerally and versioned )
let me give you an example a namless organisation chooses to give each department their own sharepoint site and let them configure workflows :) good, let them decide who can see documents good :) let them decide where sharepoint stores files >:( bad. Basic modeling of who else will need that file, not done a concerted effort to capitalise on not just team wide document management but organisation wide document management not done centralised storage, you may as well be speeking iraqi in new york.
We (Th IT people) need to get involved here and cut down on the number of data stores (remove repeted data like in adatabase) and help the organisation avoid stale data and develop sensible processes to ensure everything is stored in the right place we can search that place (like a database) and everyone who needs to knows where that is.
If implemented correctly with proper security precautions your work issued iPhone or blackberry could open the barrier to the staff car park with gps or base station location open the security doors at work with blue tooth, tell your colleges where you are but when you phone in sick an hour after the new secretary and the boss sees both your phones in london city centre near one base station... Is there a privacy issue if we use the obvious tracking ability which a comany has the right as owner of the device? It could also be required to be near you're work laptop or desktop at start up, set your im status to away when you're on the move deliver email to the device when you are not at your computer... I think you get the idea.
There are some concerns about the increased impact of losing a phone that does all that but if you can cut down company kit to a laptop and a phone and set up strong passwords access codes bio metrics or some appropriate system the automation and information generating capabilities provided could be very useful.
SME's and even Blue Chip firms organically acquire systems and retain the most effective for business purposes which are not necessarily scalable with the growth of activity using theses systems.
Cutting the BS. systems evolve: someone somewhere sees a problem which an information system could solve and having attended the company events listened to the geeks no sorry IT dept (my cupboard) and read the management memo that says stop tell the IT dept so we can spec develop and deploy it to a production environment with resilience, performance scalability and interoperability, proceeds to spend twice as long as a dev team evolving the business by knocking out an excel vba or access system which cant grow with the business or talk to the oracle database used elsewhere in the business because of how they hacked sorry developed it and then IT are told to fix it. Its not just marketing people ;) further complicating the issue is the fact the big firms have various separate business depts each with their own IT and thus various Operating systems and development patterns... so when we are told to take a joined up approach we look at the continental plug and the British socket scratch our heads reach for the converter leave it in on loads its not designed for and moan when it catches fire because the budget to start again with a unified approach does not exist.
Alot of the networks current archives are on tape and will be required if you were to say knock out a Lead Zeppelin obituary. All of this footage will either be referenced as the tape library and seen as separate and out dated but required and staffed (ok a dwindling staff but still there will be more IT staff maintaining the new nodes), or there will be a huge migration from tape libraries requiring even more tape trained staff than we have and seeing the current ones through to retirement. Further as the networks sell off the tape based kit wont smaller networks, student and community TV and prosumers clubs etc require somewhere to put all the footage they get before the trusty old cameras die out?
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