[conspire] IT as a cost to be minimized? ...

[Michael Paoli]

IT as a cost to be minimized?

Well, attitudes and degree of cluefulness (and/or lack thereof) varies
a lot among companies/employers, departments, managers, executives, etc.

Most are still far from ideal in attitudes :-/ ... but at least some,
in much significant part, are quite a bit better ... and some might
even be pretty excellent.

Many well realize that looking at IT as a "cost" is a far too simplistic
and short-sighted view.  Sure, at the simplest levels, it's a cost ...
but so are roadways, electric grid system and having available electric
power, telecommunication lines, The Internet, satellites, much etc.
So the view needs to be more all-encompassing - or at least closer to it.
"Cost", yes, but what is gained by that expenditure?  What does it enable?
What does it make possible that's not otherwise possible, or make better
what would otherwise be worse?  What are the impacts of not giving sufficient
resources to IT, and the costs of those impacts?

Also, opportunity cost ... a well tuned IT is a great resource - many things
can be done or made possible, and much more quickly - it is/becomes a quite
important tool/asset.  Conversely, an IT that's kept too short on resources,
the short view may be a "cost savings", but the loss in other costs may be
much higher.  Want to get that new cool thing implemented?  Well resourced
IT, and it's done quickly and efficiently.  IT way short on resources?  It
gets added to the queue, periodically reevaluated for priority, maybe it gets
done in a couple weeks or months or more, or maybe it never gets done.  So,
what are the losses in it having not been quickly implemented?  IT has a bit
of resources to spare?  They can help make the organization and other folks
more efficient and productive - look at how folks are doing their jobs and
what IT can do to make things better and more efficient.  If IT is stretched
thin, they generally won't have the bandwidth to look for other opportunities
to improve operations.  IT thin ... more outages/failures - and those often
have significant business impact - lost revenue, etc. - often much more
of a cost than providing more resources to IT to avoid or reduce the
probability of such problems.

And some things are quite complex ... risk/benefit analysis, probabilities,
often not all that simple, but do need to reasonably consider the whole
picture, indirect and consequential costs, etc.

So ... some managers/executives actually "get IT", and better understand
it's a very important *resource*/tool/infrastructure ... and yes, that it
of course is not without cost, but how proper providing for IT resources
well benefits the organization - and by much more than what it costs to
operate that IT.

Anyway, yes, attitudes, and enlightenment/cluefulness, and/or lack thereof,
can and does vary a lot ... by person, manager(s), executive(s),  
department(s),
company/organization, etc.

More folks need to keep in mind overall impacts on/to/for the organization.
And that also applies to IT folks too ... including budget/cost/financial
bits ... money doesn't come out of existence from thin air ... more funds to
IT means less funds (at least in the first order immediate) to something else,
so, yes, IT should have appropriate resources/funding ... but should also not
waste those resources either - should function as a well tuned smooth
running machine.

> Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2018 15:59:01 +0000 (UTC)
> From: Paul Zander <paulz at ieee.org>
> To: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>, 	"conspire at linuxmafia.com"
> 	<conspire at linuxmafia.com>
> Subject: Re: [conspire] Why you should always test your backups
> Message-ID: <1826044847.4479463.1533830341914 at mail.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
>       From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
>  To: conspire at linuxmafia.com
>  Sent: Wednesday, August 8, 2018 2:36 PM
>  Subject: Re: [conspire] Why you should always test your backups
>
> Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):
>
>> I was never in IT, but I used to ask about the IT department when
>> interviewing.?? The one time I didn't ask, I found myself at a company
>> that treated IT as a cost to be minimized without concern for how much
>> time and frustration that caused for everyone else.
>
> Well, this may depress you, but _every_ company treats IT as a cost to
> be minimised.? Some are merely worse in this attitude having corrosive
> effects on IT than are others.? At the really bad example firms, the