Are you shitting me?
July 12th, 2006 by 
gowest
When working in Information Technology I consider staying up to date with current software critical. I keep track of software and operating system updates and make sure I upgrade fairly quick to have my environment secured and to avoid being hit by viruses or exploits.I recently listened to some other IT folks talking about the latest Microsoft patches that were released and almost fell of my chair laughing and swearing. I mean - I knew they were already behind. Lightyears behind to be exact. But the attitude of these so-called IT professionals just stunned me. Microsoft had announced end of support for certain products and patch levels and these so-called IT professionals had to question the Microsoft representative a couple of times as if this end of support would mean the end of the world to them. How can you work in IT and run into problems with the end of support time line of a Microsoft product? Nobody expects you to be cutting edge, but there are years in a lifecycle of a Microsoft product. Years!!! And these so-called IT professionals fail to plan for upgrades and patching and then struggle when Microsoft finally pulls the trigger?! That is just bad.
Don’t get me wrong. I know many companies are squeezing the last dollar out of a product they pay good money for. But Microsoft publishes end of lifecycle dates years in advance so that businesses can plan. An IT professional is doing a very bad job by not looking at those schedules every once in a while and to plan accordingly. The bad thing here is, that these so-called IT professionals are in charge of their environment and now everyone underneath has to follow their speed. By the way - I could see the Microsoft rep smiling and laughing about these so-called IT professionals, too. She even did me a favor when asking the question about how fast the normal patch installation turnaround time would be. First there was silence - a little too long. You could tell that there was no plan and no tools in place to get the environment patched in a timely fashion and the respondee made something up to not look like an idiot - again, a little too late. Happy patching.
Posted in Work |