Thanks for that "other perspective", Moose. Interesting and enlightening (as
usual).
Piers
-----Original Message-----
From: olympus
[mailto:olympus-bounces+piers.hemy=gmail.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Moose
Sent: 19 June 2014 00:11
To: Olympus Camera Discussion
Subject: Re: [OM] [OT] Appalling customer service
On 6/17/2014 4:40 PM, Andrew Fildes wrote:
> Or.if your organisation is running Windows, you need an IT department.
> :-)
A lot of comparisons of zebus to Cebu to eagles to bananas going on in this
thread.
Just for a little perspective, consider the situation of a large company.
The one I have been intimately familiar with was a Fortune 500 supermarket
company.
It's almost mind boggling to see how much data they must process every day.
When we first got scanners, many of the potential benefits couldn't be
realized because of limitation in the data handling of the computers of the
time. For years after we were capturing the data at the check stand, we
couldn't use it against inventory to drive automated ordering.
Thousands of stores, tens of thousands of SKUs, warehouses larger than small
cities. The complexity of just one of the millions of daily transactions is
amazing.
The computers eventually caught up, allowing things like no backrooms in
stores with daily, just in time delivery of product.
HOWEVER, therein lies the danger, as well. If any of the real time operating
systems fails, the business could, too.
For this reason, development of software systems is tediously detailed, spec
and meeting ridden and slow. Once a system is developed, it runs in parallel
with the one it is to replace/upgrade, then it goes live, while the old
system runs in parallel, ready to drop back into primary. This may take
months, until detailed electronic audits show no problems.
None of this, of course runs on desktop PCs, but they are the gateway for
those operating and controlling the operating systems and many getting stuff
out of them.
Security and stability are not just 'mission critical', the are survival of
the company critical. And thus only computers running the currently tested
and approved version of the current OS are allowed on the heavily protected
internal net. They just started late last year the slow, careful conversion
from XP to 7.
They have IT because they can't run the business without it, and couldn't
before PCs appeared. But in the old days, much smaller amounts of data was
batch processed, overnight or less often. Now it all happens in real time,
and the need for IT is even greater.
I was never in IT. Sitting out in my skunkworks, I could snipe at them, make
fun of them and mostly go my own way. When I did have to 'interface' with
them, it almost drove me mad (Year 2000, oh Lordy.) But if I had to run the
business, I wouldn't have changed it.
The situation for individuals is different, as it may be for various sorts
of small businesses.
Another Perspective Moose
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What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
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