"The second story comes from a friend who has his own small
business taking care of other small business IT needs. He cannot
find enough quality people to cover all of his needs and he
occasionally calls me when he runs into Linux issues. He was
telling me about a problem he was having at one of his customers
and describing the infrastructure to me and he got about half way
through the tale when I asked him why he had done it that way. The
upshot of the story was that the company would not pay for a more
robust solution, despite the fact that there were several single
points of failure and certainly considerable risk points.
"As someone who works in an enterprise environment as well as
someone who has worked in small associations and small business,
this is hardly a new trend, but as the economy begins to slough off
jobs and spending becomes even more restrictive, companies will
continue to cut essential services, further risking their IT
infrastructure. This is not a new situation. IT is always the ugly
duckling at the show. At best, when everything is working, no one
sees us and the bean counters wonder why they are paying us. At
worst, it is mass chaos and the bean counters wonder why they are
paying us."
