I hate what Windows is doing to the world of systems administration. I am not an IT guy - I don’t profess to know a whole lot about IT and I doubt I’d last long in a conversation with someone who was an IT professional. That doesn’t change the fact that I can say without a doubt that Windows networks are dumbing down the IT profession.
It used to be that a local network would be running some flavor of Unix, which would run the Windows machines for the office people, the Linux machines for the retail people, the Macs for the creative people, and the BSD machines for the IT people.
I understand that the reason Windows narrows the possibilities is so that it forces everyone to be on it’s proprietary platform. The capitalist in me celebrates this astute business model.
Unfortunately, one factor which any functional and successful monopoly must ensure is that its range of products meets all the needs which competing products would otherwise cover. What we have in the corporate world today is a fresh-out-of-college IT guy who was given 2 years of route Windows training and then meets with a Windows salesman to set up his company’s IT needs. Those needs are dictated by the Windows salesman, and when a new capability is required by the company, and they ask for it, the IT guy looks at his Windows capabilities list, and if he doesn’t find a match, can bluntly say “we can’t do that”, and the case is closed.
The worst part is that corporate officers are just accepting this, and it’s causing a severe dumbing-down not only in their technological capabilities, but of their business offerings. A new corporate culture is emerging in the larger companies that are adopting a full-blown Windows solution: ossification and mediocrity. They’re pandering to the lowered expectations which is Windows network platforms, and not expecting their IT to deliver the world as it should.
Windows is also the most anemic software when it comes to responding to industry changes and consumer demands. Instead, they make their salesmen convince their customers that things can be done only such-and-such way and that’s just the way it is. This factor is the one siver liniung that convinces me Microsoft will collapse under its own weight before too long unless it changes its business model.
I work for one of these companies that limits itself because its MS slesmen say it should. Luckily, there are signs that we’re going to be dumping our entire IT system in the not-too-distant future. I really hope I can have some influence or lend some assistance in convincing them to go with a more flexible and robust long-term solution, otherwise, I’d be quite pessimistic about my future here…