4 ms·

IT leaders trust Microsoft more than Google, 2-to-1

4 points by Flemlord 17y ago

rbanffy 17y ago
That's a potentially deadly problem I call "management by managers". One can also refer to Scott Adams' point-haired boss character for further enlightenment.
- drhowarddrfine 17y ago
  You said what I was going to say and you're absolutely correct. This must be the stupidest comment and opinion I've read in a long time: The skeptical attitude toward Google was best summed up by Donna Trivison, Director of IT for Ursuline College, who wrote, “There seems to be some conventional wisdom that Google is the answer to what’s been wrong over the years in the Microsoft universe. That kind of thinking may be dangerous. As consumers of technology we need to keep each and every business partner honest and working for us. Handing trust carte blanche over to Google because, as the wisdom goes, they are good citizens, seems misguided to me. If I had to pick one, it would probably be Microsoft because they have withstood the scrutiny their misdeeds have landed them. Google remains, for the most part, untested.”
  - DannoHung 17y ago
    She must have a fucking Klein bottle for a brain.
  - maukdaddy 17y ago
    That attitude is so amazingly pervasive throughout all IT. The notion of only buying something that is "tested" is due to most managers' risk aversion. They are not willing to bet their jobs on some company or technology until x% of their peers have already done it.
    - bsgamble 17y ago
      You are totally right about the pervasive attitude throughout corporate IT organizations. The only point I would question is the "..willing to lose their jobs.." part. Most corporate IT orgs have their story so well prepared to deflect blame in the case of failures that employees are rarely, if ever terminated. Instead the business takes the failure on the chin and all of us in technology have to deal with the reduction in credibility.
      - rbanffy 17y ago
        There is a tendency the higher profile a failed project is, the highest the chance to redefine success based on its results. This stems from the pain of firing the high-level executive that signed the check. The larger the check, the higher the executive is in the corporate ladder and the more painful the firing, thus, the executive is never fired because the project cannot fail.
  - codexon 17y ago
    While the last part of Donna's answer is questionable in reasoning, there is no doubt that handing all your data to Google on a cloud is potentially dangerous as we have all seen in the recent outages for Gmail and Google App Engine.
jameskilton 17y ago
So to summarize: "Microsoft sucks, but I know their stuff, and I'm too afraid to change." Also, 12 people, from companies of which I've heard of two (NAMICO and Lincoln Financial) do not a comprehensive poll make.
scootklein 17y ago
n = 12 ? i'd love to see this poll done with startups: founders that were in diapers when DOS was launched. also, for the 8 that voted microsoft, what do their organizations as a whole vote toward?
xcombinator 17y ago
Hey, who you trust more?: a)A program that is in your own servers - computers. b)A program that is on others computers. So difficult to understand why people trust A more than B. Whatever they promise you, they can look at your data if they want, not so easy in A. E.g The NSA have the option to see whatever they want in the USA, they have it so easy to do industrial espionage against other countries(they did it with airbus, with national security excuses). Google can't say no to NSA. Microsoft either(they let them put backdoors in their software), but is not so easy.
- steveklabnik 17y ago
  Hey, who do you trust more? a) Servers that were made in your own in-house factories, with silicon mined from your mines, using tools made in your other factories, staffed by people who are only related to you. or b) Servers made by another company. You _always_ depend on another company in some capacity. I'm not saying that everything should be outsourced, obviously... but even colo servers that you own are in someone else's hands, and physical access to a machine is one of the surest ways to be able to 0wn it. You gotta trust someone somewhere.
  - xcombinator 17y ago
    Of course, you trust people, and companies trust people, but they want to control in witch ones they trust.
- Elepsis 17y ago
  What in the world makes you think Microsoft lets anyone put backdoors into their software?
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    It's probably a reference to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY
  - xcombinator 17y ago
    They need to send their network and security code to NSA for inspection, they look at it and MODIFY, they don't know in some cases what does the modification does. It has been that way from 1995 days(I had family members working in MS at that time).It's normal, they are a US company after all. I'm too lazy for citation, just search by yourself, here you can look at the "there are good contributions from NSA" probe: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/08/AR2007010801352.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01... You know, we "can be all terrorist" mentality, like the printers mark, they need some way of accessing any computer just in case.
sunchild 17y ago
And how many of these same IT managers route every last piece of corporate email through Postini? The hypocrisy and FUD in corporate IT is out of control. Most IT managers today are survivors from the days when "IT" was basically a blue-collar job - running cables, installing switches, and hiring other companies to do all the application layer work. Their days are numbered, so they cling to the glory days when desktop software made by Microsoft made everything so difficult for end users that a huge in-house IT organization was viewed as a necessary evil.
roc 17y ago
All that just to say "No-one ever got fired for buying IBM" ?
- rbanffy 17y ago
  I have one example of someone who was fired because he bought IBM

4 points by Flemlord 17y ago

That's a potentially deadly problem I call "management by managers". One can also refer to Scott Adams' point-haired boss character for further enlightenment.

drhowarddrfine 17y ago
You said what I was going to say and you're absolutely correct. This must be the stupidest comment and opinion I've read in a long time: The skeptical attitude toward Google was best summed up by Donna Trivison, Director of IT for Ursuline College, who wrote, “There seems to be some conventional wisdom that Google is the answer to what’s been wrong over the years in the Microsoft universe. That kind of thinking may be dangerous. As consumers of technology we need to keep each and every business partner honest and working for us. Handing trust carte blanche over to Google because, as the wisdom goes, they are good citizens, seems misguided to me. If I had to pick one, it would probably be Microsoft because they have withstood the scrutiny their misdeeds have landed them. Google remains, for the most part, untested.”
- DannoHung 17y ago
  She must have a fucking Klein bottle for a brain.
- maukdaddy 17y ago
  That attitude is so amazingly pervasive throughout all IT. The notion of only buying something that is "tested" is due to most managers' risk aversion. They are not willing to bet their jobs on some company or technology until x% of their peers have already done it.
  - bsgamble 17y ago
    You are totally right about the pervasive attitude throughout corporate IT organizations. The only point I would question is the "..willing to lose their jobs.." part. Most corporate IT orgs have their story so well prepared to deflect blame in the case of failures that employees are rarely, if ever terminated. Instead the business takes the failure on the chin and all of us in technology have to deal with the reduction in credibility.
    - rbanffy 17y ago
      There is a tendency the higher profile a failed project is, the highest the chance to redefine success based on its results. This stems from the pain of firing the high-level executive that signed the check. The larger the check, the higher the executive is in the corporate ladder and the more painful the firing, thus, the executive is never fired because the project cannot fail.
- codexon 17y ago
  While the last part of Donna's answer is questionable in reasoning, there is no doubt that handing all your data to Google on a cloud is potentially dangerous as we have all seen in the recent outages for Gmail and Google App Engine.

jameskilton 17y ago

So to summarize: "Microsoft sucks, but I know their stuff, and I'm too afraid to change." Also, 12 people, from companies of which I've heard of two (NAMICO and Lincoln Financial) do not a comprehensive poll make.

scootklein 17y ago

n = 12 ? i'd love to see this poll done with startups: founders that were in diapers when DOS was launched. also, for the 8 that voted microsoft, what do their organizations as a whole vote toward?

xcombinator 17y ago

Hey, who you trust more?: a)A program that is in your own servers - computers. b)A program that is on others computers. So difficult to understand why people trust A more than B. Whatever they promise you, they can look at your data if they want, not so easy in A. E.g The NSA have the option to see whatever they want in the USA, they have it so easy to do industrial espionage against other countries(they did it with airbus, with national security excuses). Google can't say no to NSA. Microsoft either(they let them put backdoors in their software), but is not so easy.

steveklabnik 17y ago
Hey, who do you trust more? a) Servers that were made in your own in-house factories, with silicon mined from your mines, using tools made in your other factories, staffed by people who are only related to you. or b) Servers made by another company. You _always_ depend on another company in some capacity. I'm not saying that everything should be outsourced, obviously... but even colo servers that you own are in someone else's hands, and physical access to a machine is one of the surest ways to be able to 0wn it. You gotta trust someone somewhere.
- xcombinator 17y ago
  Of course, you trust people, and companies trust people, but they want to control in witch ones they trust.
Elepsis 17y ago
What in the world makes you think Microsoft lets anyone put backdoors into their software?
- rbanffy 17y ago
  It's probably a reference to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY
- xcombinator 17y ago
  They need to send their network and security code to NSA for inspection, they look at it and MODIFY, they don't know in some cases what does the modification does. It has been that way from 1995 days(I had family members working in MS at that time).It's normal, they are a US company after all. I'm too lazy for citation, just search by yourself, here you can look at the "there are good contributions from NSA" probe: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/08/AR2007010801352.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01... You know, we "can be all terrorist" mentality, like the printers mark, they need some way of accessing any computer just in case.

sunchild 17y ago

And how many of these same IT managers route every last piece of corporate email through Postini? The hypocrisy and FUD in corporate IT is out of control. Most IT managers today are survivors from the days when "IT" was basically a blue-collar job - running cables, installing switches, and hiring other companies to do all the application layer work. Their days are numbered, so they cling to the glory days when desktop software made by Microsoft made everything so difficult for end users that a huge in-house IT organization was viewed as a necessary evil.

roc 17y ago

All that just to say "No-one ever got fired for buying IBM" ?

rbanffy 17y ago
I have one example of someone who was fired because he bought IBM