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You are absolutely correct. Covering the company's ass is half of IT's job. Providing services is only the other half. It's a tricky balancing act. Legal pr

by hapless 17y ago

You are absolutely correct. Covering the company's ass is half of IT's job. Providing services is only the other half. It's a tricky balancing act. Legal problem #1 with IM is logging. In public companies, particularly in regulated industries, anything that has ever been recorded by any employee can and will be used against you, and the discovery will come at your expense. Everything that is said, but NOT logged, will be used as evidence of your malfeasance. For this reason, E-mail systems are typically centralized, and users are prevented from pulling mail off the server, so that all e-mail can be retained for exactly six months, no more, no less. With third-party IM services, that can't be done. This is the reason for the rise of highly restrictive internal IM - Lotus Sametime, Microsoft office communicator. With Communicator you can ban both logging AND copy-paste centrally, at the server. It's a terrible tool, but it controls the legal risk quite nicely. -- Google doesn't worry about this because they have more money than sense. (Also, not a regulated industry.)

ohhmaagawd 17y ago
The root of the problem is IT has no incentives or checks in place to maintain a reasonable level of productivity. Their only mission is to make sure that services are online and there aren't breaches. Productivity doesn't factor in at all. I'm not in a regulated industry (enterprise software). I completely get this if it's healthcare or defense. But we are just talking about middleware here!
- hapless 17y ago
  IT is a cost center. There's constant pressure to contain its headcount and budget. The costs of providing a high level of service are obvious, but the costs of lousy services are all hidden. As a result, yes, there's usually NO incentive to do anything more than the minimum. (The minimum, of course, involves the ass-covering.)

by hapless 17y ago

ohhmaagawd 17y ago

The root of the problem is IT has no incentives or checks in place to maintain a reasonable level of productivity. Their only mission is to make sure that services are online and there aren't breaches. Productivity doesn't factor in at all. I'm not in a regulated industry (enterprise software). I completely get this if it's healthcare or defense. But we are just talking about middleware here!

hapless 17y ago
IT is a cost center. There's constant pressure to contain its headcount and budget. The costs of providing a high level of service are obvious, but the costs of lousy services are all hidden. As a result, yes, there's usually NO incentive to do anything more than the minimum. (The minimum, of course, involves the ass-covering.)