I had a few interesting conversations at IP Expo last week and I'd like to talk about a couple of them as they really highlight what is going on in a lot of IT Departments.
First was a conversation I had with a Senior Sys Admin who was very anti the moves we are seeing in the industry towards simplification; he really didn't want to see his job simplified and de-mystified as he could see that he would no longer have a job or not as well paid job. And all this automation and simplification didn't work anyway; all mouth, no trousers.
Secondly was a conversation with a vendor who acknowledged that in the past that their GUI had not been great and we should look forward to a much simpler UI with ease of use at the fore.
So we have an industry move towards simplification at a time of recession; an easy sell to the CIO but not such an easy sell to the people on the shop floor. I wonder how many of these initiatives are going to fail because of these attitudes; unfortunately, I suspect quite a lot but often broken promises, imperfect products and shoddy delivery has allowed these excuses to stand.
I think that lot of people in IT like the idea that what they do is somehow mystical and complicated; they get a thrill from getting called at 3 am in the morning, they bitch and moan like hell about it but deep down they love it. I've certainly seen this in my day to day work; heroes in IT are all over the place, working silly hours to keep systems up but if you suggest that there might be a better way, there is a look of horror.
I wonder what we can do to change this attitude? Ideas? Obviously, we need to ensure that the tools that are supposed to make lives easier, actually do make lives easier; often not the case.
All the functionality that is provided at the CLI needs to be in the GUI; this means there are less excuses to revert to the CLI. CLIs themselves need to be simplified and made consistent; as functionality has got bolted onto systems, the CLIs have got covered in cruft and are no longer syntactically consistent.
We need to ensure that the simplification is actually simple; too often the automation breaks and means that we end up doing things manually anyway. It must deliver on its promises not deliver more promises.
I totally agree about the number of ‘heroes’ in IT. The organisation usually doesn’t realise the operational costs these folks are hiding, and the risks they’re exposed to if the hero goes on leave, or gets sick.
I sortof disagree about the CLI -> GUI move. I want a powerful CLI/API to be able to control the system with my automation suite. Automating a GUI is harder and messier.
I’d *love* a standard set of APIs, but each vendor needs to differentiate from their competitors, so there’ll always be proprietary extensions, and manageware plugins.
And yes, you can wrap the higher level automation in a GUI if you want. But one day you might want to automate *that*, too.