Re: RE: [Micronet] Which hosts running older OSes will be blocked by min. stds?

On Thu, Jun 24, 2004 at 09:57:44AM -0700, Mike Hunter wrote:
> On Jun 23, "Tom Holub" wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Jun 23, 2004 at 05:20:04PM -0700, Eric Chamberlain, CISSP wrote:
> > >
> > > Does it really make sense for departments to keep outdated insecure
> > > operating systems around and have central campus spend more money than it
> > > would cost to upgrade, to make services less secure and backwards
> > > compatible?
> >
> > If central campus will have to spend more money than it would cost to
> > upgrade, wouldn't it make sense for central campus to pay for the
> > upgrades instead?
>
> Shouldn't departments be expected to budget for the real costs of a
> properly-administered computer instead of being bailed out when they find
> themselves awash in droves of under-administered/user-administered
> workstations?

I think "helped out" is a more accurate phrase than "bailed out".

First of all, academic departments don't have much flexibility in their
state funds. They are static from year to year, and the only way to
"budget" for a new expense is to stop spending money on something else.
In most cases, computing is competing with the teaching program, and
when departments have to decide whether to cut support for computers,
or cut support for teaching, they will almost always choose the former.
And even as a geek, I can't really argue that it shouldn't be so.

Furthermore, it is only within the past couple of years that
departments have even been told that they have a fiscal responsibility
for the support of computers under their control. In 1994, when a
faculty member asked for a new computer, no one except IT managers was
pointing out the ancillary costs of computer ownership, and most
departments didn't have IT managers. Certainly the campus wasn't
providing any guidance in this area. Decisions about adding computers
were distributed to whomever held the funds--in many cases, faculty
members, further insulated from any sort of centralized IT planning.
And again, no one was telling faculty members that they shouldn't be
doing that, except in those few departments which had creatively found
funding to support a centralized IT operation strong enough to fight
battles with the faculty.

So the network grew, not so much in defiance of good practices but in
ignorance of them.

So we're now at the point where consciousness is being raised about
the true cost of ownership of computers, at a time when department
budgets are being cut for the third year in a row. Even departments
who fully support the idea and have the best intentions will have
great difficulty coming up with funding to deal with any mandated
expenses.

Departments shouldn't be blamed for the situation they're in; it's
only very recently that they've been given any guidance on IT
planning. And even if they had been given guidance years ago, they
still would have needed an infusion of new funds to pay for new
expenses.

-- 
Tom Holub (tom_holub@LS.Berkeley.EDU, 510-642-9069)
College of Letters & Science
249 Campbell Hall
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