back to article So your client's under-spent on IT for decades and lives in fear of an audit

Infrastructure as code is a buzzword frequently thrown out alongside DevOps and continuous integration as being the modern way of doing things. Proponents cite benefits ranging from an amorphous "agility" to reducing the time to deploy new workloads. I have an argument for infrastructure as code that boils down to "cover your …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Russian attack to help Labour in the elections?

  2. John 104

    What happened to the audit and 'high' IT spend mentioned in the beginning? I kept reading and hoping to find something other than advertisement. :(

  3. Justicesays
    Devil

    And this helps guys underspending on IT for 15 years pass an audit how exactly?

    I mean, all they have to do is re-architect their 15 year old solutions into containers, adopt new technologies capable of being "lightweight" , discover and store and centralize all their application, switch, firewall etc. configs into their puppet/chef/ansible. In 4 days.

    Way to pose a problem , then say, "well, if you had just set things up in a modern fashion 15 years ago , you wouldn't be in such a mess".

    Of course they would also be super rich, being able to both see the future and use tech before it was invented.

  4. User McUser

    Wait what?

    Recently, a client of mine went through an ownership change. The new owners, appalled at how much was being spent on IT, decided that the best path forward was an external audit. The client in question, of course, is an SMB who had been massively under-spending on IT for 15 years, and there [was] no way they were ready for – or would pass – an audit.

    So the new owners were appalled at how *much* was spent because the SMB had *underspent* on IT for 15 years? Surely that should be "appalled at how *little* was being spent on IT" because otherwise it sounds like a marketing drone overheard a conversation between two techs and made up a story to headline a not-quite-but-sort-of "news" article?

    This article is sponsored by HPE.

    Oh, I see. Never mind then.

    1. RichardB

      Re: Wait what?

      Repeated underspend --> massive overspend

      If you've ever worked in a place that has curiously aligned budgeting channels, you would see this often.

      The 'project' gets the budget, so they get to define what they get. So off they go to acquire a bunch of servers, database platforms, bi solutions and whatnot. All the smallest they can get away with, and all earmarked for that one project.

      Next project comes along, does the same thing. Then of course there's a 3rd project to 'integrate' the first 2. All with their own little boxed off gear.

      Repeat for 50 or a 1000 big projects over the course of a few years and you've suddenly got multiple different versions and editions of the same platforms chewing through electricity. All being patched, repaired, maintained, monitored with the associated costs. And all sitting using 7-10% cpu, of which at least 6% is just alerting, antivirus and endpoint monitoring solutions laid over the top.

      Maybe you'll find some of them are so old they are out of support, but you cannot upgrade them because the software vendor is out of business or simply don't support anything newer than the last decade. The hardware by now for some of these project servers is probably dual or quad cores, any rational admin would consolidate onto modern hardware and updated gear - but you can't because it's only the _project_ that gets the budget - IT is a cost center after all...

  5. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    I kndo of see the benefits of this idea

    It's operations for grownup installations, not BoH & PFY shops.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I kndo of see the benefits of this idea

      I see it more as a buzzword heavy sale of Yet Another Idea that is only popular because the suits can't really understand it so they'll overspend, which is the whole goal of the jargon overload (sorry Trevor).

      It's a simple metric: the longer the words are, the more you're being ripped off. That's why Government projects never have short, meaningful titles, and design documents never come in under 250 pages, and that's before the appendices.

  6. Hollerithevo

    Had I but known

    If this had been at the top:

    This article is sponsored by HPE.

    I wouldn't have read it. But it explained a lot.

    1. Youngone Silver badge

      Re: Had I but known

      I wouldn't have read it either.

      I wondered why I couldn't understand any of it, but it became clear when the sponsorship line hove into view.

      It's not me, it's you.

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