Good enough IT really is good enough. You don't need new hardware

Enterprises are slow to adopt new IT. Or is it small businesses that are slow to adopt new IT? Wait, the mid-market is traditionally underserved and overly reliant on appliances so clearly they have to be the laggards! All of this is true, and none of this is true. It just depends on your point of view. Adoption of new IT …

[hplasm]

take the time to think for yourself and don't be led by marketing – nor the baying – of fools.

This is good advice for life.

[AndrueC]

Re: take the time to think for yourself and don't be led by marketing – nor the baying – of fools.

The Space Merchants should be required reading in school. I read it when I was a young teenager and I've never forgotten the message.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: take the time to think for yourself and don't be led by marketing – nor the baying – of fools.

Then again I have seen enough shops penny wise and pound foolish that thought it would be a good idea to give their ready to throw away kit to the expensive contractors as well. Granted this was more relevant a decade ago but saving on nearly commodity hardware isn't always smart if labor is most of your costs.

[PaulAb]

I'm not...

Hyperconverging, it's too big a word. I'm not moving over until this word is shortened to something simple, like cake or tea (I like those words and I understand them).

[Rich 11]

Re: I'm not...

Or like ------------------------->

[Horridbloke]

Re: I'm not...

"Hyperconverging" is a pretty long word but round here we pronounce it "tosh".

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'm not...

> Hyperconverging, it's too big a word. I'm not moving over until this word is shortened

Certainly: have h13g.

Or h14e for hyperconvergence.

[yoganmahew]

Outstanding

in your own field if you carry on like that!

More heresy please. The view is great as is the fresh air.

[unapologetically mainframe]

[Franco]

Interesting that El Reg post this sensible and well written piece on the same day as the latest round of you must all use DevOps propaganda.

It all goes back to first principles, design based on requirements rather than on trends.

[DanX]

Cloud based desktops, sound amazing but...

Take a hosted Desktop environment, and gain massively from easy to manage and deploy applications. Data security and other benefits too.

Take this proposal to client at an SME, and try to explain those massive savings compared to the ongoing costs.

What happens though - is they still need a desktop to run in their office - and even the worst desktop, will manage 90%+ of everything they need to do.

Not an easy or obvious sell. What they have is good enough.

[Skoorb]

Re: Cloud based desktops, sound amazing but...

Not to mention needing to entirely rip and replace a good chunk of your network setup, SAN etc.

We run from over 500 sites, along with a load of people "agile" working off laptops. I'm sure quoting for that kind of external connectivity would have our Virgin Media account manager drooling.

[Naselus]

Re: Cloud based desktops, sound amazing but...

We've been investigating the possibility of just using locally-hosted dumb terminals for a heavy CAD workload... every penny we'd save on client hardware is more than taken up by the massive upgrades required for our internal switches to take the load. I dread to think of the pipes we'd need for external hosting to be practical.

[Anonymous Coward]

No I DO need new hardware. I love that new hardware smell.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all about balance...

Install shiny new stuff, drop the old kit on a marketer.

The world must be kept in balance...

[Smitty Werben Jueger Man Jenson]

Re: It's all about balance...

" drop the old kit on a marketer."

From the 6th floor BOFH style?

[Shadow Systems]

@Smitty...

Enjoy a pint from me for every upvote the system won't let me give you, just try not to get alcohol poisoning in the process.

(Envisions giving the computer a hefty *THROW* to accellerate it on the way down, the better to maximize the splatter pattern.)

MUH Hahahahahahahahaha...

[Captain DaFt]

Re: It's all about balance...

" drop the old kit on a marketer."

"From the 6th floor BOFH style?"

I'd recommend the fourth floor. High enough to do damage, but not high enough to make aiming tricky. You wouldn't want risk missing the market critter, would you?

[Shadow Systems]

Re: It's all about balance...

Practice makes perfect. =-D

[calmeilles]

Re: It's all about balance...

If six floors are all that you have...

[Rich 11]

Lick that new, new metal...

[John G Imrie]

Lick that new, new metal...

You are Bender and I claim my £5

[Anonymous Coward]

At last...

... someone is actually talking sense about IT equipment requirements.

If it works and does the job asked of it why change to the latest and greatest that will require much messing about to get it to work to the same standard?

[RonWheeler]

The opposite

of good enough is perfection.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The opposite

Nah, it's being so trendy that no system is ever finished before it gets ripped and replaced.

[John G Imrie]

Re: The opposite of good enough

is expensive.

[tin 2]

Re: The opposite

Surely it's "not good enough"....

[MonkeyCee]

Re: The opposite

Perfection is the enemy of good.

A poor decision made now is often better than a good decision made after a suitably long thinking time.

But that's often a real world vs academia argument.

[Andrew Harding]

Re: The opposite

Don't ignore perfection just don't prioritize it over all else. In many cases 80% of perfection is achievable with only 20% effort. 80% = C

I've witnessed people giving up on perfection and only producing 80% of "good enough" which equals crap. 60% = F

[nijam]

Nitpicking...

...but sometimes it has to be done. Loved to see the wonderful word "aught" used, but in that context "naught" (the opposite) would have been correct.

[LaunchpadBS]

This article...

Must go viral! The world needs to know the truth, before the machines take over and see just as many idiots as I do, only they decide they have no use for them and we're back down to a billion!

[mstreet]

Re: This article...

A billion? That's a bit of a stretch isn't it?

[45RPM]

Except that…

The problem is that IT vendors cycle their hardware far too quickly these days - so, if you want to continue benefitting from support (kinda handy for mission critical kit), you need to run to keep up. I have systems running on DL380 G4 - and you know what? It's good enough. It does what I want - and there's no point in replacing it. Except that I can't get support for the bloody things anymore - so it's upgrade time to G9 (which, in turn, will be end of life this year I think). And so the wheel turns, and HPE continue to fill the coffers at our expense.

Contrast with the happy days of VAX and Alpha - those things remained in production for years and, in most cases, remained supported for a decade or more. Halcyon days.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Except that…

Not really a problem if you have the service department to deal with it.

We have a client that has a number of DL385 G2 that are still running and doing the job they were bought for back then. Our service has enough spare parts to keep them going for at least the next twenty years which is all the client asks for, all the factory machine tools will be replaced by then.

[nilfs2]

@Ivan 4 - Re: Except that…

The electricity that those old toasters consume is probably worth more than the computing power they are giving.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Except that…

Quite true. and yet...DEC is long gone while HPE lumbers on. At some point you have to throw money at your chosen vendors just to keep them in business, or else design your systems so elastically that everyone truly is a click away from being replaced. Either way you'll be paying.

[45RPM]

Re: Except that…

HPE gets handed great wodges of cash every year to support these systems - whether they require support or not. So don't cry for them - they're getting paid. But still they tell us that the systems can no longer be supported once they reach a certain age. Still doesn't stop them pocketing the money for the service contract though.

[Notas Badoff]

Seen on a business card...

Oh please somebody print a bunch of business cards saying

.

Gottfried A. Boodle

Aught but Avarice and Ego

.

or name of your persuasion, leave these around at conferences / business meetings / etc. , and we'll see which industry these are copied into. We know what kind of person that'll be - what'll be interesting is in what kind of industry this is considered mere bragging rights. Finance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Seen on a business card...

or a business card for your complaints department for

Helen Waite

Complaints Department

Anyone who has a complaint can go to Helen Waite!

[PNGuinn]

Evil Brute

Trevor - you're an evil brute.

Marketeers will weep.

PHBs will shout and cry and throw their old toys out of their prams.

KITTENS WILL DIE!

And the rest of us heartily agree with you.

[a_yank_lurker]

Lifecycles

Most of the buzzword bingo is trying to convince someone that what works well for them is garbage. The cloud, etc. are tools to solve problems, use the correct tool for the problem.

[Oengus]

Not just IT

It isn't just IT that have the "Good enough isn't good enough" mantra.

Look at the other industries

Fashion: it was the latest and greatest last week. This week it isn't good enough.

Cars: Last years model was good enough for you last year. You need the latest one now.

Phones: I suppose they could fit under the IT umbrella (unless in my case where it is a phone not a smart phone)

Cameras: 24 megapixel isn't good enough we have a 26 megapixel model now...

Every industry is producing "Good enough for now". If they came up with perfect we would never need to buy another one and they would go out of business...

[Robert E A Harvey]

26 megapixel

Quite. I have taken the opportunity to go from 8Mp to 12Mp to 18Mp to 28Mp, but only because I needed to buy a new camera at each time.

That said, the Olympus's OM-D E-M5 II is interesting. It's "only" 16Mp, which is a perfectly reasonable sweet spot for taking jolly good pictures - but if you tripod mount it it subverts the image stabilisation motors to dither the sensor about and take a 50Mp image. That's clever, and I can see myself being attracted. But there is no /point/ in going backwards from AP/C to micro4/3rds, and from 28 to 16 just to get 50. So my wallet is safe.

Probably

[Teiwaz]

Re: Not just IT

"The speed of technological advancement isn't nearly as important as short-term quarterly gains."

- Quark 'Little Green Men'

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

"Falling for the marketing hype does your business more harm than good"

Oh, oh, oh - DevOps, anyone?

[Jonathan Richards 1]

Not only is good enough good enough...

... but better has to be >= (good enough + cost of implementation) where 'implementation' includes but is not limited to capital costs, installation, training, modification of test procedures, overhauling backup and disaster recovery, and the salesman's fat commission.