Re: Don't trust those with purse strings!
I've been through hundreds of project audits over the years (all clean). Auditors have asked very incisive questions. I once had to explain why I was writing off £300,000 worth of 3 com kit after 12 months, the simple answer was that a new entrant had produced a new switch which was more powerful offered greater management for less than the annual maintenance cost of the 3com monsters we had been using. The new entrant was Cisco LOL.
We had a similar conversation about 'missing' £250,000 worth of network switches after our county wide network had experienced multiple lightning strikes. We had had to deploy all our spare kit initially then swap cards between switches to get the network back on its feet. We did completely lose track of where individual switches were for a while as we had a constant stream being sent of for repair for months. Done even get me started on some of he 'vapourware' purchases I had to make to keep discount levels on mainframe operating systems, Trying to explain, why I'd be spending £40,000 on a piece of software I would never get installed to gain £300,000 worth of discount on other produces I needed was always interesting. It eould have been easy to gloss these over with some auditors as its just so bloody confusing
Biting the hand that feeds IT
