Reply to post: A blast from the past

Riverbed Technologies files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection following pandemic 'headwinds'

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

A blast from the past

Have to be careful what I write here for fear of who may be reading....

Once upon a time, I was involved in independent consultancy for a customer who employed a young whipper-snapper of an IT manager who was quite obviously promoted well above his skillset.

Nonetheless, one day, the IT manger declared he wished to move all (and I mean *ALL*) servers from their office in X to their office in Y. Where distance(X,Y) = a very long long way. As an additional factor, bear in mind this was about a decade or so ago, so high-bandwidth fibre (either private circuit or internet) was not an option.

But I digress. Said IT manager had seen a presentation at some trade show from our friends at Riverbed and got a greasy-sales rep in for a sales presentation.

To say I was, shall we say, "concerned" about the claims being made would be an understatement, but we shall leave it there lest any legal-eagles read this.

Anyway, IT manager pushed ahead with an order. At great cost of course, because such was the way with Riverbed.

So one weekend, the Riverbed guys came in and set it all up, tested and went away. At the same time, all local servers were decommissioned.

Come Monday morning, 80+ people arrived in the office. As expected, they could barely login (Windows network, so AD logins, NTFS network folders and all that jazz). Even once logged in it was slow as treacle.

Our phones were off the hook with people begging us to come and "fix it". However the IT manager sitting in his office in Y was unrepentant and insisted it was all some sort of teething problems and Riverbed was the one and only way forward.

Our team relayed this up to the big cheeses. And word came from up high that we were to immediately cease taking calls from that client, and the big cheeses tore up the contract and left the client and their IT manager to their own self-inflicted demise.

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