Back to school – are your IT systems ready?

Summer has come to an end, and schools have started a new term, highlighted by the mad rush of activity within the IT department to get things ready and ensure everybody has a consistent, productive IT experience.

The activities that cause IT departments pain at the beginning of term are numerous, often compounded by the fact that staff have had their laptops at home over the summer, meaning that these devices generally haven’t been receiving updates or anti-virus definitions for nearly two months. Cue the complaints about machines being slow and taking hours to upgrade or apply updates.

The car…

“You don’t expect to buy a car with no engine.”

“It’s like buying a car and being told a steering-wheel isn’t included.”

“When I buy a car, I expect to fill it with fuel occasionally.”

The car analogy seems to fit all circumstances. Within IT, it’s used regularly to convey complex issues in simplistic terms, with varying degrees of success.

It’s lazy, often throwaway, but it can occasionally help to get to the heart of an issue by emphasising requirements, expectations or circumstances that are perceived to be illogical, unfair or just plain dumb. Both suppliers and customers use the car, internally and externally, to highlight things that they feel are wrong.

The benefit of end-user computing

What consumes the majority of an IT department’s time on any given day?
Backup issues?
Change requests?
Or maybe end-user support?
If you chose the latter, you would not be alone. End-user support is the one of the most difficult IT costs to quantify; it’s difficult to measure, impossible to predict, and issues that occur are often classed as high severity, meaning resources may be pulled from project work or scheduled tasks to support the problem.