Automating change; IT worker shortage; Carriers: Make stopping spam a priority; Are Cisco switches really so expensive?; Slippery spam slope; Nuances matter in ‘Net neutrality
Managing change
“Automating change” misses an opportunity to show how mature mainframe change management/version control systems are. I believe change management was founded in the mainframe technology environment, thus making it the model for change and configuration management in non-centralized PC (desktop and server-based) and midrange computer processing environments. The mainframe still manages 80% of the critical data processing applications running in corporate America. The highly developed change management techniques within the mainframe have greatly contributed to its success as a stable and secure processing platform.
Jim Bandinelli
Buffalo, N.Y.
Training is the answer
Regarding “IT worker shortage”: If more companies were willing to train/retrain people with older IT skills, there wouldn’t be this problem. I’m unemployed and have a BS in computer science and 15+ years working with MS Access, SQL and VBA, but I’m having a really hard time finding work. I’ve applied for various other IT jobs where my skills would benefit the company but may not be an exact match for the job, and no one wanted to make the effort or take the time to train me into that position. What I also found was that most of these places had already gone a month with one or more people missing in their departments before beginning the hiring process. Now, if they can go a month or more with a shortage of staff where those left have to pick up the slack, why is it that they are so resistant to hiring someone they may need to train for a couple of months? They’ve already proven that they can handle the extra strain with no one there; seems to me that having someone there in training is better than no one at all.
David Brefka
Elmira, N.Y.
More on stopping spam
Regarding Daniel Briere’s column, “Carriers: Make stopping spam a priority”: Let’s look at this from a different viewpoint. There are many different forms of deliverables driving our economy. The first big economic boom was based on hard goods (the Industrial Revolution). Then a new economic horizon approached via the deliverable of soft goods (the software industry).
What is the next plateau? I would argue it is information goods (Google, Yahoo and other successful portals understand this and are paving the way, while at the same time gathering very healthy revenue streams).
This brings me to spam — in your inbox, in mailbox, on your cell phone and soon to come to a VoIP contact point near you. Locking down the network at every turn will not solve the problem but will instead create more places to look for lost “valid” communications.
Ask yourself the following questions:
1) Why is it that Google or Ask.com are not littered with commercial messages on their pages?
2) Why are the advertisements on their pages so relevant to your current state of mind?
3) Your email, cell phone and VoIP line are nothing more than portals — “personal portals.” So, here is the million-dollar question: what is the difference between your portal and Google, Yahoo or Ask’s portal? The underlying issue is that unsolicited commercial overload cannot be controlled without giving the consumer personal control over the value of their personal portal. Once this step is made, the P2P application arena will flourish the likes of which we’ve not seen since the Internet bubble.
We must stop looking at this issue as a liability that costs to correct — it is the exact opposite. Your digital contact points have immense commercial value — that’s why you get spammed and why spammers are so diligent to jump the hoop. Once the value location is completely understood, the value proposition can easily be turned around so the abusers (with ill respect for your desires) would be the only ones that will (and rightfully should) incur the cost of cleanup.
Frank Urro
Principal and co-founder
Vanquish Labs
Marlborough, Mass.
Don’t forget HP
Regarding “Are Cisco switches really so expensive?”: You appear to have left out Hewlett Packard. This omission is conspicuous because: 1) you get free software upgrades for life, 2) you get free next-day replacement for life, 3) HP has a Cisco CLI emulation mode that makes it cake to use if you know Cisco, and 4) HP switches cost less to purchase in the first place.
When it was time to replace our aging Baystack gear last year, I chose HP over Cisco for the above reasons, and have not looked back. TCO and value wise, HP wins hands down.
Joe Pampel
Redding, Conn.
Wrestling with spam
In his letter to the editor entitled “Slippery spam slope”, Larry Huntington suggests that we can’t do anything about spam because we don’t know how to define it specifically and legally. Well, my Google Gmail account catches about 50 spams per day and seldom makes a mistake. Julian Haight, founder of SpamCop, comes to mind as one who knows how to define spam after having worked with it for years.
We will never know how to handle spam until we wade into the swamp and start wrestling with it. Apparently, there are those who still believe that money can be made from spam. If we remove the money motivation, spam will disappear.
Jim Jordan
Sacramento
Vague neutrality
I usually agree with Johna Till Johnson, but her column, “Nuances matter in ‘Net neutrality” left me perplexed. Why would Google support net neutrality regulations? They developed Google video, purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion, and signed content agreements with Universal, Warner Music Group, Vivendi, the NHL and others. But with AT&T offering Internet television on demand in its Homezone package, can Google compete? Only if their content is not further degraded. Johnson is right that net neutrality is still a vague concept. There’s almost no way to tell if content is being intentionally degraded and it may be difficult to enforce legislation specific enough to address real-world problems. However, it is important that we have a fair and level playing field. Whether content is charged per bit or per packet, the price should be the same for any player. A typical market incentive is volume discounts, not volume overcharges.
Net neutrality may end up being decided in myriad individual court cases relating to anti-competitive practices, or in government antitrust action. But the idea that carriers such as AT&T are investing billions in a “money-losing endeavor” is ridiculous. Video is the next phase of the Internet, and it requires infrastructure expansion and investment. Net neutrality means that all players in the video over Internet market receive a fair price as well as reasonable and enforceable quality-of-service agreements.
Fred Pierre
CEO
Data Doctor
Kent, Ohio
Regarding Johna Till Johnson’s column, “Nuances matter in ‘Net neutrality”: Johnson is dead on — let the market figure it out. Don’t bring the government in to pass laws that will make the market inefficient. The free, open market is the best place to decide this matter. If AT&T tries to charge Google more to pass its content, Google has 16 other Internet carriers to choose from. And if the large backbone carriers try to fix prices, we already have a law for that: it’s called the Sherman Act, passed in 1890. The market will figure out this problem, not Congress.
Michael Morris
Research Triangle Park, N.C.
