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Ah the delights of an outsourced IT department

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by
kgroneman
, 19-Jul-2011 at 08:45 (1170 Views)
Before the merger with the Attachmate Group, our CTO decided it would be a good plan to outsource our IT department here at Novell. Contracts were signed, employees were "moved" (still here at our Provo campus) and it started off quite well.

Piles of paperwork ensued and IT work slowed to a crawl. Our CTO "left the company for other opportunities" and here we are. (No, he didn't get a glowing recommendation from me for his new job).

With the Attachmate Group merger, SUSE and NetIQ are split from Novell so Novell can get back to our roots which is a wonderful thing. In a meeting I was in last week with Bob Flynn, President Novell, he said not only is the HQ back in Provo, but we will re-establish Novell Red as our color. Yea, I know...kind of insignificant on the surface, but it's a representation of good things happening around here.

With SUSE splitting off, we need to break off the SUSE forums from the Novell forums and tie the SUSE and openSUSE forums together. Back to the outsourced IT dept. issue. Still lots of paperwork and people that don't know our business very well. Hence an openSUSE forum outage today as they tried to install the SUSE forums IP address/DNS on the forum box which houses the openSUSE forums. Whoopsie. They quickly got it fixed. Here's hoping we don't have a repeat of the problem once they are ready to put the SUSE forums online. There is work going on currently to bring our IT department back in-house.

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  1. jdmcdaniel3's Avatar
    So I read your story with great interest and empathy. By that I mean, I am surely interested in the fate's of openSUSE and SuSE in the up coming months as such changes as the server moves progress as to what we have to look forward to. As interests shift, old connections severed and new ones made, big changes are the last thing I want to see since change is not always good. And this in no way says that you have said anything that looks bad for openSUSE.

    Second, I have empathy for the IT side of the issue. I work for a large company which was a couple of years ago bought by another large company and our local IT support has evaporated from a single IT person per district office to perhaps one person for every six states. IT support has moved to a more or less self serve help yourself mode of operation. Password resets of all kinds are totally automated, no need to talk to a real person anymore. Hard drive go bad? One call to Dell and a new one will be sent your way, in a few days and one of the secretaries will be sent a restore disk for your computer. With a small screw driver you can find at any Wal-mart and wham bam thank you mam, you will be up in no time and if you have any files on the network, why they should still be there when you get done. While some things can make sense (like calling about a password reset where you did hope a real person did not change it to ID10T on you), it is all about cost reduction and customer service goes out the window in favor of boosting the bottom line of the company and of the many managers I feel.

    So, I do hope the networking goes your way and I am hoping for good things with SuSE and openSUSE. Thanks for representing us there.

    Thank You,
  2. rrdonovan's Avatar
    All I can say is "someone left the idiots in charge"! Outsourcing IT is Wrong! Very Wrong! No one gives a **** about your business more than your own people. Bringing people from the outside to run things only causes animosity. Jon Rubinstein was elected as CEO of Palm. He trashed a most profitable company down to where even struggling HP could have bought it for a dime, and they did. He then was promoted at HP only to be gotten rid off a few short months later. I am published with Novell, and I hope the best for them. At the same time, I am an openSuse aficionado. We simply cannot let outsiders come in and trash good, hard, work. I just don't want what happened to Palm to happen to openSuse. Don't force me to go up there and clean up that mess. While we are at it, let us scrutinize the board of directors and put their feet to the fire. Basically, I don't trust them. None of them, at any company. Let's keep our beloved Lizard safe!

    Rod Donovan

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