Recently, we have had a rash of external hard drives coming in to be repaired. This is alarming because in every case these drives were being used instead of shares on a network resource (a server, a NAS, or a SAN). There were no backups, there was no redundancy, therefore in every case there was a loss of productivity for a significant period of time and in some cases, complete data loss.
Wow.
This reminds me of an article I read on the website for Mann Consulting. I came across their company after they were featured in a story on NPR and I talked about it on this blog.
Here is an excerpt from the Mann Consulting Blog:
"If you're being asked to lower your email storage by your IT
department, it might be time to have 'the talk.' The one where you
explain that you can go to a retail store and buy 1,000 gigabytes of storage
inexpensively but that you have to keep your inbox smaller. You don't have time
for that.
When your employees start going home to
get real work done, or using their personal email accounts because work email
is too restrictive, you have a problem...
IT departments used to control
everything. Now they're fighting to keep that control, but
information workers have caught on-they've learned how self-reliant they can
be. ... bridge the gap so that the IT
people can ensure security is preserved, and the non-technical business people can
get work done."
I think they have an interesting take on the role of an IT department in the future workplace. Technology professionals need to be more responsive to their clientele regardless of their relationship to the customer (internal or external). More often than not IT "professionals" exhibit a crab mentality, promoting oneself by pulling others down.
But, that is probably a discussion for another day. Right now I have to help a co-worker recreate a year's worth of work.
Safeguard your data, folks!
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