Risk vs reward or CYA at all costs

Interesting things happened this week and mostly on the exchange migration project.  Seems there are those were not happy with putting Outlook 2007 with an Office 2003 product.  they huffed and they puffed and they claimed that patch management is much more difficult.  Yeah like having to do them in a certain order is something we cannot train chimps to do.  Anyhow seems the higher ups have decided that we are going to put in a lower quality product.  I am not completely happy with this decision as I have always been one who would strive to put in the best product possible for the users and make the changes administratively that were necessary to suppor it.  Seems this is not the prevailing view.  The view tends to be more along the as long as the product can meet minimum requirements then lets choose the one with the lowest possible risk factor. 

Not that either side is completely wrong, but the risks here can be easily mitigated.  Any way I look at it its irrelevant at this time the decision is made and old software has been the victor.

This whole situation has gotten me thinking about corporate life and what are the ethical dilemas that permeate it.  I have seen so many times that the safe has been the choice and it has handcuffed the inventive, the progressive.  Seems this mindset is what makes some corporations average.  Lets look at Google, out there doing great and yet we all can name a bunch of initiatives that didnt pan out.  Some large purchases too that were a flop.  Yet their culture is one of trying, experimenting and striving for the next level, somewhere few have been able to succeed.  It is with this attitude that they have built what so few have.  Now I never want to advocate throwing all caution to the wind, but the safest is not always the best and more often then not it stems the flow of true innovation.

Ok I vented and rambled enough for a holiday morning

Back Again

Seems like I went away but really I am still here.  A few things have been going on.  First , and most important, is that we had another baby on 8-14.  A strapping 7lbs 7oz boy named Austin. The pregnancy and the birth had me distracted.

The second is the turmoil here at work.  With the addition of Wenda Millard and the absolute jumbling of everyone else things have been lets say up in the air.  The stock has rtaken a hit, down today to under 13.  This is troubling since the stock has fallen considerably since the addition of Wenda, though personally I think it has more to do with Lauren leaving.  She did a great job with our publishing side, consistently outpacing our competitors.

So what is new hmm lets see….still moving to Exchange from Lotus Notes, should have that wrapped up by Dec 15.  Probably going to put the VoIP migration on hold til early next year, just cant rationalize the cost right now.  The website, which thank god is not my dept, is still blah all around form performance to design to well just everything.  The talk is that the site is going to be a push in the next year but the minds controlling the push are the same ol folks who did the last revision, so I for one am not terribly optimistic.  Be nice to see them use any technology from the last few years on it.  Maybe they will use more of the Flash, yes adobe did announce the hd flash today…sweet, but I would be surprised or rather shocked if they did any HD on the site.  For a company that strives for innovation they are technology prehistoric in their thinking.  I hear the complaints that they cant get ajax working, this seems to me to be more mismanagement than anything else.

Infrastrucutre side we are revamping all roles and responsibilities, lets see how that falls out.  Generally our problem is that we have a glut of staff who haven’t kept up with technology, and those hard chargers that we do have are being wasted in roles which limit their drive.  Yeah such fun but I am just rambling

Exchange migration begins

Looks like today begins the first day of planning our migration off of Lotus onto exchange.  I dont see this as nearly as big a deal as some here do, heck we only have 850 employees, but I am sure it will end up somewhere in the middle.  Now comes the tricky part of the whole thing, the massaging of egos etc to get and keep everyone playing together nicely.  At times I miss the govt or private enterprise where this stuff didnt matter.  The whole get on board or get out of the way mentality, just not there anymore. 

I swa that Roddick lost in the first round of the French again.  Whjen will this guy get his head out of his butt and develop more of his game.  It is becoming clearer and clearer that the serve forehand game is not going to get him to the next level.  You would think Connors could talk some sense into him but it does not seem to be taking.  I guess Gilbert wasnt all bad since his results have not been nearly as good without him.  Wonder if Andy regrets that decision?

I am not happy with my conditioning nor my play since my return from fla…I need to get back on this more especially with such nice weather, no excuses

anyhow just wanted to drop a quick ramble

Through the first week back

Friday is here yeah, not that I have anything really interesting going on over the weekend, but its not work  lol.  Been a real quite week at work and that was a good thing since I was not exactly pumped and enthusiastic to hit the ground running.  I preferred the stroll that was this week.  A few days closer to getting rid of Lotus Notes, thank goodness as a pure email program it sucks.  Microsoft made some news by aquiring aQuantive, but 6 billion?  Hmm I got into the wrong side of this business.  Its good to see MS reaching out as the Google MS battles are good for business, and stock prices.

I am addicted to the blog from Alyssa , I voted for the Hat and shades a much more natural look.  I have been reading it for a while and I know alot is just PR sensationalism, but wow cant believe so many young women are so messed up.  Priorities I wonder where they go sometimes.

Love the Mets comeback yesterday now lets put the Yanks 12 behind the Sox and life will be good.

Had another tennis match, my second after returning from camp.  Played on a pillow they liked to pass off as a court.  Plus played some guys who just loved to lob and were ok at it.   Not our best win but a win none the less.  Have to work on overheads dropped 4 or so in the net, yuck.  Practice this Sunday so that will be good to get to hit alot more balls.  I also am playing a tourny 4th of July weekend, so that should help my game too.

Well work calls so enough rambling for me today

Meeting day Yeah!

Ah its meeting day again and I have to present on new closet switches.  It will be interesting since the group will have few that know the difference between PoE and QoS, but hey I can do this.  I see Yahoo has hired a CFO that is big on M&A.  Guess those talks with MS are picking up.  It may be a good thing a Yahoo MS merger as long as the two cultures can get along.  This I see as truely the most substantial hurdle in this.

Not much else really going on newsworthy unless Meebo doing ads is a big deal

On the Tennis front I had my first match yesterday after tennis camp.  Tough to gage improvements since the team we played was real bad.  I felt good though a few minor errors and I could feel “wrong” when it happened so I feel like I am on the right path

Ok enough rambling for today

Vacation is upon me

Well this is my last day before I leave for vacation.   Not much really going on.  The more I see about the Right Media acquisition by Yahoo the more I like the move.  Microsoft is making waves at Mix with Silverlight and here is a great writeup on it.  I think it will be a hard cultural shift as so many developers political leaning is so far left they do not want to do anything big corporate…but hey its a step in the right direction.

Weather looking good in Tampa high 80’s…so I should come back even light and tanner than when I went down , these are not such bad things.. Well enough rambling I am off to work.  I will try to write about the camp experience everyday I am down there

Microsoft Record earnings again

So here is the question I have been pondering this morning.  If Microsoft is losing ground all over the place to the Googles, Linux and Notes of the world, how did it once again post record profits?  And with these record profits why is it that so many of the top Microsoft execs are leaving?  Could it be they are bored looking for new avenues to excel, new challenges?

I believe the demise of Microsoft has been greatly exaggerated, and really not true.  Are they at the front of every new idea and technology?  Of course not.  But what I can tell you from a corporate side is they are not far behind in anything and their stuff works very well with other components of their stuff.  Also the way their licenses work the more Microsoft you buy the cheaper the overall expense is.  Another thing that Microsoft has going for them is that every tech person is familiar with it, training or the high cost of specialty labor is not a concern when buying a Microsoft suite.

Now do I say all this cause I own a ton of Microsoft stock, no.  I own a ton of their stock because I believe all this and predict that they will continue to be a market leader if not dominator for quite some time still

But I ramble