At the risk of reviving a dead threat, but ...
Actual conversations:
Exec: "I'm so glad this new vendor H system uses COTS hardware and OSs."
Me: "Oh?"
Exec: "Yes - now that it's all Cisco routers, switches, and Windows, Linux VMs running on VMware, we can dump the radio guys and transfer it to IT. And since we offshore IT to India we'll be able to dump five people who cost nearly $100k fully loaded for some $3k/year contractors. And won't actually hire more contractors, just add this to their workload!"
Me: "Remember when someone (eh hem) said the same about VoIP phones and how we could dump the telecom guys at have IT handle it? And offshoring support was great until the US-based users revolted because the offshore people were hard to understand and also didn't understand why it would take more than 30 minutes to get a phone from Chicago to Orlando?"
Exec: "Well, that was different, now we know that voice is a specialized application and just like all our other apps it needs specialists to support it."
Me: "Think about what you just said."
Exec: "Well anyways radioguy, this more of a strategy sharing session than a feedback solicitation session."
.... Later that day ...
Exec: "Hey Vendor H, I'm told your new NSC uses Windows xxxx release yyy and your Cisco devices are running IOS zzzz. Our Information Assurance team has determined those versions are unacceptable and highly vulnerable. We're upgrading the NSCs to ..."
Vendor "H" : "Don't do that. We will send a bulletin once we've throughly tested those versions. Besides, your NSCs are firewallled from the rest of the network so this vulnerability can't even be exploited unless you're plugged in on the NSC side of the firewall."
Exec: "Hey ITguy - vendor H is being difficult and doesn't share our comprehensive vision of all IT in the enterprise running a common IA approved release. Go ahead and upgrade it. We're not going to wait for them, because IA flags it as vulnerable and I don't want to go through the hassle of getting an exception and having to explain something I don't really understand to the Risk Management Committee of the Board."
... Later that day ...
Everything broken.
Everyone panicking.
Exec: "Radioguy, what the heck did you do wrong! Vendor H, we've spent many millions and look at how lousy your system is working."
Me: "IT did what you told them to. It was a compatibility issue."
Exec: "Well why didn't you add your NSC VMs as Configuration Items (CIs) to the IT Service Management (ITSM) application and build an approval workflow which automatically triggers when a CHG ticket is opened against those CIs to get a documented objection?"
Me: "I have no foggy clue what you're talking about."
Exec: "This is standard IT terminology and processes from the ITIL standards."
Me: "Yeah, so we here in radioland don't have access to those IT systems and no knowledge of how that works."
Exec: Basically says that when Vendor H switched to using COTS equipment we should have magically, perhaps by osmosis, learned all about IT processes.
So Harris does what, in some ways, is a sensible thing - use COTS hardware instead of re-inventing the wheel. And on paper, having the same hardware and operating systems that the Company is familiar with sounds good. But one it becomes and "IT System" and they try to manage it like it's any other IT system, things fail. Badly.
The truth of the matter is that it only works right when radio guy, IT guy, and vendor H all work together. There's no way on Earth radioguy is going to know all the quirks, best practices, and issues with the latest version of VMware and how VMs should be dimensioned. And IT guy has no idea about the ISSI, P25 over-the-air interface, Erlangs and traffic queueing theory, and fleetmapping. And no one except Vendor H knows the little bugs, quirks and issues which necessitate certain configs. In fact, Vendor H probably subs half the software development out so they don't know all the gory details either. Hence why technical questions now take three days to be answered because the vendor has to go behind their curtain to the sub on another continent and ask them.
And sometimes it's good to have those annoying IA guys around. For example, when you need to setup two MPLS pipes to a statewide system for roaming and only they can convince the exec that even if it is the state of ___, you still must drop the coin to put a firewall pair between those MPLS circuits and NSC and pray to the deity of your choice that the state of __ did the same on their end.
Someone once said interop is not a technical problem, it's a political one. Deja vu.
