Sunday 4 December 2011

Why do we buy your software?

Why do businesses continue to buy software from companies that have no interest in developing software properly?

How many times have you, as a system admin, been asked to give out the local admin/root password to install or run software?  I'm not talking about giving up an account with local admin access, i'm talking about software claiming to need "the" local admin account.  Do you care so little about the people that need to run your software and the servers that it runs on that you can't even be bothered to implement some kind of proper coding practices?  Is it so hard to setup your software to write to the locations that software should write to, instead of writing everywhere? Do you care so little that you try to mandate all users in Active Directory/LDAP need to be in a certain location instead of properly using LDAP?

  • Please stop assuming that you are the only software out there and that people will accept whatever you tell them and bend any kind of best practice to run your crap. (I'm looking at you Cisco)
  • Please stop using ridiculous requirements in your software to sell your hardware (Still looking at you Cisco) 
  • Please understand that AntiVirus software is a way of life now on Windows systems and realistically there is no difference between AV products.  Don't come up with some stupid requirement to only support a couple of products, just provide the needed exclusions and move on. (Again, CISCO)
It is a simple equation.  Some of the current system admins and application support people will climb that corporate ladder and end up in a place that they have the power to make the decisions.  If they come across a choice that is between your company that has been a pain in the ass or a company that has "worked with" the people supporting their software, who do you think they will choose?

- Z

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