[Info-vax] EDS and HP hard to tell the difference

[David J Dachtera]

"Richard B. Gilbert" wrote:
> 
> [snip]
> If you own a business are you going to maximize profits?  Would you
> accept lower profits just to be nice?

I would weigh the value of profits against the risks of inexperience. In
a NPO, it's a no-brainer ... or should be. It wasn't, in our cases.

If anything, I would let the junior staffers go and put my faith in the
"proven people". These are the people who get me out of the jams that
technology inevitably gets me into.

I don't have to guess whether kids will be able to save my skin, falling
back on the vendors to support things they've never seen before and/or
have never heard of before. I know my senior people can do it because
they've done it before. We've been thru hell and back, and lived to get
drunk about it.

I'd like to see these kids lose an entire 3.5TB (at the time, it was
11+TB when I left) database and recover it in under a month. We did it
in nine days back in October of 2001.

Remember also that profits are only good until the "deferred
maintenance" - to borrow an anology - catches up to you. Then, you're
toast.

Profits are neither everything nor the only thing. Sometimes, ya gotta
do what's right because its right, even if its not especially
profitable. In the end, you maximize your profits my minimizing your
losses and optimizing your ability to produce profits (Steven Covey
calls it "production capability"). That means "maintenance", and
maintenance is rarely - if ever - a profit center.

To borrow a different analogy, sometimes the best way to keep the
alligator from eating you alive is to feed it something else instead of
trading it for smaller or less voracious alligators.

D.J.D.