Describe the IT systems you use in your workplace

[TexasLawyer2000]

Originally Posted by ddm2k

I can only speak for the "now" but I think we're a little too "locked down".

When a director-level staff engineer can't install his own drivers for his new wireless mouse, and instead, has to wait 1-3 days for an IT ticket to be processed, it's a little bit ridiculous.

I don't see a problem with a director not being able to install drivers. The problem here is the mismanaged IT department that takes 1-3 days to help.

If someone at my place of employment needs something installed, they just walk up to the "tech bar" where people are standing by to help. It works just like the Apple Genius Bar. Something as simple as mouse driver installation probably has a wait of 0-3 minutes and only takes as long as the conversation and work involved (downloading and installing as admin).

[vision33r]

Originally Posted by TexasLawyer2000

I don't see a problem with a director not being able to install drivers. The problem here is the mismanaged IT department that takes 1-3 days to help.

If someone at my place of employment needs something installed, they just walk up to the "tech bar" where people are standing by to help. It works just like the Apple Genius Bar. Something as simple as mouse driver installation probably has a wait of 0-3 minutes and only takes as long as the conversation and work involved (downloading and installing as admin).

If a workplace has a walk up IT bar, it is either a dotcom or a very low cost IT dept.

At any high end workplace, the IT dept is no different than walking into financial or accounting dept. There are rules and self service systems on your PC that will take care of things with just a few click of the mouse button.

[Mr.Hospitality]

Originally Posted by vision33r

If a workplace has a walk up IT bar, it is either a dotcom or a very low cost IT dept.

At any high end workplace, the IT dept is no different than walking into financial or accounting dept. There are rules and self service systems on your PC that will take care of things with just a few click of the mouse button.

The IT bar is quite common these days (past 5 years or so). My last experience with one was at a 100+ year old print media company with several thousand employees in the corporate hq (where I was for a short period of time) and another several thousand spread around the world (satellite office sizes ranged from 5 people to 600 people).

Before that I was at one of the big pharma conglomerates. They had multiple of these bars because their building was just so big.

I wouldn't call either of those dotcom era companies. Maybe low cost IT, I don't know.

You would go to them when you needed something self service couldn't handle. Like installation of non-standard software or you need a spare laptop charger or something. Or even if something appears to be wrong.

Imagine how inefficient it would be if a handful of IT guys were walking all over the building to get to people. So much more efficient for them to spend their time attending to people who need help than moving around.

[TexasLawyer2000]

Originally Posted by vision33r

If a workplace has a walk up IT bar, it is either a dotcom or a very low cost IT dept.

At any high end workplace, the IT dept is no different than walking into financial or accounting dept. There are rules and self service systems on your PC that will take care of things with just a few click of the mouse button.

The company I was thinking of is hardly "either a dotcom or a very low cost IT dept.".

It's a law office with a few thousand lawyers and even more support staff. It's one of the big law firms.

[macroy]

Pretty much 100% virtual/cloud.

My primary desktop is a VDI served out of AWS - can use my company provided Surface Pro or my own devices to access.
All of our servers also resides in AWS
Productivity suite is pretty much all O365