I've been pondering the different organizational styles of OldJob and here. Both have undergone centralization of the IT function, but with different results. And also, different methods.
At OldJob, centralization was done by fiat with the details worked out later. The IT director spent a lot of time managing the different areas. There were still two major silos of IT that connected with central IT only in theory, and rarely in practice; after seven years that wall was only just showing signs of weakness.
Here at WWU, that was done by diplomacy and bribery. The first step was to set up a central e-mail system, and offer that to everyone; this gave the smaller departments an option to get out of the e-mail biz that many took. Then came a central printing system that offered the same thing. The central file-server farm was an attempt to do that as well. The SAN has provided another incentive, in that it provides fast, high capacity, backed-up storage, that is sparking another round of migrations.
There are still two big departments that are resisting the migration to central services, and they're big enough that they can stonewall as long as they want to. They may move in the future, but it is far from a sure thing.
At OldJob, centralization was done by fiat with the details worked out later. The IT director spent a lot of time managing the different areas. There were still two major silos of IT that connected with central IT only in theory, and rarely in practice; after seven years that wall was only just showing signs of weakness.
Here at WWU, that was done by diplomacy and bribery. The first step was to set up a central e-mail system, and offer that to everyone; this gave the smaller departments an option to get out of the e-mail biz that many took. Then came a central printing system that offered the same thing. The central file-server farm was an attempt to do that as well. The SAN has provided another incentive, in that it provides fast, high capacity, backed-up storage, that is sparking another round of migrations.
There are still two big departments that are resisting the migration to central services, and they're big enough that they can stonewall as long as they want to. They may move in the future, but it is far from a sure thing.