You know that you’ve go to do it. You know that it could cause problems with yours and your customers systems but all good tech people know that it is just a part of life. Sigh.
A recent post from Susan Bradley detailing recommendations of how resellers should approach patching just confirms to me why I want someone else to do this. There is just so much time and hassle involved it demonstrates to me that we have built our technology on shaky ground. I acknowledge that patching applies to all software simply because it is developed by fallible human beings but man, you’d think it would be getting better. Even if you aren’t a techie read the post and consider that someone should be doing this for all your systems at least every month. What a waste or time and money but without doubt it needs to be done. Sigh.
The most likely reason is that because technology is so pervasive these days it means it has to support people who have software from pre-Y2K to 2009. That’s a hell of a lot of software and when you start mixing and matching it on different PC’s, that an even greater number of variations you have to account for and patch.
I can see why customers believe that there is conspiracy going on here between developers and IT professionals. Not only do they have to pay for the software they also generally have to pay for someone to update it and debug and issues that arise. To a customer this is painful and seems to happen on a never ending basis.
Again, it confirms to me why cloud computing is so appealing from a customers point of view. Any updates are applied on someone else’s hardware and they don’t have to worry, it is all part of the monthly fee. Sure, many resellers make money out of offering update services but I reckon many customers don’t have this service and many probably don’t want to pay for it anyway. It is always tough to sell a service that simply maintains the status quo. To be more effective maybe you are better off simply selling a repair service and making money when the client finally appreciates they should have done something. I’ll guarantee you’ll have their full attention then!
Honestly, this is all getting far to hard. Honestly, you gotta wonder whether these IT systems are really making any return on investment given the constant maintenance that is involved. Honestly, I’m sick of testing patches on multiple systems before I apply them in production. Honestly, I’m sick of the downtime they cause. Honestly, I want it to be someone else’s problem because it is all just too much work and it is preventing me from doing my work!
CIAOPS 