said by Nightfall :

Paying for a break glass in case of emergency person to always be on staff is not worth it. Paying for educated and experienced IT people who are diverse in their experience as well as good with customer service pays for itself over time.

said by NetAdmin :

Getting the bill for having a group of SMEs coming into the enterprise to diagnose and clean up the issues are sometimes a powerful enough motivator to fix that.

said by NetAdmin :

If the bean counters are afraid of paying salaries, they need to be made aware of the costs of bringing in consultants for those critical down situations.

said by nixen :

It's more a term for someone that's REALLY good at whatever it is you have a business-critical need for.

said by nixen :

Yeah, generally used in an "operations" context, but SMEs come in all over the place. Plenty of customers that have staff architects (etc.) that really aren't up to the task of designing a big project, etc.

Given typical technology roll-out cycles, frequency of major operational anomalies, etc., it's frequently not worth trying to keep such people on staff. And, even if you try to, they'll often get bored and bolt for the next "interesting opportunity."

said by Nightfall :

Depends on the people involved. I know many VMWare experts who are fully certified working at one organization with less than 100 virtual servers. There is no excitement there, no crashing, and no downtime. These people are there to help shape the organization as well as provide support for a key piece of infrastructure.

You seem to think that the real experts are in consulting and should only be in consulting.

said by Nightfall :

That may have been the case in the past, but its changing. Companies are now seeing the benefits of paying experts to be on staff to help make recommendations and streamline what they are good at.

said by Nightfall :

The companies that choose not to do that will be the ones to suffer, and will be calling companies such as yours to help support them and fix their problems.

said by Nightfall :

Trust me, I know many companies who subscribe to this line of thinking.

said by Nightfall :

True, and these people are hired in by successful companies not only for the insurance policy but for the expertise they provide. For instance, we have 20 databases running SQL server. Instead of contracting that work out, we hired a SQL expert for 100k a year. This guy keeps our databases running in tip top shape. The result is a 99.9% uptime during work hours.

said by nixen :

Given typical technology roll-out cycles, frequency of major operational anomalies, etc., it's frequently not worth trying to keep such people on staff. And, even if you try to, they'll often get bored and bolt for the next "interesting opportunity."

said by heels_fan :

365 24/7 for the last 4 years.

I even have to carry my laptop with me on vacation. While planning my vacations, I have to find out if and where the nearest internet connection will be.

said by Simba7 :

..or teather a Windows Mobile, Blackberry, or iPhone to your laptop..

said by Loco :

I'm an Automation Engineer for a power plant here in Southern California.

said by nixen :

Thanks for paying attention and your helpful input. However:

•when one is in the SERVICES industry, you really don't have a freaking choice in the matter.
•When one works in services corporations where the sales team dictates what customers can put in your data centers and get support on, you really don't have a freaking choice in the matter.
•When one works in services corporations where "technically correct" is ignored in favor of the next sale, you don't really have a freaking choice in the matter

You can have all the freaking skills in the world. You can work in a rather well-funded corporation with global operations and Fortune 50 customers. However, when you're supporting OUTSIDE, paying customers, none of that makes a goddamned difference. Try it sometime. It's BOATLOADS of fun.

Well, there's "IT" and then there's computer services (consulting, hosting, etc.) Services are a RADICALLY different animal than "IT". Very few people that see themselves as competent in the nice, safe coccoon of the "IT" world could either cut it (both be able to survive or be truly useful) in the services or high-end consulting world.

Now, if you weren't trying to be as pompous as what your post came across as, I'll pre-apologize for what felt like an appropriate tone with my response.

said by drew :

This.

I've always liked Sprint for a device. Their network seems solid, at least on the west coast.

said by drew :

IIUC, aren't Vz and Sprint both CDMA utilizing companies?

Sprint isn't awesome so much for their network, but that they don't charge for roaming data unless it's something over 30-50% (I think) of the entire data usage, and then they just think about terminating the contract.

said by tankabbot5 :

I work for siemens IT solutions and my job requires me to be on call 24/7 365 minus PTO time. I have been doing this for a little over 3 years now. I never get a weekend off at all. Well, unless I take PTO time off. Anyway just wondering if anyone else is on call all year long too. I don't know anyone who is on call all year 24/7 like I am minus PTO or vacation time.