Lose your IT religion

You don’t have to be in IT all that long before you end up in the middle of a heated religious debate. Whether it’s the Church of Microsoft, the Holy Jobsian Order of Apple, or a Linux distribution cult, tech allegiances run deep.

People like what they like and proselytizing is just part of human nature. But religious beliefs sometimes exert an unholy influence on strategic IT decisions.

[ Also on InfoWorld: Read Dan Tynan’s article on the biggest tech cults in IT. | Seeking a higher plane of reliability? Then check out Matt Prigge’s High-Availability Virtualization Deep Dive Report. ]

I’ve fallen prey to such prejudices myself. Recently, I was discussing overall IT infrastructure strategy with the CIO and COO of a new client. At one point, we touched on the client’s use of a layered combination of hardware and software firewalls in the company’s Internet border network. I offhandedly remarked that I thought that was a great architecture: a purpose-specific hardware firewall at the border with a feature-rich, general-purpose software firewall safely tucked behind it. The CIO mentioned that this architecture wasn’t completely intentional and he wanted to remove the hardware firewall in the near future.

Without putting a great deal of thought into it, I cautioned him against doing that. I’ve never felt that having a full-featured, general-purpose operating system — however much it has been hardened — attached directly to the Internet is a fantastic idea. It only took a few seconds for me to realize that I had unwittingly veered into the realm of religious debate and spent the next five minutes paying for it. Could I prove that this configuration would directly put the company at risk? No, I really couldn’t. I had to admit that my recommendation came from a personal prejudice rather than direct experience.

As far as religious missteps go, that was a pretty tame one. More often you’ll see such oddities as an entire corporate network largely comprised of Microsoft-based PCs being served by Apple X-Serves simply because the server admin loves Macs — or an enterprise SAN comprised solely of high-speed SAS disks simply because the storage admin doesn’t trust SATA disks for some reason. Neither decision spells disaster for the environments they serve, but they undoubtedly result in decreased functionality, unnecessarily high overall cost, or both.

I would never deny anyone his or her right to have an opinion, but bias is another matter. Each IT solution demands that you dig through the options objectively, as the requirements are considered. Otherwise, don’t expect to get the biggest bang for your buck or to serve your users’ needs as best as possible. Worst of all, clinging to your prejudices prevents you from being exposed to new solutions that you might grow to love.

If there’s one thing that’s constant in the IT world, it’s change. Just because Brand X’s server hardware was terrible when you used it seven years ago doesn’t mean it is today. And that Brand Y storage device that was rock solid five years ago? Don’t count on it being equally stable five years later. You don’t already know the answers — even though it feel good to think so. Dig in and do the research.

If you’re lucky, your IT department is large enough to accommodate different backgrounds and opinions, which together act as a hedge against bias. The arguments that ensue can actually be productive when they bring new information to light. Just make sure the upshot of that debate is a decision based on factual investigation, not on who shouts the loudest.

This article, “Lose your IT religion,” originally appeared at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Matt Prigge’s Information Overload blog and follow the latest developments in storage at InfoWorld.com.