Re: [Lit.] Buffer overruns

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler (lynn_at_garlic.com)
Date: 03/18/05 

Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 10:44:54 -0700

Lawrence Statton N1GAK/XE2 <lawrence@hummer.not-here.mx> writes:
> I respectfully disagree.
>
> I think that is an over-generalization.
>
> It has nothing to do with whether the customers are internal or
> external, or whether there is money involved, but the variance among
> the customer needs, and the organizations' dedication to the
> product.
>
> As to the "make any money" part: Some organizations, including the
> one I work for, *do* apportion the cost of internal software across
> the various departments. While it all comes out of the same pie at
> the top of the organization, if the operations people want the
> engineering group to implement some special feature, they will have
> to allocate some fraction of this year's budget to that feature, and
> will have to consume so many fewer paper clips, or whatever other
> cutbacks they need.

lots of organization have oscillated between the two spectrums
.... in-house operations required to provide significant competitive
advantage to various business units as opposed to being a distraction
from the core business focus and don't provide sufficient competitive
advantage to justify the distraction. this extends all the way down to
there being a signficant culture clash between the core business
people and people in various in-house services). in addition, numerous
corporate cultures feel more at ease with contractual relationships
(with things like penalties) which can be a major problem when dealing
with internal organizations.

purely internal operations have typically been viewed as cost centers
and it has been frequently difficult for them to demonstrate return on
investment. this is behind a great deal of the outsourcing that
periodically goes on.

i got involved in a different approach back as an undergraduate.
boeing was spinning off much of their dataprocessing into BCS ... to
operate as an independent business operation ... being able to market
to both "internal" customers as well as "external". spring break i was
conned into giving one week class to the initial bcs technical staff
(bcs was still getting off the ground and was still working on
absorbing/digesting existing datacenters). 

-- 
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/