Make a name for yourself
This morning I surfed over to Wired News as per my usual morning routine and was bombarded by Microsoft ads. On every story I read were two versions of the same ad: one in traditional banner format at the top and one in the nuevo-square ad format. And both were Flash-based ads.
The gist of the story is that some guy from the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs and his team were traveling too much updating servers. But now he’s “made a name for himself” because he managed a bunch of servers in multiple countries from a single location, all using Windows Server System.
What make this worth mentioning is the incredible power of marketing combined with ignorance. Let’s stick with the Windows environment for a second. Back in the mid-1990’s you could do this in the Windows environment using Timbuktu. And there is a handful of similar packages like pcAnywhere. But to someone who may not know better, this sounds like a revolution in computing.
Of course, in a Unix/Linux environment, remote updates have been possible since the dawn of networked computing. I have a server co-located at a hosting facility that I haven’t seen for two years. And yet, magically, I’ve been able to keep it up to date, all without the use of Windows Server. How can that be? Well, it’s because my server runs Linux.
Oh, and my final thought on the man who made a name for himself is I wonder what his “team” thinks of this new software? Because it seems to me that the “team” that had to fly everywhere to manage servers is likely now out looking for work because they probably don’t need as many people any more. Funny how the ad doesn’t mention that. Maybe that’s because “…now he’s known as Mr. 500 Servers in 156 Countries Managed from 1 Location” sounds much better than “…now he’s known as Mr. Fired My Whole Team”
Thu, 13 Jan 2005 16:03 Posted in Technology
