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I think you have some misconceptions?

You wrote:

I think you're saying that companies will pick the software that works best for them. They should. If "works best" implies having fewer people on staff, that's a normal part of business. (I think replacement of paid by volunteer labor is wrong, but that's not the issue here.)

There is a misconception that the people who develop stuff for Open Source are doing it as volunteers. ISC releases BIND (created by Paul Vixie), they sell servers (one was place in Russia, located in Moscow (iirc) about a year or so back) that actually do something that everyone uses. They were [paid for their work, just as I am presuming that you are! Sleepycat (Berkeley DB), MySQL (MySQL and MaxDB from SAP), Sendmail (Sendmail MTA) are all products that are sold or build from source, depending on the in-house skill and needs of any given company or organization. The people that build the software (the programmers, etc.) are all paid!

If you are running a business, you are not doing it for the sake of hiring people; you are doing it to fill a need.

Well, you're doing it to make money. The reason people and businesses pay money to you is because you're filling a need. Didn't want to leave out that step in the logic.

Companies want increased efficiency so they can focus on their core competencies. They may have higher requirements for those that they hire, though. If your company?s core competency is doing medical service (say as a hospital), it may make sense to hand off the medical records handling to an EHR (Electronic Health Record) ASP that meets HIPAA requirements. If you are an online venture (or retail with an on-line presence like Barnes & Noble), it may make sense to farm the financial transactions to a company that can handle it and focus on your core competency (retail). The skills requirements are just as high, just the physical location of where people are is different.

If you have a specific staffing need, you fill that need. If you can automate much of it, thus reducing potential human errors, you will probably go this route and go after the profits through increased efficiency.

A wisespread problem is that companies will expect to use automation even if a person is less expensive.

More egregiously, a company will go from a working system in place to a new software package because they expect fewer, less expensive (read: younger) people will be required for maintenance.

If the person that they are hiring can script and automate most of the required processes, then it benefits both the company/organization and their clients. What you maybe missing is that setting up automation also requires some higher skill sets than just hiring some kid to do the job. An example, a systems admin (Windows/Unix, because they are really very similar these days) will use scripts to reduce the daily workload, which allows them to focus on dealing with daily user issues. This benefits the company in that it reduces the possibility of error from repetitive and mundane tasks. This allows a business to have higher productivity.

Such changes are applauded initially, and for some reason the failure of many such projects (which has to be resolved by expensive consultants) does not dim the prospects of the executive who recommended the fiasco to begin with.

In short, for many companies personnel costs are qualitatively worse than other costs.

In business, the business oriented people, those that run the actual business, HR, Payroll, marketing, etc., look to automation to make their jobs easier. Speaking as one of those expensive consultants, I know that some of what is expected by the business people is not always in line with what is doable. That is why there are specialists who can deal with these issues (usually as consultants, since they are specialized). People (management) expect that in house tech staff will know everything (or a lot more than the non-techs), which is where the problems start.

Sometimes, reality is a pain!

Posted by: B.O.F.H.   Posted on: 04/01/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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