As promised, the rightsizing IT thread

"You don't need that" and variations thereof invariably echoes through the comments sections on just about any story covering new technology. 

Most of the time the dismissal of the new is just annoying, as information technology (IT) is innovation driven and changes rapidly. Hearing about what's coming up is useful when it comes to planning for the future. For example, would you stick to wiring your house with awkward to run copper networking which runs hot due to high power usage, has thick cables that are difficult to bend and route, or would you give fibre to the room a spin if you knew about the latter technology?

Rightsizing is however an important consideration, relevant to other areas other than IT as well, and "you don't need that" can be good advice. Thing is, you can make do with very little if you have to, or just stick to what you have because... well, it works, doesn't it? Like the San Francisco municipal transport agency, which recently became the poster child of "technical debt" as they still use 5 1/4-inch floppy discs (do look them up if you haven't heard of them, they're that old).

Stuck in the 90's? So is the Market Street Subway system in #SanFrancisco! It still runs on 5 1/4 inch floppy disks. 🤯 @jeffreytumlin, the @SFMTA_Muni Director, says the city is ripe for a #transit fiasco like we just experienced with @SouthwestAir. #OutdatedTechnology #safety pic.twitter.com/EQua3mSSVl

— Priya David Clemens (@priyadclemens) February 2, 2023

But, it's difficult stuff that requires a solid understanding of the needs of users as well as possible, and then dimensioning a solution accordingly. This is much easier said than done, and there are difficult to remove hindrances such as users having learnt workarounds to get their work done - Shadow IT - which might be insecure, hard, and unproductive in the long run; it works for them so if it ain't broke, why fix it?

If you have been involved in architecting IT solutions, this won't be news. It's why on the enterprise side of things management consultants ride in with best-practices developed through past experience (and mistakes), software tools, and educational programmes for staff. Plus a truck load of patience, particularly for organisations where IT isn't their core business. Even then digitisation projects can go wrong.

As a general rule, finding a state of "IT Nirvana" is where it's at. This is a mindful state when users, be they business ones or at home, can just get on with what they want to do and don't have to think about the underlying technology that supports it. Life's short, and you don't want it to be even more brutish with angry users complaining and bashing you for IT under delivery. 

Generally speaking, giving yourself a bit of margin here while not blowing the budget can make for a happy user experience.

But even budgeting isn't always straightforward, and the cheapest solution isn't necessarily the best, as one commenter on the MacBook Air M3 review story pointed out. Longevity, and reliability could lower the total cost of ownership significantly, despite a higher upfront expenditure.

While hardly anyone bar sysadmins under active budget pressure are able to notice when a solution is over-specced, people do spot the under-resourced ones quickly. That's when delays in getting work done occur, causing productivity to suffer, or seemingly tasks like video conferencing being nigh impossible because there's not enough bandwidth available, so there's stuttering imagery and poor audio quality so it's back to long email threads instead. See also: Shadow IT as per above.

All of the above is a moving target of course, as needs change with time along with new technology appearing. It's also a more complex dilemma to solve in 2024, as we now have the cloud to factor in. With the cloud, it's vital to accurately match your actual needs with what you rent from a cloud provider. Failure to do so, and monitoring cloud usage over time, could cost users dearly. 

Without further ado, let's have your war stories from the ongoing battle of getting IT right. Yes I intended that terribly lame pun and refuse to apologise for it.