...this then puts all the burden and stigma on Alvaka, our engineer and our NetPlan program. That fuels some of the debate we have with some clients. I remember two separate debates with a controller at a 20 year long client. He said he “should not have to pay for us to check our own work.” I have two answers for that objection:
1. He has two of his own guys that work on his IT system, along with other vendors. His employees can do things unintentionally, etc. This is not about checking on our Alvaka engineer. It is all about checking the overall integrity and operational state of his IT system, which has changing needs over time and changes due to different people touching it. It is simply a matter of doing a periodic review to make sure nothing is getting missed or looking for things that need to be done a different way. Changing and updating tape/disk backup jobs to accommodate new servers and software is a classic example. Without review these jobs don’t often get updated and that leads to tragic results down the road. I have seen it way too many times in 30 years. It is preventable.
2. Even if a client does not have their own IT staff, it is prudent to periodically check IT systems to make sure everything is working right, that the current needs are being met and that important requirements/practices are not getting overlooked or wrongly....