2002 predictions from expert Greg Ferro

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2002 predictions from expert Greg Ferro

We asked our site experts to give us their industry predictions for the New Year. Here's Greg Ferro's witty look at what's to come for his IT shop.

The most important thing this year will be my Networking Budget Request for an "upgrade." It's my big chance to shine.

The media is convinced that this year will be the year of the network and IPv6. Yes, at last we can get rid of IPv4 and get onto to something new. How long can we hang on to old technology?! My IP schema hasn't changed in 15 years!!!

Look at those server and applications folks, they spend squillions every year just keeping their systems up to date and ME, well I'm just getting on with it. Who needs Windows "insert number here" to change every year? Seems to me that every time I talk to these guys, they are upgrading their operating system or programs. "Got an outage here, put a patch in there, yada yada." Can't they just get on with it and actually do something?

And those desktop guys, always bleating about new Intel Pentium "big number" or planar bus speeds or "very big number" megabytes of hard disk drives. For goodness sake, if I didn't have to make diagrams I'd still be using a VT100 terminal to configure my routers.

So I am going to learn from these guys, and demand that we implement IPv6. This year. And before you all spam me, I know that we don't need it yet; it will be years before we can use it for anything. But look at the server guys, planning away for Active Directory

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implementation, getting training and resources, just so as we can log in to the network.

Dr Network: "I'm sorry, you said log in to the network."
Server Guy: "Yep."
Dr Network: "Buts that's what we do now."
Server Guy: "I know, but we will do it better and scalable."
Dr Network: "So how does that help the business?"
Server Guy: "Ummmm, well, all sorts of ways."
Dr Network: "A-l-l-righty then."

So I am going to start planning for IPv6, right away. I'm gonna need training courses, a test lab, a couple of consultants, schedule some outages. Yep, this is gonna be a great year. Once this is done, they'll have to give me a pay rise.

Hang on, those server guys are onto something?