June 10, 2012

Memo to self - when instituting draconian budget cuts

Maybe the IT department is not the place to go. From Alabama's The Birmingham News:
Computer crash cripples Jefferson County
A server that runs Jefferson County's financial software system has crashed and halted financial activity in a number of county departments, officials said Thursday.

Since Tuesday, the hardware problem has slowed or stopped transactions in the finance, treasurer and purchasing departments, preventing vendor payments and deposits and delaying preparation of the fiscal 2011 audit, according to county officials.

The server runs SAP, the accounting software system the county uses to track financial activity.

"The SAP functionality is so diminished that it does not allow us to do the day-to-day financial operations of our county," Commissioner Jimmie Stephens said. "It's the financial backbone of the county. It's the language that we use to communicate with all of our vendors and all of our financial contacts throughout the county. And to have it go mute to where we can't communicate is a tremendous problem."
SAP is an excellent program but it requires, nay demands, decent hardware to run properly. It has a lot of capability and is truly an Enterprise Application but it is a resource hog. Why are they having these problems?
County Manager Tony Petelos said all of the servers that run the SAP program have outlived their useful life, and of the 16 servers in the Information Technology Department, only one has any life left.

"The rest of them are outdated and they need to be replaced," Petelos said. "When one server crashes it causes the whole system to go down. I've said this over and over again: The county has to reinvest in its infrastructure, and this is only one key example."
A bit more:
The cash-strapped county laid off hundreds of workers last year to conserve cash until a fix could be found for a shortage of general fund revenue. Wayne Cree, director of information technology, has said his department lost approximately 30 budgeted positions in the past year because of layoffs, retirements, transfers and resignations.
Now there well may have been some fluff in their budgets and hiring but the IT department is the one department you want to keep running at full speed as it is what runs the rest of your departments - IT don't work, nobody works. This old adage comes to mind: Pay now or pay later... Posted by DaveH at June 10, 2012 11:38 AM
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