Preston hits the nail on the head in saying the IT arena may not be so public as the sports arena. The majority of users, from admin assistants to general managers, take what they use for granted. If they can log in, read an e-mail, make a presentation and print a document, everything is fine. When the technology isn't working, IT gets the spotlight.

Preston also talks about courage in IT. Our latest corporate project is migrating users to Microsoft Active Directory and Exchange 2000. For my company, which has thousands of employees coast to coast at numerous sites, this task is intimidating, but I look forward to learning something new and using that knowledge to help the project. Courage in this case is trying to get past internal corporate politics to complete the project so everyone in the corporation can communicate and collaborate efficiently. Some people don't see the big picture; they fail to recognize that they're part of a corporation. These people do their own thing because they think it's best for them, not for the company. I imagine we've all done this at some point, but I've driven myself past this behavior for several reasons, not the least of which is that I was tired of having tunnel vision and worrying about tomorrow instead of next week or next year.

Russ Lyons
LAN/WAN Administrator
Company name and e-mail withheld by request

Mike Lee hits the nail on the head in his column "My Dog Ate My 10 Gig Switch." We're seeing the same kind of "you don't need to review this" vendor attitude here in West Virginia University's Advanced Network Applications Lab.

It used to be that whatever caught our interest would be easy to get in house for a 30-, 60- or 90-day eval. Now getting gear for evaluation is like pulling teeth. We've been after one major network vendor for almost a year to let us evaluate its DWDM optical gear. This evaluation could result in a multimillion-dollar sale if we like the gear. So far, no dice. Jeffrey Fritz
Director of Networking; Office of Information Technology West Virginia University
jfritz@wvu.edu



Calling All Vendors
I appreciate Mike Lee's column "My Dog Ate My 10 Gig Switch" (Jan. 23, 2003). As an IS manager, I don't have the resources to analyze hardware I want to implement. When faced with the need to implement switches, routers or what have you, our department turns to reviews in trade magazines. Your service is a vital resource that provides a ton of useful information we can't get on our own. Our final procurement most often includes products of vendors that have participated in reviews.