Hacker News Reader

Comment by notatoad | Hacker News Reader

Sysadmins aren't big fans of disruption either. You could build the greatest active-directory replacement in the world and no IT department would touch it with a ten foot pole because it isn't what they're used to.

View on HN

> Sysadmins aren't big fans of disruption either. You could build the greatest active-directory replacement in the world and no IT department would touch it with a ten foot pole because it isn't what they're used to.

It's all fun and games untill 2000 users cannot log into their machines because your new shiny active directory replacement didn't work.

Right. Automation means you can break things faster than ever. When you're asking someone who's already busy to rip out the guts and start over, and, if you're lucky, it will successfully do exactly what the old thing did... what's the incentive? So often in the ops/admin world changes can only make things worse and make your life miserable. And if your team doesn't have the bandwidth to deal with those 2000 users one-by-one.... good luck!

It would have to prove itself in smaller shops first. If you're running a multi-thousand-user shop, you'd be insane to be a first-adopter for something as critical as "can my employees even start working each day?". It's not a matter of "what they're used to", it's a matter of risk management. And with things this big, it's not IT's call to make, it's a business decision; it needs to come from the top, because the penalties of failure go well outside the IT department.

I built one over ten years ago, and it's true, it's a difficult area to disrupt for these reasons.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com