NZ IT "in" joke.

[James Deuce]

What do you give Mickey Mouse for Christmas?

A Datacom watch.

[sugilite:Me]

Oh gawd, I heard that Joke when I worked for GCS 16 years back, just insert GCS in place of Datacom (Government Computing services was the SOE bought up by EDS)

[Finn]

NZ IT is a joke full stop. IBM, Gen-I, Datacom, EDS and all the other pricks that pay back handers to win business. Don't agree? Name one large IT project that was a success in NZ...

Go on, try me.

[sugilite:Me]

Oh, I know the answer to that, INCIS

[pete376403]

Define large.
DIA did a rollout of gaming machine compliance controllers in every single site in NZ that has one or more pokies installed (excluding the large casinos). Pokies are linked to controllers with fibre, controllers communicate back to DIA via wireless internet. Installed by various third parties including my employer. Completed on time and under budget.
(Controllers run Suse Linux btw)

[James Deuce]

Go on, try me.

ICMS for Telecom. Integrated diverse networking architectures and Hardware platforms and got customer response times from 6-8 weeks down to 24-48 hours. Then they fired anyone who knew anything so they could re-instate the 6-8 week response time.

The Defence Network Integration in the mid-90s. Migrated users to a common desktop, server & email infrastructure, with absolutely no casualties and in the space of 4 months. 6000 desktops spread all over the country.

It does happen. You only hear about the bad Juju.

[Finn]

ICMS for Telecom. Integrated diverse networking architectures and Hardware platforms and got customer response times from 6-8 weeks down to 24-48 hours. Then they fired anyone who knew anything so they could re-instate the 6-8 week response time.

The Defence Network Integration in the mid-90s. Migrated users to a common desktop, server & email infrastructure, with absolutely no casualties and in the space of 4 months. 6000 desktops spread all over the country.

It does happen. You only hear about the bad Juju.

ICMS is a pig. They should have acquired an "off the shelf" proven system rather than blow money and time on what turned out to be a turd.

The only thing impressive about the Defense Network was that they did it in 4 months. I'll give you that however it was after all just a desktop roll out. Nothing difficult. So what do 6000 defense workers do all day in NZ?

[Finn]

Define large.
DIA did a rollout of gaming machine compliance controllers in every single site in NZ that has one or more pokies installed (excluding the large casinos). Pokies are linked to controllers with fibre, controllers communicate back to DIA via wireless internet. Installed by various third parties including my employer. Completed on time and under budget.
(Controllers run Suse Linux btw)

Plugging controllers into pokie machine is hardly leading edge technology.

[ManDownUnder]

Oh, I know the answer to that, INCIS

LOL bastard - you just beat me to that.

I was due to do a datawarehousing product demo to the relevant bods one morning in Chch... we'd flown down, set up, imported data and were going through the usual range of pre demo setup checks etc and a white faced gent came in...

"We need to delay the demo - possibly till tomorrow"

So we ask... "why?"

"I'm not sure if any of us have jobs anymore"

INCIS was canned, the IBM development team went offshore (back to Oz?) and (surprise surprise)... they didn't need to talk to the Police about INCIS' datawarehousing capabilities and benefits...

Oopsie!

[James Deuce]

ICMS is a pig. They should have acquired an "off the shelf" proven system rather than blow money and time on what turned out to be a turd.

The only thing impressive about the Defense Network was that they did it in 4 months. I'll give you that however it was after all just a desktop roll out. Nothing difficult. So what do 6000 defense workers do all day in NZ?

ICMS isn't a turd, no one knows how to use it.

Defense wasn't a desktop roll out. It was an architecture change involving migrating the Air Force and Navy from Novell to Microsoft, and upgrading every desktop to Windows 95, as well as implementing Microsoft Exchange and migrating Groupwise users to MS Mail and Office. We also installed 4 servers per site. I spent most of my time placating the Navy & Air Force base commanders, some of whom have become the Defence Chief.

Most of the World's military forces require a ratio of 6-10 support staff per frontline individual.

[Finn]

ICMS isn't a turd, no one knows how to use it.

Defense wasn't a desktop roll out. It was an architecture change involving migrating the Air Force and Navy from Novell to Microsoft, and upgrading every desktop to Windows 95, as well as implementing Microsoft Exchange and migrating Groupwise users to MS Mail and Office. We also installed 4 servers per site.

You should have a look at some US telco's. By comparison, ICMS is a giant turd. The very fact that no one knows how to use is a sign. It's not all about the technology.

I'm not trying to belittle your efforts, but it's hardly leading edge stuff.

[James Deuce]

One day a Kuwaiti Royal Family member felt generous enough to offer his three sons anything they wanted.

First son wanted a Ferrari and was thrilled to receive a 250 Daytona.

Second son wanted a Jet Fighter that could do Mach 2, so Dad bought him a recently retired Royal Saudi Air Force BAC Lightning.

Son number 3 (6 years old) asked for a Mickey Mouse outfit and was terribly disappointed to receive a certificate naming him the sole owner of Datacom.

[James Deuce]

I'm not trying to belittle your efforts, but it's hardly leading edge stuff.

In terms of ICMS, we ended up was the first call centre in the world with single desktop connectivity to 22 different host architectures, from 3COM File Servers to Fujitsu Mainframes. This predates a Windows desktop environment and included PCs and Macs as the desktop machines.

Re. Defense, it was in 95. It was the first implementation of NT4.0 in the world. We used a pre-release build and made it work as well as developing functional IPX connectivity to seamlessly migrate from the Novell 2.51 Naval and Air Force infrastructure and we also developed a precursor of RIS for the desktop build. The server build, migration process, and desktop rebuild process were developed in 8 weeks.

[pete376403]

ICMS (I see a mess) - That was IBM AS400, with IBM 9370 as the interface to the exchanges. When did all the other connectivity get in? Or was that the hardware at the exchanges?

And ICMS was developed for AS400 from a small texas-based telco application originally running on System 38.
IBM was pushing the AS400 barrow and wanted a flagship app for it. They would have been much better off installing any one of a dozen mainframe telco apps. My connection to ICMS was that Telecom Wgtn (Tory St and Herd St) were my (hardware maintenance) accounts, up to the IBM VSOP (redundancies) of '91

[James Deuce]

ICMS (I see a mess) - That was IBM AS400, with IBM 9370 as the interface to the exchanges. When did all the other connectivity get in? Or was that the hardware at the exchanges?

There were HP MAinframes, Fujitsu Mainframes, Wang Minis and Mainframes, Exchanges, Sequents, Early Terradata boxes, IBM S370, AS400s and on and on.

9370 wasn't used to connect to the exchanges. That was serial connectivity (RS323 and 449) and then a 9370 Gateway card in a CASE stat mux.

I don't actually give a rat's arse about the ICMS app. I architected and implemented a big chunk of that Network, and we were breaking new ground every month. 1st bridged spanning tree network in the country, first cisco router network, first use of digital NTUs - it was quite frankly the single best job I've ever had and it just went all downhill from there.