The Workflow of System Administration
Geoff Halprin
Topic: Systems Management
Audience: Intermediate/Advanced
Description:
Increasingly, companies are trying to squeeze the last drop of "productivity" out of every resource, be it a
computer, an employee or a sub-contractor. The IT department is, of course, caught at the bleeding edge of this
push, too. Departments have their budgets reduced, and companies tender under closed bids to provide outsourced
IT services for the lowest price. All of this inevitably impacts on the system administrators who are being asked
to do more with less.
The only counter to this push is to proactively seek to quantify what will be provided, and hence form some basis
for estimating the costs and resources required to fulfil a contract. In order to derive these costs, we must look
well beyond the raw product or service being offered to the underlying infrastructure and organisational costs.
Too many companies set themselves up for failure by only considering the raw materials and resource costs,
ignoring the working environment which is essential for personal and organisational productivity.
In this paper we examine a wide variety of topics seeking to gain a better insight into the role of systems support,
and how to deliver those services to customers in a more controlled, quality assured, productive and profitable
manner.
This paper seeks to bring to the fore the aspects of system administration that tend to go unnoticed, such as the
psychological factors and workflow inherent in the role. We can then consider ways to improve productivity in
light of this knowledge.
Prerequisites:
none.
History:
SAGE-AU'98 (Canberra)
Last change: Sep 16, 2006 04:29:23 PM
The Speaker: Geoff Halprin
Contact Organization: The SysAdmin Group
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Phone: +61-3-9686-3233
Email: Geoff.Halprin@sysadmin.com.au
Website: http://www.sysadmin.com.au
Will travel: Anywhere
Payment required: Fees + Travel
Compensation required: 1500 per day
Other payment info: Fees and expenses for tutorials, travel only for conference papers. Need several months warning for overseas travel.
Bio:
Geoff Halprin is the Principal Consultant at The SysAdmin Group.
He has been a system administrator for the past 15 years, and
a consulting system administrator for over 10.
Geoff specialises in data security and systems management
disciplines, and in the evaluation and improvement of systems
management practices. He has consulted to a wide variety of
organisations, including government, large corporations, and
several major ISPs.
Geoff is also the Vice-President of the System Administrator's
Guild of Australia (SAGE-AU).
Last change: Sep 8, 2006 02:55:12 AM
Other Talks by this speaker
Improving Network Security Through The Use of Host Rings
Managing a Production Environment
Systems Management - The Bigger Picture
Auditing - The Unexpected Ally
Management-101
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