VLAN confusion
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@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
ok. I could make a big stink about this, claiming that Cisco and the Cisco partner are just taking our money when we could be getting something for a lot cheaper, and it would probably work and I could probably convince them to not go with Cisco at all and instead let me find something that would be cheaper.
- The core claim is around fundamentally bad business practices. Not the Cisco situation.
- Then that leads to the Cisco SALES people being the wrong people to engage.
- Then it leads to why there has been NO evaluation of needs AT ALL. Zero. No IT done, whatsoever.
- Then it should lead to hiring a phone consultant, the word you misused about the salesman
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@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
But then, I would be responsible for finding that product and implementing it myself (I assume), such as FreePBX, which I know nothing about. I don't know anything about phone systems and I don't want to get myself into a mess and have my boss say, "see we should have gone with Cisco and had them set it up the right way" or something.
Why make this assumption? This is not, in any way, a logical place to have arrived from the discussion. I feel that you are caught up on the technical value of FreePBX vs. Cisco, which we are not discussing at all, and glossing over the business ethics and basic IT business process discussion that we are having. This isn't about Cisco being a bad solution, it's about how the solution was arrived at and how is benefiting and who didn't do the job that they are paid to do.
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@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
EDIT: side note, we did go down this road with Sh---Tel voip and C------Link ISP where the ISP was responsible for installing the voip but really sucked at it so we pulled out of our contract due to my efforts at showing how they were doing a bad job, etc.
Right, so you identified a basic issue with how vendors are chosen, and they got confuse and switched from one inappropriate vendor relationship to another.
Everyone seems to be confusing problems with a bad decision and a bad decision process. Looking at Cisco vs. FreePBX, for example, is trying to make a decision. But clearly, the underlying issue is that decision-making processes are bad and are being ignored.
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@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:
@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
ok. I could make a big stink about this, claiming that Cisco and the Cisco partner are just taking our money when we could be getting something for a lot cheaper, and it would probably work and I could probably convince them to not go with Cisco at all and instead let me find something that would be cheaper.
- The core claim is around fundamentally bad business practices. Not the Cisco situation.
- Then that leads to the Cisco SALES people being the wrong people to engage.
- Then it leads to why there has been NO evaluation of needs AT ALL. Zero. No IT done, whatsoever.
- Then it should lead to hiring a phone consultant, the word you misused about the salesman
What do you mean about number 3?
Also, I don't really know how to find phone consultants. Googling that seems to yield more full voice solution companies, so more of the wrong people I assume. Plus, we are in a small rural city with not a lot of diverse consultant type companies around. Maybe I could call Jared as someone suggested..
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@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
So my say does count, but I don't want to make another bad case about Cisco and avoid going with them -- a setup that we know we can get installed correctly and supported well, vs going with some exotic and obscure cheaper voip solution..
Again, not related to the discussion. You are stuck on the decision when we are talking about a business process.
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@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:
@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
So my say does count, but I don't want to make another bad case about Cisco and avoid going with them -- a setup that we know we can get installed correctly and supported well, vs going with some exotic and obscure cheaper voip solution..
Again, not related to the discussion. You are stuck on the decision when we are talking about a business process.
Sorry, I suck at properly following along in discussions...
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@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
Also, I don't really know how to find phone consultants.
You have two non-reseller consultants in this thread alone. You should have an ITSP that aids you all the time, it should not be something you go looking for like this at all. Where is the company that helps you with finding the right people? It seems like there is a big gap in your support portfolio. That would be the CIO's job to have at the ready.
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@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
- Then it leads to why there has been NO evaluation of needs AT ALL. Zero. No IT done, whatsoever.
What do you mean about number 3?
No IT work has been done here. Here is the roles that were in play...
- Business person (CIO) discovers a technical need (need voice communications.)
- Business person does not engage IT.
- Business person finds a sales person that says that they will sell something to the company.
- Company buys product.
At no step in the process was an IT person engaged, no IT person represented the company interests, no IT person looked at or compared options, no IT person produced an evaluation of needs, etc.
There's no IT. Just business people and sales people bypassing any and all IT oversight.
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@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
Plus, we are in a small rural city with not a lot of diverse consultant type companies around.
Locality is not a factor in consulting, or IT. Locality is only a factor in entry level bench work, janitorial work and things like that. You don't get advice from people nearby, you get advice from people who know what they are doing.
http://www.smbitjournal.com/2015/08/avoiding-local-service-providers/
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@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:
@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
Also, I don't really know how to find phone consultants.
You have two non-reseller consultants in this thread alone. You should have an ITSP that aids you all the time, it should not be something you go looking for like this at all. Where is the company that helps you with finding the right people? It seems like there is a big gap in your support portfolio. That would be the CIO's job to have at the ready.
Well we do have the FIS who helps us with all the products and services we use in our company, but not so much with our IT infrastructure like we are talking about.
We did have a Dell VAR who I've cut ties with because he was terrible. Then we started up a relationship with that IT business management consultant company (who also are the Cisco partners/resellers we are going through)
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@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
Well we do have the FIS who helps us with all the products and services we use in our company, but not so much with our IT infrastructure like we are talking about.
I'm not familiar with this term. What is a FIS?
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@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:
@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
Well we do have the FIS who helps us with all the products and services we use in our company, but not so much with our IT infrastructure like we are talking about.
I'm not familiar with this term. What is a FIS?
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@dave247 said in VLAN confusion
@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:We did have a Dell VAR who I've cut ties with because he was terrible. Then we started up a relationship with that IT business management consultant company (who also are the Cisco partners/resellers we are going through)
They are NOT a business management consultant company. They are sales people. Please stick to the correct terms. Calling sales people consultants empowers the very behaviour the CIO is using here. It legitimizes what he's done, where the is no possible excuse for it, in reality.
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@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:
@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
Well we do have the FIS who helps us with all the products and services we use in our company, but not so much with our IT infrastructure like we are talking about.
I'm not familiar with this term. What is a FIS?
Oh, a consumer bank processor.
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@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:
@dave247 said in VLAN confusion
@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:We did have a Dell VAR who I've cut ties with because he was terrible. Then we started up a relationship with that IT business management consultant company (who also are the Cisco partners/resellers we are going through)
They are NOT a business management consultant company. They are sales people. Please stick to the correct terms. Calling sales people consultants empowers the very behaviour the CIO is using here. It legitimizes what he's done, where the is no possible excuse for it, in reality.
Well I don't know what else to do or who to go through for help. I don't know how to find the right people and I'm bad at weeding out things that aren't what they seem.
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@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:
@dave247 said in VLAN confusion
@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:We did have a Dell VAR who I've cut ties with because he was terrible. Then we started up a relationship with that IT business management consultant company (who also are the Cisco partners/resellers we are going through)
They are NOT a business management consultant company. They are sales people. Please stick to the correct terms. Calling sales people consultants empowers the very behaviour the CIO is using here. It legitimizes what he's done, where the is no possible excuse for it, in reality.
Well I don't know what else to do or who to go through for help. I don't know how to find the right people and I'm bad at weeding out things that aren't what they seem.
But it's not your job. It's the CIO's job. Are you saying that he's business incompetent now and can't or simply won't do his job?
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@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:
@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:
@dave247 said in VLAN confusion
@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:We did have a Dell VAR who I've cut ties with because he was terrible. Then we started up a relationship with that IT business management consultant company (who also are the Cisco partners/resellers we are going through)
They are NOT a business management consultant company. They are sales people. Please stick to the correct terms. Calling sales people consultants empowers the very behaviour the CIO is using here. It legitimizes what he's done, where the is no possible excuse for it, in reality.
Well I don't know what else to do or who to go through for help. I don't know how to find the right people and I'm bad at weeding out things that aren't what they seem.
But it's not your job. It's the CIO's job. Are you saying that he's business incompetent now and can't or simply won't do his job?
He's the one who chose that company I mentioned.
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@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
... and I'm bad at weeding out things that aren't what they seem.
In any of the cases that have come up, as anything been different than it seems?
Walk through it carefully. Maybe there is something you can fix, like misusing terms that people use to mislead you, or emotionally reacting and wanting to defend people that have no reasonable defense or such.
Your Dell VAR... the title alone is enough to tell us that they'd be bad for you. The Cisco VAR, same thing. The CIO bringing in sales people instead of consultants, people calling sales people consultants. Having an ISP for the phones.
All of those things should be obviously bad based on what they are, and I would assume, were all transparently those things from the onset. Did any of them lie or hide their true nature?
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My guess, and this is only a guess, is that you have an emotional desire to see people as good, as working in your interest, in being your friends. And this overlay of emotions leads you to try to rationalize how the CIO might be being ethical, and just making mistakes. How the sales people might be consultants, who also sell. And so forth.
It's called "rationalizing" and all people do it. But it isn't that what they are is not obvious. If this is what you are doing, it's that it is so obvious that you panic and try to, in your mind, make them out to be good people even when it is obvious that they are bad actors taking advantage of the company that you are trying to protect.
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In other words, if we asked a computer about these people, it would tell us that they are bad actors. We know enough to know that. Logically it is apparent. It's human emotions that make it feel confusing. We all have them, so learning to shut them down when analyzing these things is very important.
