Baselining Hardware and Software

One of the most significant challenges I face on probably a monthly basis is "defending" the Division's decision regarding standardized hardware and software.  And before you think "yea, you and everyone else," I'd like to point out that we've standardized on Apple Macintosh equipment.  So trust me when I say I get a whole 'nother level of confrontation about that.  I promise this will not turn into a Macintosh versus Windows post, but I do want to spend a few minutes on the most common arguments as a way to get to the actual point of the post.

1- You Have More Hardware Choices
Chad Dickerson, CTO over at InfoWorld made that exact argument to me in an email after I responded to him regarding an article entitled Want a Mac? You're on your own. No argument there, but when you look at what institutions tend to buy for desktops and laptops, it's Dell, then maybe HP and IBM way behind.  So even though you have more choices, they aren't exercised.  In fact, Chad argued not two weeks later in favor of significant hardware standardization on the PC side.  So if you're serious about hardware standardization, then it doesn't really matter which platform you pick.

2- You Have More Software Choices
I'll give you this one as well on a technicality.  There is a great deal of software available for Windows.  If you ask a typical Windows user what they do most of the day, they'll say word processing, web browsing, and email.  A few will add spreadsheets as well.  Shoot, I'm the tech guy, and that covers 90% of what I do too.  Since Microsoft Office is available for both Windows and Macintosh and there are ample options for web browsing and email on both, the platform shouldn't matter for most folks.

OK, so where exactly am I going with this?  All that was the lead up to say that I'm a big believer in standardizing hardware and software as much as possible.  In fact, John G. Henderson and Michael R. Hoadley over at Eastern Illinois University indicated in their program at the Midwest Regional Conference (which I listed to via podcast) that one of the ways their institutional optimized IT spending was to standardize to some extent hardware and software at the institution.  It's just a matter of how you go about it.

One of the things we've done in Student Affairs is to stop talking about "standardization."  That implies that everyone is the same and that every need can be met the same way.  Instead I talk now about "baselining."  I'm not sure what that implies, but what it means is deploying a hardware and software configuration that will meet the most possible needs without change.  If I can meet 70 - 80% of needs with one configuration, that's a big win for my support group.  If I can meet another 10 - 15% with a few "upfits," we've met 80 - 95% of needs with the minimum support effort possible.  That leaves us time to do things like training and strategic planning.  Oh, and HIPAA documentation.  But that's a story for another time.

In Student Affairs we constantly expand the baseline to meet new needs.  5 years ago our baseline included 1 desktop and 1 laptop with Microsoft Office, Meeting Maker, PageMaker, Photoshop Lite, and an email client (kind of amazing to realize a baseline image 5 years ago didn't include a browser).  This year we have 2 laptops and 1 desktop.  Our software suite will include Office, the full Adobe Creative Suite, the full Macromedia Studio MX Suite, some Duke specific financial software, FileMaker Pro, Meeting Maker, 3 web browsers (including FireFox), 3 email clients, and Apple's iLife suite.  So our baseline covers more use cases than it did five years ago.  The key to this is letting the baseline grow organically.  As more users asked about software, we looked more closely at adding it to the baseline.  We leveraged volume and concurrent licensing options as well as institutional site licenses to provide across the board as soon as there was sufficient momentum.  We listened to the needs of the users.

How many baselines should an institution have?  I don't have that answer.  One thing to remember, though, is that it isn't the size of the institution that matters, it's the ratio of support to computer.  The more computers each IT support person has to support, the fewer baselines you can have.  How concentrated are your IT operations?  IT operations supporting hundreds of people can do interesting things like use license pooling software (we use Sassafras Software's KeyServer) to have 10 licenses for concurrent use for software installed on 200 machines.  IT operations supporting 50 people probably can't do that.

OK, this has gone longer than I intended.  If you're interested in hearing more details in a later post, let me know and I'll be happy to talk in more detail about something.