The best of 'Reader Comments': mobile phone masts on churches, IT directors on the up and air-tight storage

At the end of last week, we wrote about cash-strapped churches allowing their steeples to be used for mobile phone infrastructure (http://www.silicon.com/a41288 )

--Mobile churches
From: Michael Huggett

Our historic church buildings are generally appreciated as a community resource but are millstones around the necks of dwindling church congregations. This will provide church councils with help to maintain their lovely but expensive buildings.

--A question...
From: Anon

Does this mean mobile phone companies will be offering 'pray as you talk' services?

--The divine link
From: James Bowler

Can't see a problem with the use of churches. They may even be the best place for the mobile antennas - no offence to those that are worshipers, but there are fewer and fewer of them around. Indeed, congregations are in decline and the church doesn't seem to command the audiences it once did, so the minimum of £5,000 per annum seems a divine intervention to me.

--And finally...
From: Ian Lubbock

Yes £5,000 per annum would definitely help some parish funds and the church needs to appear progressive. Mobile phone masts, especially ones in village/countryside churches where they really would be beneficial, will have their critics but on a big plus side, weddings at participating churches would always be remembered for having a perfect reception!

Meanwhile, on Monday we reported on the way IT directors are still being ignored when it comes to many crucial business decisions (http://www.silicon.com/a41322 )

--IT directors need sell-side coaches
From: Mark Linnell

IT directors and other technical experts are progressively becoming a vital part of the sales process. To get IT directors and their teams confident in face-to-face meetings with customers they could use a coach who will make them feel good about themselves and give them the skills and confidence to participate fully in the business plan and sales process.

--Don't undermine the IT function
From: Haydn Rees

Any e-biz consultant who wanted to turn such an organisation into a cash cow would approach the IT director, feed him the strategy, and let him show he is worthy of his place on the board, even if it's only because he knows where to go for the good information. A tactical mistake would be to undermine the IT function.

Many IT directors are promoted IT managers, and companies who fail to develop them - or fail to have IT feed into strategy formation - and strap IT on afterwards, deserve all of the implementation problems and expense of hiring stupid high-handed big five consultants they get.

--Paying to hear what you want to hear?
From: Nick Baggott

The Board may bypass the IT director because they don't like the message. External specialists are indeed sometimes seen as more accessible to senior directors but this can be because they tend to oversimplify everything and often don't understand the complexities of either the business or the existing environment.

The IT director may be enthusiastic about a project but he cannot hide the complexity, the likely expense or the resource implications - and he also has to consider its relative priority with other key business projects. The Board may well prefer to hear that it is straightforward and not too expensive and it won't have any impact on other projects.

In the end, however, one thing is certain: the IT Director will eventually end up with the responsibility.

And finally, the now strategic nature of storage was obvious from feedback on a story about how much money is now wasted on it (http://www.silicon.com/a41286 )

--Quantity, not quality
From: Anon.

Surely there's a hidden issue here - granted, there are managers who aren't spending a bean on storage but there are others throwing money at it but wasting every penny. Unless backups are tested for restorability, and unless people take account of the media on which they are storing things and the hierarchy in which files are stored, they can spend all they work - they won't reap the benefits.

--Smart storage
From : Anon.

I personally think the article hits the truth on the head, however I also see that from a company's point of view, spending that sum of money on storage for data that may be confidential and 'eyes only' is a justifiable spend. Personally, I think that 'smart' spend should be applied when it comes to security and storage data.

--Only £1bn wasted?
From: Nick Booth
LAN... SAN... NO THANK YOU MAM

Companies are wasting a billion pounds on storage. Is that all? There are a lot of sales managers for storage companies who'll be furious about this; if you added up all the targets for their sales force, we should be on target to waste ten times as much money as this. So come on all you IT buyers, stop deleting things and splash out on some more unnecessary storage.

--No data, no profit
From : Zhe Xing

It is astonishing to learn 'almost half of the companies questioned are inefficiently storing data while another 26 per cent have no data management policies in place'.

As we have seen in the agriculture industry, because of the lack of information, demand is more elastic than supply. Consequently, there is always a lag in response in supply. It is known as a cobweb model in economics.

The explosive development in IT determines that information is the most important thing to a company - far more important than to the agriculture industry. You will need accurate data to prepare your budget, your research and development, etc.. Therefore, all your economic activities are closely related to data, no matter if you're a small workshop or a Microsoft.

Poor data (or even no data management at all) will lead to what we have already seen in UK companies - wasting £1bn on storage.

We don't expect a company with a huge stock of 8086 CPU-based PCs nowadays to make a profit. Therefore, the level of efficiency of data almost determines whether the company will make a profit or a loss.