Every now and then, you have an experience or meet someone who provides you with a new perspective of the world, and it changes how think about what you are doing. This week, it was listening to my 24-year-old nephew describe what life was like for him during his two-year deployment in Afghanistan. To say that his life experiences were changed, from growing up in San Diego, was an understatement. He told stories about how people are just trying to survive in extraordinary circumstances and that the news reports, in no way, really could convey what life is like in that region of the world.
The next day, I had a chance to speak with some IT managers about network convergence, 10Gb Ethernet (10GbE) and 16Gb/s Fibre Channel, and in many ways, they sounded like my nephew telling stories about what it was really like to do the job of networking vs. marketing networking or reporting on it, and in both cases, we, the observers, are off-base. They did not care about the protocols or the opinions of pundits or the messaging of marketers. They just wanted to get a job done and go home without any further grief. This may be the best lesson I have learned about life and my job in a long time. Help without creating more headaches.
So I thought I would ask some of the IT folks to share their perspectives on what network convergence should do for them and how it has helped or could help them do their jobs, what they really want IT vendors to share with them about technology and what they think are the biggest misconceptions pundits and marketing folks have about real life in IT. Looking forward to your feedback.
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