The "Cascade"

 

When I use the term cascade, I'm sure most people envision something like this, or at most a high waterfall. Generally something peaceful and beautiful. Actually, what I meant by the word is nothing of the sort. I'm sure others in managing IT have used the concept, if not the word, but in my application; I invented it for my own use...."back in the day." The Y2K days, when I was working my first real IT job at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I was a departmental IT guy, but I was the guy. There was no one else. I had a boss, but she mostly worked on the application end of the software that ran our departmental functions. For hardware, or software support, I was it. We had roughly 60-70 computers that I was responsible for in our area. They ranged from regular desktops, to laptops, to servers. Since I was it (my job title was Area Coordinator for IT), I also handled digital cameras, PDAs, Printers, setup and maintenance. I had 1 student who worked for me. My one minion was a long-haired Mac lover. We had no Macs! Since we were a lone department at a public university, we didn't have a ton of money, we had some, just not a lot. Every year, I could buy anywhere from 10 to 20 machines, which basically calculates to me being able to replace them all on a 3 to 4 year cycle.

Although we weren't exactly a cube-farm, everybody used computers. From the department head who was a university Vice President, to front desk workers of the various building who were students. Some like my buddy Scott was the graphics professional who needed LOTS of power, others, like the aforementioned "desks" just needed to access records. Some like, the big boss (who was a New Yawker), needed to look good while he sat behind his big desk, in his big chair. After sitting down and looking at what I needed to do (machine-wise), and comparing that with what I could do budget-wise, I realized the corporate way of doing things where I put everybody on a cycle and got a new machine every so many years isn't going to work very well. We just didn't have the resources to do that.....eg. buy dozens/hundred of computers every year. So I came up with "the Cascade".

What I had to do was to go around and figure out what everybody does on a computer. How they use it, where they use it, what software they run, yada, yada, yada. Then, I had to figure out how much computer they needed and if there were any other considerations. For instance, my immediate boss needed lots of computer. She got into our databases, and the server software that the department ran on, on a daily basis. The graphics guy needed lots of computing power as well for obvious reasons. The other "executive" type people ranging from the "Big Boss", needed to do the routine office type stuff and didn't need the latest greatest, and so on down to the folks that just needed to access the "front-end" of one of the applications. Once I got that handled (it took a while), I had to break everyone down into groups that fit generalized categories of PCs relative to their capabilities in easily configurable buying specs, and make sure there weren't too many different models to support well. I didn't want to make the mistake of my predessor who had 5 different brands of computers, which God only knows how many different models!

 

I bought 2 brands: Dell for the desktops, IBM for notebooks. Within those 2 brands, I had maybe 2, sometimes 3 models during any given buying cycle. There were sometimes small variations within the specific models such as a bigger screen for some particular worker who was looking at giant spreadsheets all the time, or more powerful/dual processors for the graphics guy, who also got extra/giant hard drives. Actually, his stuff was almost always special because of what he did. I can't even begin to tell you how much of a difference this made in everything from setup to support, by my second year. Of course, I only spent a little over 2 years there, but this was the testing ground for my IT ideas.

.....But what about the others? Oh yeah, them, the proletariat. I almost forgot.... It's actually they who allowed me to conceived of the cascade. I realized pretty quickly that by virtue of what they did on their PCs, there were some folks who didn't need to have a new $2000 machine every 2, 3 years, or actually.....ever. Some like a the cadre of administrative assistants, only ever looked up certain data, and wrote memos. Their computers were glorified word processors. Then there were even some workers who only occasionally did things on their machines. Maybe an hour or two a day at most, but they needed a machine to complete those tasks. Therein lies the function of the cascade. If I could eliminate them from the new machine "cycle", then I could use my finite pot of budgetary funds each year, to speed up the cycle so that my high-end users got new machines! I would just take their old ones, and push them down to the next level, or whichever level that the specification of machine was appropriate for their job. In the end, they didn't really care, because they still got "new" machines every 2 or 3 years and that kept them for having to use the antiquated 486s that didn't pass the Y2K utilities!

What did that do for me? It caused me to do more work! If you think about it a little bit. This meant that not only did I have to set up just the number I bought that year; I had to reload all the ones that they displaced for someone else, and maybe do the same to the machines at the next level as well! Holy Cats!!! It's financially efficient, but it almost tripled my workload! At UIC, that wasn't so bad, but when I moved on to the Texas Tech University Libraries with the 700+ PC (and Macs) that were my responsibility, it was daunting. However, I did it. Every spring when the orders would arrive, and through the summers when we did the bulk of our update work, I was stressed. Over a period of several weeks, I'd have to refer to my cascade spreadsheet to make sure we got the correct PCs to the correct workers.

What does all that have to do with a home propellerhead like me? Well; when I pulled the old guts out of the "old" Blackbird, I started a cascade! You see, in our house, my desktop workstation is at the top of the food chain. It has the most powerful, the biggest, and the fastest of everything. It's parts are more advanced than every other computer in the house. I'm sure you can see where this is going. Over the course of the next several weeks, the various parts taken from the Blackbird are going to replace parts in maybe 3 other machines! So stay tuned; we've only scratched the surface!