For What Its Worth
Computing stories, Saving money
In the 1980s a computer system had been purchased and it cost around $300,000, but 5 people could use it simultaneously. The problem was they had failed to purchase a second disc drive. The company figured they could save $10,000. The problem was the system was bottlenecked by the disc size and slow response when the disc filled up. With 5 users, it didn't take long for this to happen. As the users became proficient, the support for the system became intense. The system response would be slowing down at the end of the week. Each weekend the IT support had to archive, defrag, reconfigure and re-install the drive. This was long before "defrag" was a system command. It took almost a complete day of overtime.Eventually a new IT manager came in and it didn't take him long to realize that the $10,000 cost savings had crippled the payback on the $300,000 system. In a few weeks a new drive appeared and IT people could go home on the weekend and users no longer ran into the end of the week slow downs.
