Submission + - Google's IT Infrastructure Secrets
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "The Wall Street Journal has an interesting interview with Douglas Merrill, Google Inc.'s chief information officer on how Google gives their workers the technology they need and keeps them safe without imposing too many restrictions on how they do their job. On Google's IT structure: "Google's model is choice. We let employees choose from a bunch of different machines and different operating systems, and [my support group] supports all of them. It's a little bit less cost-efficient — but on the other hand, I get slightly more productivity from my [Google's] employees." On Security: "The traditional security model is to try to tightly lock down endpoints, and it makes people sleep better at night, but it doesn't actually give them security. We have programs in our infrastructure to watch for strange behavior. This means I don't have to worry about the endpoint as much." On Enterprise Software: "Fifteen years ago, enterprise technology was higher-quality than consumer technology. That's not true anymore. It used to be that you used enterprise technology because you wanted uptime, security and speed. None of those things are as good in enterprise software anymore. The biggest thing to ask is, "When consumer software is useful, how can I use it to get costs out of my environment?"""
