Again, just asking, why wouldn't you do a limited deployment to your QA group to make sure everything works, and then do the company-wide deployment over a weekend after you know everything works.
I've worked at a programmer at companies where you weren't allowed to touch Widget X because it works, so I understand the mindset, but more often than not in programming departments the focus is on shipping so nothing is off the table completely. I guess I just don't understand why IT has a different mindset.
That's the point, they did a "limited deployment" and discovered that everything didn't work. Specifically, the VPN didn't work.
Making the VPN work would require spending millions of dollars in hardware, as well as the deployment of said new hardware in thousands of offices across the globe.
That's one option...The other option is to not upgrade to Windows Vista.
I don't understand what you mean by "mindset". The "mindset" of IT is to provide operational support. That means that they don't decide to upend the network infrastructure of the company willy-nilly for no discernible positive benefit.
> then do the company-wide deployment over a weekend after you know everything works.
Even if there weren't serious network infrastructure issues involved, I wouldn't dare do an OS rollout like this.
This isn't a new version of some webapp you can just upload to a server and be done with. You're talking about fundamentally altering the operation of thousands of desktops and laptops around the world being put to diverse use by people who are very probably not technically minded.
And it would be impractical at best to upgrade all of that over the network on a weekend. Every piece of hardware would have to be turned on and connected to a high-speed link with appropriate netboot infrastructure. That's not going to happen.
QA can't catch everything, so rolling it out all at once means the entire company goes apeshit on IT all at once. Watch the senior IT people walk out the door because they don't have to put up with the abuse and can find a new job. Watch the young and inexperienced IT people have nervous breakdowns and take months to address all the problems, possibly costing the company millions in the process...
I've worked at a programmer at companies where you weren't allowed to touch Widget X because it works, so I understand the mindset, but more often than not in programming departments the focus is on shipping so nothing is off the table completely. I guess I just don't understand why IT has a different mindset.