Have you noticed the increasing use of the term 'kit" to refer to a hardware vendor's products? Articles will refer to, for example, Sun's "kit", when discussing our latest servers or storage and desktops.

I really like that term - because it drives home the point that when you are in the market to purchase "kit" from a product vendor, you sign up to be the kit builder. And for the hobbyist out there, that can be really fun and educational, even thrilling to some degree.

Many of us grew up building kits. I *loved* building ships, trucks, airplanes, tanks, cars, rockets, etc. It was a blast, and possibly contributed to (and/or was because of) my engineering mindset. The sense of accomplishment of building highly realistic, detailed and customized models, from a bunch of bare parts, is quite rewarding.

However, most IT shops I work with are less interested in the process of constructing their own unique one-off configurations from collections of parts (kit). I applaud clients for their increasing demand for solutions built from established patterns and reference implementations. I applaud IT vendors for their increasing portfolios of pre-integrated and hardened solutions.

Kit building is a great weekend hobby for kids (and adults). But when it comes to running our businesses and defending our country, we need to leverage, as much as possible, the experience and factory integration of trusted IT solution vendors. For some, it is hard to give up the thrill/challenge of the IT equivalent of "junk yard wars". But there are even more interesting and higher-valued challenges and rewards awaiting those who free up their time from the tyranny of the "nuts and bolts".

The following is a great weekend hobby project. But you don't need to let your IT projects look like this...

April 26, 2005 02:47 AM EDT Permalink