A confession

Nigel commented on my slow provisioning post. I have to agree that Device Manager has its faults. I'm doing some work on Device and Tuning Manager in the coming weeks as I'm installing both on VMware guests. So, I should have some performance feedback.

The comment highlights how software still has a long way to go.

A few (well quite a few) years ago I needed to purchase a storage management product for implementing storage quotas on the mainframe. For those who remember DFSMS, it was just at the time SMS as a product was being implemented on MVS/ESA.

So, I asked my boss if I could purchase the software. He said I needed to a competitive analysis with other products and explain why my choice was the best. Unfortunately there were no other equivalent products out there, so I pondered my options and decided to invent one.

Based on a character at the time, I called the product "Loads-a-space" after a character called "Loadsamoney" - see the picture. Loadsamoney was a crass plasterer who always boasted how much money he made, it was the 80's boom time. Loadsamoney was a creation of Harry Enfield, so I called my ficticious software house Enfield Software.

I added Loads-a-space from Enfield Software to my proposal as the inferior product, got my approval and my purchase. It helped that my boss was Canadian and didn't know much about British Comedy.

OK, now I've got that off my chest, Nigel, I'd be interested to know how big your Device Manager deployment is and what you run it on, just to do some kind of comparison