Jeff,
Mike T and I are a bit confused about how the whole Net Backup product administration is going to be handled.
Over the past few days, Rodney, Mike, and I have been working with Jeff from the consulting company working for Symantec. Through this process, Rodney has taken a big leadership role in the implementation of the product, as he should have given his level of experience with the WinTel architecture and his previous experience with Backup Exec. As we have been working, how the members of your team has fallen into question.
These are the impressions that Mike T and I have gotten from Rodney through this installation process:
In the list below, I realize I specifically single out Rodney. I am doing this because he said "I will .." in many of his statements. I tend to believe what he means by "I will" means "NTS will handle these things".
Rodney will be doing (and has been doing) all of the engineering/design of the backup solution.
Rodney will build and configure all media servers
Rodney will push out and configure all clients
Rodney will set up all backup jobs
Rodney will set up all backup schedules
Rodney will make all policy decisions and configure all policies accordingly
Rodney stated that he will do all training
Rodney will set up all vaulting and media movement
Mike T said in a configuration session held late Wednesday evening that Anthony gave him the same impression with regards to some of these items.
Mike has also told me that he feels that his involvment under the new plan will be LESS than what he is currently doing with Backup Exec.
Please understand that I am not intending to accuse anyone of wrong doing, but these are the impressions that we have gotten during this process.
While we were in the exploration phase of trying to select an enterprise backup solution, Mike and I were under the impression that when the selected product was implemented, that the future setup, implementation, management, etc was going to fall under the ERP Operations team, with me having primary responsibility for managing the product, and Mike T and Ben handling setup and operations as well. I was told that the ERP team would be assuming primary responsibility of the product so Rodney could be freed up to work on bigger and more important projects.
We were also under the impression that when the product was selected, that the three of us (Mike, Ben, myself) would be going to a Veritas training school to learn the product inside and out. I had believed that I would be closely involved in the design of the solution before it was implemented. I wasn't involved in any of the pre-implementation design phases, though I don't know how long or involved that process was.
If you would be able to get some clarification on exactly what the ERP Operations teams involvement in the WinTel Enterprise backup process will be in the future. The feeling we have is that we will be responsible for putting tapes in the library, taking them out, and sending tapes to/from Iron Mountain. This is not what we were expecting going into this process. It would be wonderful if you could clarify this for us.
Mike and Mike