Taming Information Technology: Lessons from Studies of System Administrators

Information technology is at the center of modern life. It supports most day-to-day activities: talking on the phone, getting money from an ATM, or working in the office. Whether for work, commerce, or fun, we interact with computers, networks, and databases -- all sorts of information technology. How does it work? Certainly, technological advances helped create this world. But what keeps it running? The answer is people. These people -- computer system administrators -- are the unsung heroes of the modern age. When we notice them, it is only because something went wrong. Small failures can become big problems, and big failures can make news headlines and cost lots of money. But most of the time, things go right, and system administrators are invisible. They work out of sight, down in the data-center, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. But how do they keep systems running? And more importantly, how can we help make them better at their jobs?

To answer these questions, the authors of Taming Information Technology set out to study system administrators -- sysadmins, for short. They observed sysadmins in their natural environments, their offices, at the data center, or wherever they worked. The authors took notes, recorded video, interviewed, and, ultimately, put all these pieces together to try to understand what sysadmins do. This book, ten years in the making, is the result. It tells the story of system administration through the narratives of real system administrators. It documents dynamic systems of people and machines, of specialists working together to tame hugely complex information technology infrastructures, developing and adapting their own tools and practices over time to create productive work environments. The authors hope Taming Information Technology will lead the way to a future in which the important work of these IT workers is better appreciated, better understood, and better supported.

Eser Kandogan is a research staff member at IBM Research - Almaden and manages a group conducting research on visual interfaces to data. He served as the general chair and program chair for ACM CHIMIT symposium and was a member of the program committee for several conferences including ACM CHI, USENIX LISA, and IEEE Policy. He holds a B.Sc. degree in computer engineering and information sciences from Bilkent University, Turkey and a Ph.D. degree from University of Maryland, Computer Science Department. Dr. Kandogan has over 50 publications in areas such as human-computer interaction and information visualization.

Paul P. Maglio is a research scientist and manager at IBM Research - Almaden. He holds a bachelor's degree in computer science and engineering from MIT and a Ph.D. in cognitive science from the University of California at San Diego. One of the founders of the field of service science, Dr Maglio serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Service Research and Service Science, and was lead editor of the Handbook of Service Science. Dr Maglio has published more than 100 papers in computer science, cognitive science, and service science, and is an Associate Adjunct Professor at UC Merced, where he has taught service science since 2007.

Eben Haber is a research staff member at IBM Research - Almaden, where he has worked on topics including IT System Administration (including studies of sysadmins, developing prototype administration tools, and designing new features for middleware management products), as well as research on end-user programming and information visualization. He holds an A.B. in computer science/physics from Dartmouth College, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As the only person on earth so named, a wealth of additional information about him can be found using any web search engine.

John Bailey is a Director of Product Design at CA Technologies, where he creates leading-edge product user experiences for the management of information technology. Previously, John was a research scientist at IBM Research - Almaden, where he did research on service systems, specializing in human factors in information technology service engagement and delivery. He has also been the Lead User Experience Architect for IBM WebSphere Application Server and manager for user-centered design. Prior to working at IBM, John was a Research Fellow with The Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area, conducting research in simulation, training, and virtual reality at the US Army Research Institute. He has published in the areas of virtual reality, human-computer interaction, automation, simulation and training, systems administration, and service science. John has a PhD. in Human Factors Psychology from the University of Central Florida.