SBS, Healthmon: Why would I care about notifications?

So you’ve read the previous few posts, and you’re a little interested in using healthmon. But maybe you’re just not yet to the point of actually doing anything about it. You’re probably sitting there asking yourself, “Hey, great, so I can tell when my customers are adding computers. Why should I care?”

You should care because you’re a driven professional who takes pride in your work. And depending on the type of contracts you’ve been able to secure, you should start getting preventative, and take technical ownership of the installations (obviously to the extent that your customer has directed). Beyond that, you should care because you want to add value. Remember that you’re there to protect the customer’s IT infrastructure, and sometimes that means protecting it from the customer.

It’s great when a customer is technical enough to add their own computers to the domain. But it’s not so great when those systems are added without considering the workstation lifecycle. How are those systems going to get updates from the WSUS server? Who’s responsible when they’re not added to the managed antivirus installation? Who’s accepting these risks, and the costs associated with them.

Obviously, there’s still a healthy balance to mind, because you and I both know the customer is not going to perceive any value from you bugging them to update the BIOS revisions on their workstations every few months.

Mind that healthy balance, and focus on adding real value.