SNW - Weather Channel"s VP on horizons

25.10.2005
Von 
Lucas Mearian ist Senior Reporter bei der Schwesterpublikation Computerworld  und schreibt unter anderem über Themen rund um  Windows, Future of Work, Apple und Gesundheits-IT.

Dan Agronow, vice president of technology at The Weather Channel Interactive Inc. in Atlanta, has been focused on rolling out more open-source software and commodity hardware as a cost-cutting effort over the past few years. At the same time, he"s been working on a more robust disaster recovery plan as well as employee retention. In an interview with Computerworld at Storage Networking World Tuesday, Agronow discussed how he"s addressing key industry challenges.

Have blade servers created any issues? I"m more concerned about heat. We run a lot of 1U pizza boxes. It"s great to have faster and more powerful boxes. But if I have to spread them out because of the heat, then I have an issue with how many servers I can stick in my racks. It"s great to see the competition between Intel and AMD. I think ultimately that"s going to help the end users. I most dislike all the lawsuits going around. Cisco, IBM, AMD, Intel. It just seems to delay projects going forward.

What"s your biggest concern these days? Losing skilled staff. The past couple of years, the industry hasn"t been that good. Now things are starting to pick up. We"ve had almost zero turnover the past couple of years. My fear is I"ll lose some of these talented individuals I"ve built up over the past few years. In the past, it was very easy to fill positions. Most times, you got a lot of resumes and high-quality candidates. What we"re seeing lately is the number of resumes are down and the quality of the candidates are down. And we"re getting outbid. We"d make an offer, and they"d already have offers and we"d lose. The amount to money we"ve been paying for people to come in has come up.

I spend a lot of time working on employee retention. My hope is that when they get calls from headhunters, they won"t even give them a call back. That"s when I know I"ve had success.

How do you ensure that? We"re putting a more realistic telecommuting policy in place. Especially with such high gas prices, it makes more sense. We"re constantly trying to find and fund new and fun projects for people to work on.