Who's Your Data?

I sent Pete, who is the best. My secret is that he is not a consultant at all, he is an engineer. The guy who works on my car is a mechanic. I have a Porsche (I know, a consultants car). For the average $250.00 oil change I suppose he would like to consider himself a consultant to my Boxster. Best I can tell the difference between a technical engineer and a technical consultant is price.

Why do customers want a consultant onsite? I am sure Webster’s or Wikipedia have neat little definitions that would help illuminate this subject. I have a standing policy that no blog shall be researched, so this subject is unknowable from a reference standpoint.

Consultants encourage customers to make paradigm shifts and consider the outflows resulting from the inputs. They know how many trillions of dollars will be spent on storage by the year 2013 and the top 3 reasons why CIO’s are implementing ERP. A Consultant can pick up the tab for an expensive dinner (and charge it back). He or she can order french wine as easily as a domestic pinot noir.

An Engineer has dirty hands from uncrating servers and pulling cables. He or she wants to implement Linux in the data center because MS has to be rebooted every week. The Engineer knows where the best barbecue place is and orders everything including socks and underwear online. I like engineers. I don’t dislike consultants.

Let me ask you a question…if you were stranded on a desert island with one person (and you had already ordered the wine) who would you count on to help you survive, the engineer or the consultant?