Discipline must be, so it is right!

After this legendary speech of Major Terazky from the "Black Barons", I would like to continue in the next paragraph a little more seriously. I will return to the reasons for its usage at the end of this post.

So allow me to preface this post by apologising to all the certain inaccuracies and mainly incompleteness that I am about to publish here. At the same time, I would like to ask for leniency with all of you who are unpopular in this area, or do not speak the language of my tribe. I will try to compile from public sources and briefly explain the differences between the infrastructure and cloud solutions of the systems for which I was co-responsible at Radio ГA / ГA. Without stating these facts, I would not be able to proceed intelligibly further, and my further testimony would, as you surely understand, be somewhat "out of the mill".

Since my entire working stay at Radio ГA / ГA revolved around software solutions in the field of electronic mail services, applications and their licensing, I will focus only on them. So for simplicity we can say that there are 2 licensing models and their deployments.

On-premise

On-premise solutions represent software (programs) or hardware (servers and computers) that are stored in the company's internal infrastructure and space. In the case of on-premise solutions, all maintenance, updates and security are managed by the company, or the company hires external specialists who provide server support.

Radio ГA / ГA and "on premise" time:

In 2004, I joined Radio ГA / ГA version 1.0 as a "Systems Support Specialist" with a long-term qualification from "business" for administration and development in the IBM Domino/Notes environment. I basically took care of a large information system based on this platform, consisting of several dozen servers and supporting almost 1500 users. It was a typical example of the infrastructure, operated on the premises of Radio ГА / ГA and all hardware and software management was taken care of by ourselves.

Cloud

Cloud represents an outsourced form of infrastructure. Companies providing cloud services (providers) own their own or rented data centres in which they rent individual servers to clients. The client pays a regular fee for a license that gives them access to the data store. This license is scalable and includes all server support. Access to the data storage works as a rule via the Internet: the client can manage his data and programs via a web browser on any device. There are several types of cloud services, but due to the incidents described later, I will focus on SaaS, or "software as a service", which is Microsoft Office365 and for which I was co-responsible.

Radio ГA / ГA and "cloud" time:

However, in 2012, with the transformation of the company to version 2.0, the company's management began to promote the Microsoft Office365 cloud solution, which is a typical representative of the SaaS category. Those from "the upper echelons of the local food chain", probably after undergoing a light lobotomy, argued how wonderful it would be for us to have all our data on the Internet - after all, it is a modern and secure system! Guess what, from the Bill Gates association itself!

And how did it work with this solution? All hardware and software management was handled by the provider, in our case Microsoft, and we rented an end service from them, i.e. an application or program, for which, of course, regular fees are paid according to different licensing models and whose goal is for the service provider to understandably make money. This is a typical model that works for thousands of companies.

And while I'm on the subject, during the "on premise" era, we paid for this information system a base annual license support rate of several tens of thousands of US bucks plus my annual admin salary. That was roughly the cost of an information system with mail and quantum of applications. In order to save on running servers, we preferred not to replace them, so by the end of my tenure here it was common for them to run without shutdown for more than 10 years - hats off to "HPs" servers!

After the transition to the new SaaS system, the real "financial porn" began. Licenses began to be paid according to a simple "cloud" formula - the unit price of the license multiple the number of people multiple 12 months. It is not necessary to state what "money pipes" flowed to the company from the Redmond Campus in the USA. With a little taste in searching public price lists and using a calculator, you will understand the reason why my supervisor #RC("Remotely controlled") preferred to block such kind of information for me in the administration portal - probably in order to heal my mental state.

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In connection with this type of service, I always have to remember the "pearls" of opinion that, like one man, the defendant opponent poured out during each of our court "sessions". That I reacted insufficiently and that I should have disconnected the infrastructure, that they were told to do so by their local administrator. It's just a shame that they mostly didn't let us speak - I could have directed them to Saša Lukashenko. In this task, unlike me, he successfully hosted here .

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If you look at the image below, we are only talking about one quarter of this four-leaf clover, about Email. And since the liquidation of the previous "on-premise" solution, including applications, was successfully started, and the word "IBM Domino/Notes" became obscene and was obligatorily replaced by the word "legacy" (obsolete) everywhere, it was necessary to order and pay soon also for the remaining "flower tickets" below.

By the way, I carried this label with me until my last days. As the lawyer of the opposing party #MV ("Mgr. Prasátko") did not forget to teach me about its uselessness in his closing speech - he says that today no one uses the system anyway and that everyone runs away from it as much as they can.

But how to save?

Negotiations with the supplier were one thing, but "political" and according to the well-known "when the bird..." e.t.c. were other stories. The cheapest licensed model was bought and as my #RC ("Remotely controlled") supervisor often bragged - it was priced especially for us as the cheapest and specified that it was intended for "charity . It probably goes without saying that it wasn't exactly a "Mercedes". But I have to cut off all the bad guys here - because at least it was driving.

I tried to convince the duo of self-proclaimed IT specialists #MV ("Mgr. Prasátko") and #JH ("Dr. Hustá") in the courtroom, especially with the technical and "know-how" equipment of Radio ГA / ГA (which, unfortunately, I also counted on), it is not necessary to talk at further.

It was in this structure for several years, and sooner or later we were begging for trouble. Only after a significant security incident and my forced "fire", the details of which I will be happy to introduce you to in one of my next posts, the already educated American manager started buying, and in a hurry at the beginning of January 2020, new and more expensive and more secure license models.

But that was in price for other quality of "bananas"!

And because it was necessary to cover up this earlier managerial failure of his, no one spoke to him about it this time. As the Americans say - "justification is important", we would say - "the end justifies the means". Here is a very good article aptly titled “Bosses are reluctant to spend money on cybersecurity. Then they are hacked.„ - as if written about Radio ГA / ГA.

Now you may be wondering why I am listing all of this here?

My job description describes the tasks and responsibilities associated with installing and managing servers and business applications, with responsibility for day-to-day systems maintenance, including troubleshooting, upgrades, server and network issues, user support, security, disaster recovery and data backup, including work on innovative projects for server system technologies.

In English and in the official document, I state this below.

All of you who carefully read the previous information about "on premise infrastructure" and its difference from the "cloud" one, after reading my job responsibilities ("Responsibilities" section) must have clearly come to a conclusion that they didn't cover to after more than 2 years, all these "anointed" - Judge #JH ("Dr. Hustá"), the Court of Appeal, #LA ("Leklá Andělka") and not even the lawyer #MV ("Mgr. Prasátko") paid by them.

Not only did I not have the job duties to work on a cloud SaaS system where a hacker attack occurred while testing other software, but the spicy thing is that I performed this function at Radio ГА / ГA without defining job duties and without proper training, which I kept demanding, like a broken gramophone, for more than 5 years.

They say there is no money for that, my superior always whispered in my ear in a mysterious voice when I asked for an explanation.

However, as I soon found out, I relied prematurely on the fact that it was not possible to grossly breach job duties that I did not have at all, as stated in the preamble to my statement below.

When I pointed out this fact to the Court of Appeals on 3/29/2022, I thought I would kill them all after more than two years of dragging the courts with this simple argument. Me, an ordinary "IT guy" and a legal zero! Only with my sister!

I was wrong again, as I have been many times in this monster trial.

The only one who responded to this argument of ours was Radia ГA / ГA's external lawyer, #MV ("Mgr. Prasátko"), well paid by the American taxpayers, who "on the fly" changed the text of my above statement to a more appropriate - "for gross violation of work discipline”. The fact that this is a completely different quote from the statement, moreover, with a problem-free employee, without a hearing at the first instance court, did not bother the lady judge of the appeal court at all, and so after 15 minutes of the hearing, rushing to a well-deserved lunch, the judge confirmed the decision of her first instance colleague in a "robe" - #JH ("Dr. Hustá").

As the classic said (Mr. Švejk's story):

“Clear case Mr. Auditor, you are lucky, another execution. Congratulations. Bring in the convict, I mean the indicted, and briskly, the cook cursed me, that there would be kidneys at half past eleven. And they must, as is well known, be eaten warm.”

Holt, when completing point number 4 of the already mentioned template , there Radio ГA / ГA does not know a brother.

Discipline must be, so it is right!

Finally, one thought for all the more sensitive of you:

Do you believe me that the "violation of work duties", even if non-existent, would be nicer to me in the end?