Using Amazon EC2 to Thwart Crappy Internal IT Services

Most of the restrictions you might want to circumvent are put in place for legal reasons, not technical. Some data is not allowed to leave the state, some <i>the building</i>. Amazon servers are not on the list!<p>One tiny slip, one mishap, and all of the "being freakin' awesome at your job" in the world won't stop you from being a great big minus sign on your company's balance sheet with regards to hiring you.<p>If you happen to be an employee considering these methods in order to improve your own awesomeness by breaking the rules, consider why those restrictions where put there in the first place: <i>"jackass,you are the problem"</i><p>Sorry for the rant, just an old IT guy here who's had one too many dealings with over-clever users who broke stuff big time by "knowing better" without knowing enough...

IT depts don't care about developers getting shit done, they care about covering their asses. I work at a software company that has an IT dept that seems to do anything in it's power to keep work from being done. They do on access virus scanning which increases compile times 5x (which we can't turn off). They banned IM because of "legal issues". They banned itunes because of "legal issues" and "bandwidth issues". Any streaming media is banned because of "bandwidth issues". They installed software that keeps track of everything you install. They set up our (proprietary Nortel) VPN to route everything over their network. Chatrooms like Campfire - banned. SaaS - banned.<p>Of course I've worked around all these issues, but it's a PITA. I don't buy the legal issue argument as companies like google and msft don't have all these restrictions.<p>I'd love to know the reality on these legal issues. Is there really a legal reason for a company to ban IM/Chatrooms/iTunes/etc? If so, why is it that Google doesn't?

"Let me reiterate that all three of the above uses put me in direct violation of my corporate IT policies."<p>Not to mention several state and federal regulations depending on the data being uploaded...

Ugh, if you are a rank and file employee why would you do this. You are basically taking on a large risk where all the upside benefit is for the company.

He doesn't know how to write Oracle PL/SQL, nor apparently how to use DECODE etc.<p>So he blames the company and puts sensitive corporate data up on an external resource with no ability to audit its security.<p>Brilliant!

And the only reason IT would give you 100Mb of space is because they hate you and want you to fail. Nothing to do with corporate policy or budgetary limitations or staff or any other kind of limitations.<p>Uh huh.<p>"The rules are there to prevent disaster, but as a consequence they ensure mediocrity" - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA-zdh_bQBo" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA-zdh_bQBo</a><p>Sometimes no-disaster is all a big company wants.

Avoid crappy Internal IT services/policies by not joining the crappy company that put them in place.<p>Great tips for us teleworkers though.