While on vacation in Singapore recently, I took our boys out for a walk in the stroller to help my jetlagged wife get some sleep (we were visiting family on the other side of the world on vacation so were all in various stages of jetlag — she was exhausted, they wanted to play). During the walk around the complex (several high-rise condominium buildings + some several story ones….lots of space to walk plus some good swingsets), we came across this…

Note the pattern in the concrete. Now what follows is speculation but I think it holds overall…

Singapore is an island nation with very, very few natural resources — almost all raw materials have to be imported (an even larger issue in the past when Singapore was not as relatively prosperous as it is now). Now while I’m sure that there are some nice aesthetic reasons for the pattern in the concrete shown above, I’d bet that a large part of the reason for the design is that it took less concrete. There’s quite a bit of concrete with this pattern around the complex (mainly for fire lanes by the 25+ story high-rises) so that’s quite a bit less concrete.

Switch gears to IT. What is relatively most scarce in your environment? (or in your customer’s environment) Is it time? (or rather time of qualified people) Is it money? Is it physical resources? (rack space, cooling capacity, etc.).

Example – If you’re short of time, more standardized infrastructure will probably make sense — this impacts the products you choose to look at (you may not care about tons of features and flexibility as much).

Whether we like it or not, we have to design around scarcity and what is the most relatively scarce in our environments. Recognizing that up front can accelerate the design process and lead to better results (and as a reseller engineer, recognizing that up front can help me make better design and/or product recommendations).

But back to the morning walk, yes, little boys do like swings. 🙂