We have a number of users who have MP3s in their home directories which are stored on our centralized file server. This has a negative affect on how long our backups take, how much drives space we need to have, etc. I thought about sending e-mails out for people to remove it with a notice that it would be deleted by a certain day but I don't feel that this is the right way to go about this. Many of these employees have music because it helps them work more efficiently and they don't have quantities that are excessive but the amount in sum across all the employees is still significant.
I have come up with a couple of ideas but each have their own problems:
- Idea: Allow Users to stream music instead of storing it
- Problem: Takes up too much bandwidth
- Idea: Move all the music to the users' local machines
- Problem: This would take significant effort on my department's part and we would then be responsible for doing things like redirecting the default directories for iTunes on people's computers so that data is stored locally
- Idea: Encourage people to purchase their own portable MP3 players by leveraging our corporate discount to offer employees discounted players
- Problem: Some of our users listen to podcasts, something that I have found extremely beneficial in my job, and may not have a computer at home to synchronize with
What are some good ways to handle respecting our users and getting the productivity and morale benefits that music affords without having to store users' music on our file server?
Best Answer
I'd be tempted to ask senior management just to send out a "remove and don't do it again" email - then you can do a monthly scan and give the management a list of those still doing it.
It's not a technical issue so don't make it one.