Usability: Still your father's mainframe world

Sometimes I'm simply stunned by the fact that users put up with this userid madness. I mean, when we all logged on to our mainframe system running VM, that's pretty much the only login we had to do for the whole day. Now, we connect to a dozen systems and our user profile is never the same, let alone the passwords. Interestingly, IT companies talk about usability requirements, single-sign-on, password security, encryption and the like, however, they make it overly difficult for users.

When I started in my new job, the friendly IT guy gave me my new PC, my kensington lock, and a sheet with my userids and passwords. To do my job, I need to log on to my Windows XP machine, the VPN, the intranet, the extranet, a few applications, and Lotus Notes. Why is it that every system sports a different user id? One has my name, another a botched version of my name, a third has my initials and a number, another one my initials plus one other character and a different number. One has a dash somewhere in the middle... and so on.

Passwords? Same thing. Wherever I could change it, I instantly did. For others I needed to call the helpdesk. I almost got everything like I needed, even adhered to the password rules, but one thing I have yet to understand: When will we get rid of the 8-character limit for user IDs that we had in the 70s? I mean, it can't be storage, it can't be bandwidth, it can't be screen size. It's just silly, and I continue to be abittere because that last r violates some rule. Of course, my last name is exactly 8 characters long, but then IT would need to drop that important first initial A and that would violate another rule. Ugh.