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Technology keeps changing

Danny Greefhorst

Wednesday, 19 September 2007

One of the key trends in the IT industry is that technology keeps changing. Was your application developed more than two years ago? Chances are high that it does not comply with new technological developments, product versions or design best-practices. Did you just learn a new programming environment? The latest framework will require you to learn much of it over again. All these new technologies are simply added to the existing environment, since we just cannot affort to stay behing the competition. Also, IT professionals generally get a kick out of learning and applying new technology.

The effect of this technology turnover is now becoming clear to a lot of organisations; IT costs are high, knowledge of technologies is becoming scarce and systems are becoming brittle. Also, IT professionals are under constant stresss to keep up with developments. We are creating a huge technological backlog, that is becoming harder and harder to dispose of. Business keeps focusing on functionality and does not want to invest in cleaning up this technological backlog; their perception is that IT solutions do what they should do and do not require re-investment.

How do we get out of this technology rat-race? The answer is twofold: we need to be carefull in applying new technology, and we need to clean up old technology. With respect to the first: we need a technical architecture in which we carefully select new technology based on its maturity and applicability to the organisation. In addition, we need strong governance to support the standardization goals in this technical architecture. We just cannot allow the organisation to introduce technology that is not in line with the technical architecture.

With respect to cleaning up old technology; we need to reserve budget for technology migration. On the infrastructure side this implies increasing the yearly costs to cater for the migration to newer products and versions, and aligning with the product roadmap of the supplier. On the application side, this implies active application portfolio management with serious attention to the technical value of the application. It would be wise to consider introducing a depreciation time for applications, and simply rewrite them every couple of years.

The above measures should become standard practice of IT departments. It will take quite some effort to get there, but we owe it to the business to show that IT can be professional. Management commitment will be one of the main obstacles on the road, but is an absolute pre-requisite.

Comments (3)

	Written by This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it on 28-02-2008 10:22
	The "technology rat-race" wouldn't be such a devastating drain on resources like money, human knowledge and even energy, if the IT world would finally agree on standardization of interfaces. If interfaces would be well-defined and broadly accepted everyone could run at it's own pace with respect to technology refreshes. Not everyone gets a kick out of having the latest and greatest. I take the protocol definitions in the internet space as an example that it is possible to achieve this goal. So now how do we get to this point? By adopting the "technology independence" principle as stated by TOGAF. In my view the implementation of this principle means that standardization of the interfaces is the road to go. The interfaces then become the structure to hold the technology in place. Replacing individual technology components will not be so disruptive and can therefor be executed at an appropriate moment. See also my blog post http://www.itarchitecturecoach.com/2008/02/it-standardization-is-result-of.html Report

	Written by This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it on 09-05-2008 15:18
	Dear Peter, I totally agree with your statements on standardization. I think standardization is one of the main goals of an IT architect. However, there will always be a tension between business demand and IT supply. A standard solution is not always what the business requires. Regards, Danny Report

	Written by This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it on 09-05-2008 18:12
	Dear Danny, Business doesn't need standard IT solutions, but they can make their IT technology (refresh) a lot less costly if they would adopt standardization of interfaces, not solutions. No business can live in isolation and has to exchange also information with the outside world. Therefor IT architects should focus on the interfaces which in the end become the framework for the IT technology in use. I don't see a big tension here with business demand, actually I see relief. Regards, Peter Report

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