01 August 2010

Escape from escapism

IT has to deal with hybrid system landscapes in which old and new co-exist. Alongside traditional custom and packaged applications there's increasing use of Open Source, Mash-ups and SaaS. The underlying infrastructure is a mix of classic in-house infrastructure and remote clouds plus an increasing diversity of devices that are IP-enabled and often location based, creating  an internet of things to deal with. It's now less about individual systems and more about interaction.

 

IT still seems to be in denial about the relevance and sometimes even the existence of systems that are more than couple of years old, fleeing towards new technologies that give the illusion of a perfect system but which inevitably – often before the system is launched – have turned into something unmanageable.

 

 21st century IT will have to grasp the nettle and learn to cope with both existing systems and new technology. Fundamental issues in this transformation are:

·         Lots of little bangs instead of an unrealistic big bang.

·         Mindset change from 'perfect' to 'essential'.

·         Move from Greenfield to brownfield architecture.

·         Not only Application Development but Application Demolition.

This is going to be a tough transformation for IT organizations who are still in denial and there'll be plenty of grieving before the realities and opportunities of the hybrid world are embraced.

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