The Harbour Pilot

IT is of course, information technology, referring to computers and related assets. Independent business is confronted with a spectrum of risks, well beyond bruising of the fingertip pads, and carpal tunnel syndrome. As distasteful as IT may be to many of us, it nevertheless needs to be reviewed. So screw up your courage, swallow your bile, take two ibuprofen, and come with me.

Most businesses these days have been enhanced through IT, in some ways that we now take for granted. All too often, taking things for granted is a source of unexpected trouble. In the following comments, I will assume that my readers are NOT developers, and are comfortable users, but not gurus. We can all find the on-switch, right?, and we can get to the internet, right?

There are several sources of risks, the least of which are the various hardware and software flaws. Here’s a handful

• Hardware Flaws.
• Software Flaws.
• Obsolescence
• Interoperability Dependency
• Dependency on Skills
• Reduce Barriers to Entry

At the moment, lets talk about the first three, which are a little more obvious. We’ll follow that up with the others…

Hardware Flaws.

Ignore them, they are at most an inconvenience, and an expense. Just bear in mind that you can really be comfortable getting one years use from a machine – any more is pure gravy.

Software Flaws.

They are a nuisance, they certainly exist, but they go with the territory. A piece of software might have 100,000 lines of code, written in several development languages, and comprise some 1,500 separate and interlocking components. The probability that they will all work flawlessly is remote. Most of the time, you will get 95% plus of what you require, and that is the most you can expect. A piece of software can be much more complex than an automobile, and you know how often they are in the shop. However, cars can be repaired on an as-needed basis, most software gets rebuilt every once in a while.

Obsolescence

IT people talk a great deal about something that they call the life cycle. What this means is that a given piece of software is not expected to last forever. Its feature set, its fundamental development environment, its programming language, and the various hardware and operating system technologies on which it is built, will change. At a certain point, it stops being sensible to continually revise and rebuild the code base. Just as steam powered tractors are now curiosities at rural fairs, IT assets become inefficient, barriers to productivity, and too expensive to maintain. The IT assets are then considered obsolete. Some examples – well Lotus 1-2-3, the venerable spreadsheeting program is rarely used anymore, despite its technical superiority. In part that is because the user community has switched away to Microsoft’s Excel. Novell’s networking software – netware – has largely been replaced by tcp/ip, because of its ability to interoperate with the internet. The PC’s DOS has been re-written and been replaced by, at the moment, Microsoft’s XP, which draws to a degree on Unix operating system approaches.
However, if you had invested time and money in such technologies some ten years ago, you would have confronted the fact that support is no longer available, and that your investment is hindering your efforts. The lesson to be learned here is that you must keep your IT projects as flexible as you can, and the IT window must be kept relatively short. Do not use an approach that indicates that you can expect a fi ve year pay-back window for IT – use 24 months. Take a lesson from those who implemented Enterprise Resource Platform or (ERPs). By the time you get the “ solution” fully implemented, it will be obsolete. For independent business, consider an off-the-shelf solution that accomplishes 80-90% of what you need, and supplement it with small custom components to tailor it. Do not bet the farm on a piece of technology no matter how whiz-bang it seems to be.

Bear in Mind

Nothing last forever, especially not IT assets. Think more like disposable razor, not real estate.

Question for You

Anyone else still using Windows 98, 1-2-3, or Dos? I still have a machine running that era!