Where has IT gone wrong - Complexity

So here I am in week 2 and I'd like to thank all my friends for their words of encouragement - I do get the feeling I am tapping into a vein of discontent with the theme of my web site!

So where to start - I was just jotting down a list of subjects to discuss on "Where I think corporate IT has gone wrong - discuss"  and now it looks like the 10 chapters of a book - scary!

As I mentioned last week I was going to come back to complexity and that's where I should start. The world of technology is  wonderful  I know but it has left us with a very sad legacy and this can be explained in a very simple equation:

 

Flexibility ≡ Complexity   

(I didn't get too far in maths so be kind to me!)

In other words if you have many ways of doing things you will create an enormously complex matrix of interacting systems.

That is the legacy of over 30 years of IT investment. In fact you can see it best in those organisations that were early adopters - banks, insurance companies, airlines and telcos. Almost all have a very old system (dare I use the mainframe word?) whirring away in the background. It's the core of their business and the only thing that has differentiated them is how cleverly they have masqueraded it's existence with their customer facing systems.

I have a theory that these systems will start to get closed down when the guys who run them die - not retire which is where we are about now - no, they'll have to leave the planet before their systems are decommissioned. Then, and only then, will these companies be unable to change them, as the massively entrenched business processes that are buried inside them become un-changeable! Sorry guys! :-)

I know some companies in NZ are embarking on a process of "mainframe replacement" at the moment and trust me they are on a hiding to nowhere. 

Even worse are those companies who have grown through prolonged histories of acquisition - like insurance companies, telcos, airlines, banks and dairy companies! A walk round their data centres is an experience not to be missed with their menagerie of systems looking like a museum of sunset technologies - it get's me wondering what the antonym of cohesion is? 

Here we have the dreaded "spiders web of inter connectivity" which has been lashed together over many years by numerous tactical projects - if you want to see really rigid change management systems give them a call! Merchant banks - don't get me started!

Although these organisations are probably the worst exponents of the legacy dilemma every other company is the same - length of time and size are the only limiters.

The ability of the industry to solve problems simply and repeatably is woeful. The only way they have got close is by using monopolistic tactics to bludgeon the industry into "de-facto standards" - just another word for high market share in my world. Any time an egalitarian organisation has hinted at cross platform standards the industry rallies around and diversifies and attacks to ensure the chaotic status quo is maintained.

I'll discuss how IT departments have handled this complexity, or not, within their own organisations tomorrow.