« DAMA-Atl Website | Main | Vision for RTodd.com »
January 26, 2005
We are Not Prepared
One of the things I like to do when reviewing other peoples work is to pick out a thought that makes me stop and ponder the ramifications. Many times, I probably take the idea or concept down another road that the original author didn’t intend, especially when you don’t have the context or knowledge of the author’s thoughts.
“Organizations will still be critically important in the world, but as ‘organizers,’ not ‘employers’!” — Charles Handy
With the advent of distributed technologies like web services the idea of a corporation actually owning data, applications, infrastructure, or anything else is fading fast. Information Technology (IT) groups will become organizers of services, not employers of technology. Of course, if you are going to toss the technology out and give to the “Best Source(er)” then you had better develop a center of excellence around your ability to catalog, evaluate, and manage distributed technical assets. Neither traditional accounting nor IT has figured out a methodology of asset management unless you can place your finger on it. In a world driven by information and knowledge… Well “we are not prepared”.
Posted by Todd at January 26, 2005 12:34 AM
Comments
Todd -
[With apologies to others who've read my single note Y2K rants...]
To my way of looking at systems, the enterprise & metadata, Y2K was "just" a large, concurrent maintenance project with a fixed deadline.
As far as I know--please ANYONE chime in & tell me I'm wrong--the Y2K portfolio inventories went in the trash on or about February 29, 2000.
"Systems" is all about making changes... and when you make changes, always there's that little voice in the background... "Gee.. I wonder if I did enough impact analysis? I wonder if my change will have some sort of unanticipated impact...?"
I would label Y2K as "Lessons NOT learned..."
Today the production platform is splayed across mainframes, midrange (Unix, VAX, DOS/VSE, AS/400, ???), client-server and the Internet.
Given that the only constant is change, why is it so difficult to get companies to put some effort into groking their software portfolio?
- David
Posted by: David Eddy at January 27, 2005 1:05 AM