Bob,

On Sun, 27 Mar 2005 07:02:53 -0500, Bob Ammerman wrote:

> I large suite of DOS applications that I developed starting in 1984 is still 
> being used today by one of my customers. It is a very critical part of their 
> business. I have several times provided them with the potential of upgrading 
> them to a Win environment, but they are happy with them and see no reason to 
> spend the $$. However, they have had a in-house development project going on 
> since 1999 to build a replacement for my system, but delivery of that system 
> is now 4+ years late!

Ah, I know that feeling!  I've had two systems that I've designed and built (with a team working for me) which 
were later (for political reasons) said to be "old technology" and projects to replace them were put in place.  
Estimates of 6 months to implement the system using "the latest technology" (how we laughed!).  I know that 
one had failed to be implemented after 5 years, I never did hear what happened to the other (I moved on) but 
it was at least 18 months late, if it ever did go live.  Both of these were line-of-business systems, 
basically running the companies that used them, and were designed for exactly the way they work.  I think the 
problem is that some people in our business get too tangled in the technology, and forget that the requirement  
is to do what the users want, not to get clever with the technology!  Or worse, to try to make the problem fit 
the solution that they like...

...for example one system (distributed around the country in a number of branches) used ISDN for comms, 
dialing between the centre and each branch twice a day to swap data.  The Brave New Solution proposed by the 
new people used a central database (I forget which, but one of the big names) so had to have leased lines 
installed to each location, and each transaction had to refer back to the central.  This was before ADSL so 
we're talking a *lot* of money!  The users didn't need live data for each location, just for their own, so 
having a central database rather than one at each site wasn't needed, but they had to pay for it anyway 
because the new IT people wanted to use the solution they had used before.  I don't know if it ever worked, 
and I know it would have been slower than the system I put in.

It sometimes disgusts me the way some IT people seem to see their job as using the technology, rather than 
solving the problem!   (/rant)

Cheers,


Howard Winter
St.Albans, England


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