Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
software integration efforts. Skill availability may become a major
cost factor for these systems, as retirement and other business factors
make experience with legacy systems more difficult to acquire and
retain. This is the least agile strategy possible, with legacy elements
hanging on and impeding integration of emerging options.
•
Cutting edge
—Enterprises with financial incentive and adequate
resources may replace systems every year or even more often, in order
to push performance to the very limits of available technology. Busi-
nesses that consume spare processing cycles for compute grids may
follow this path to maximize the CPU cycles per watt enterprise-
wide, while others may depend on the “latest and greatest” systems
to woo and maintain their customer base. Beyond being costly, this
strategy can translate into the most challenging environment for
users forced to deal with constant data migration together with appli-
cation reload and update issues. Shifting storage of user data to cen-
tralized servers can offset the disruption somewhat, by ensuring that
data stores remain intact. Data storage remediation practices such as
secure wipe and environmentally friendly equipment disposal efforts
present cost-recovery issues in this strategy. This strategy provides the
highest level of agility, because new systems can be acquired to meet
the requirements for emerging technologies and services.
•
The plum
—Businesses may replace systems on a priority based on
status, position within the organizational chart, or other internal
hierarchical mechanism for individual selection. By implement-
ing rewards of the newest technology, these enterprises have little
opportunity to benefit from economies of scale and create incredible
complexity for support and upgrade efforts. This strategy is excep-
tionally poor, due to long-term costs, support issues that will arise
due to complexity generated by minor differences between systems,
and ill will for those users who are not on this year's update short
list. This is typically a strategy employed in immature enterprise
environments, where technology purchase can be controlled by a
single individual and may be used solely to produce political good-
will for that individual. This strategy should be avoided.
•
The waterfall
—As in the “plum” strategy, the waterfall employs a
replacement scheme that depends on identification of the key users
or functions. These systems are then replaced, with the displaced sys-
tems shifted to second-tier use, those in turn to lower tiers until the
