One of the main tenets of Buddhism is mindfulness – the ability to be totally aware of the moment. Adherents of all branches of Buddhism meditate daily to train their minds to have "clear comprehension" and see things objectively and impartially.
After 20 years of involvement in IT, I can safely say that mindfulness has not been an inherent trait of most IT organizations. Sadly, from many perspectives, it can be said that "mindlessness" has been a better description of IT.
Many costly strategic decisions have been made based totally on technology prejudices, zealous preferences or knee-jerk reactions, without analyzing the true business impact. Many companies have wasted a good deal of time, resources and money on the latest IT “project of the day”. Data warehouses sit idle with data that hasn't been updated in years. Expensive Asynchronous Transfer Mode campus networks have been implemented, only to be ripped out before they are fully depreciated and replaced with Gigabit Ethernet. Budget-breaking CRM systems have been implemented that are rarely used because of their complexity and high support costs.
Unfortunately, we haven't learned from these mistakes. Companies still make knee-jerk IT decisions without analyzing the overall finances, risks and business impact. With the current need for companies to focus on their returns on investment, it's even more crucial that IT decisions be made objectively and impartially.
Take virtual private networks (VPN) as an example. VPNs can generate substantial savings in many situations – especially in the areas of remote access, corporate office connectivity, Intranets and connectivity to lower-revenue generating locations; however they are not an across the board panacea for lower network costs. Being Internet-based, VPNs can't offer the same availability, redundancy and quality of service that dedicated connections provide. So while VPNs might be acceptable for small branch offices, they probably aren't the best choice for situations requiring mission-critical connectivity – yet many companies are doing wholesale replacement of their dedicated WAN links with lower-cost VPNs. Instead of being mindful of the business impact in terms of extended mean time to repair, degradation of network performance, lower user productivity and potential lost revenue, they are blinded by the lower cost and make a knee-jerk decision.
Along with avoiding knee-jerk cost-cutting decisions, IT personnel need to also guard against making zealous technology-based decisions. It's easy to be blinded by a technology's technical elegance. An open-source PC-based IP virtual call center solution with skills-based multi-location routing is very elegant. However its business value can be questionable if the skills needed to design, implement, support and manage the platform are not available. It may be easier, faster and more cost effective to utilize a third-party call center service – especially one that has proven skills in customer service.
LAMP-based Web architectures (Linux, Apache, My SQL, and PHP) are very elegant but may bring limited value if your developers are Microsoft-centric with experience in .NET, C+/C# , SQL Server and IIS.
IT departments need to be impartial in their analysis to understand where a technology will fit and where it won't. A technology's only value is in the need it will meet. If the need isn't there, the technology -- no matter how elegant -- has no value.
And to complicate matters, technology is rarely a question of “either/or”. More often than not, the most appropriate strategy is a hybrid mix of new technology and legacy infrastructure which requires even more objective and impartial analysis to insure optimal value.
IT managers need to be mindful of the all the benefits, risks, costs and business impacts of their decisions. IT planning needs to be objective and impartial to ensure the technology architecture is not the product of the latest vendor-driven fads, but rather is a cohesive, business-focused strategy that focuses on the overall goals of the business. Now excuse me as I go meditate.
