Reader Feedback and Insights: Old Is Not Bad

Hey, Ted:

Bill needs to think about what upgrading would buy for people like David and me , which is basically nothing, and certainly not near enough to justify the cost, time, and hassle. Bill says David should invest in an iSeries to "get some commercial advantage over the competition."  What competition? The competition is not about technology. David's company is competing with other players in their industry.  Businesses should receive benefits that outweigh the upgrade cost, which also includes becoming temporarily less stable (since there are always issues with upgrades).

All too often, our society feeds right into what marketers want: buy something new just because it's out there. Then the rest of us follow just because we see others doing it, but we don't think about whether the tangible benefits outweigh the cost. Score one for the companies selling the software or hardware and score a net loss for the company buying the upgrade. Guess what, the companies selling this stuff are all winning, we are losing. They laugh all the way to the bank, while we complicate our lives with constant technological change and increasing costs for technology that's rarely in place long enough to allow the user to break even. Step back and see if your business benefited enough or suffered unnecessarily in the technological changes of the past 10 years to 20 years. Billions and billions of wasted dollars!

I, being a developer in the industry for almost 20 years, realize there are times when technology needs to change. However, I'm amazed at how many people forget that the technology they call old was the newest and greatest thing less than five years ago. The business it runs has not changed, yet they are convinced without much study that the technology they have is no longer any good. 

David, don't worry about what neighbors like Bill say about your 'old' technology.  It's stable and works as great as it did a few years ago. Very simply, if your company will make more money because of the change than what it costs to make the change, then do it. If it won't, don't change your choice of technology just to satisfy the tech heads who forget just what the technology is in place to do for companies. It's not there to service Information Technology and internal tech heads' careers and egos.

-- Alan