• by November 16, 2007

The reference to the lag caused by ongoing legacy costs is important. It seems for decades those of us in IT have waited for legacy apps and databases to be replaced. Instead, new Internet based technology has worked around it -- consider SOA for connecting to legacy data and applications as the convenient, cost-effective way to leverage the new web access platforms.

IT moves ahead so quickly now that there isn't time to wait for the "old" to be run down and ripped out. We have come up with tools that enable firms to hold on to what they are used to working with, getting continued value out of the old while layering on new prductivity tools . It is making for a faster transition than could be achieved by "rip and replace." Given the speed at which technology moves ahead, by the time large technology replacement projects were completed and adopted efficiently, they'd already be obsolete. Or, new techniques wouldn't see the light of day while we waited for firms to spend on their total enterprise replacements.