The Catch-22 of companies and technology

水能载舟，亦能覆舟 (water can float a boat, or sink it). The same applies to technology and organisations.

Your company had recently decided to leverage technology to do business. "Sure, why not?" you quipped. The widespread use of computers and technology have been propagated due to the constant evangelising that its use will have more pros than cons. But just how many people really understand the pitfalls of technology? Granted, proper use of technology allows companies to cut costs and improve efficiency. The question is: How long will the technology last? And will you have the manpower familiar with it?

As with any software development life cycle, the process begins with the requirements gathering. Budgets, time, effort and all resources are factored into consideration. Then ultimately, the group settles on a specific technology out of a few select candidates. The decision may seem to make sense at that time. But can this decision still apply five or ten years down the road?

A very long time ago, FORTRAN, C and Visual Basic were seen as forefront of technology in programming. Nowadays, C++, Java, C# are the usual suspects. The newcomers to the arena include Ruby, Python and even Cocoa is getting in on the act. In using technology to enable their businesses, companies must play catch-up with technology. This means a revamp of the entire system every decade or so. Wouldn't this boils down to added cost? By introducing new technologies that better older generations, designers of programming languages inevitably force companies to abandon their legacy systems in favour of newer, better performing ones. From scratch!

Now, I'm sure you don't see much of a problem in doing so. The company may not even decide to update themselves despite being at risk labelled as old fogeys. Would this be any more convenient? This is where it gets tricky. In order to maintain support for the old system, the company would need to hire an employee familiar with the technology of that system they use. This person will handle operational support, bug fixes and occasional change requests. Not a problem you say? Until the person decides to go job hunting.

Assuming the company can survive for more than 10 years without folding, good for them. But unless they have sufficient capital to fund a revamp of their system, they're stuck with what they have. The question I have at this stage is: will the company be able to hire a replacement that can suitably take up the role of the person that had left for greener pastures? You see, older technologies get phased out in schools in favour of educating the younger generation with newer techs. This means the pool of talent in the job market that knows Visual Basic ages with your company and basically stagnates easily.

The bottom line, technology can certainly help companies in their businesses, but unless the organisation can rake in big money with the aid of technology, they better tread wisely, making sure they are utilising something that won't die off so easily, or pay handsomely to their IT employees to keep them from running. If all else fails, these companies should probably stick to using pen and paper to do their business.

(yeah sure, i may well just be rambling on about something biased and illogical. go ahead and let me know what you think.)