South African businesses continue to struggle with technology issues while pouring millions into new solutions for old requirements. How many different General Ledger implementations does a businesses experience in its lifetime? With all of the innovation and advancement in technology, one would expect old limitations to be replaced by new constraints. This is not always the case.
During the 1970s and 80s centralised computers hosted applications developed in 3GL`s such as COBOL with the presentation, application and data managed in one place. Reusable procedures from copy libraries enhanced productivity and quality. Hardware was proprietary and all elements of the application environment were tightly coupled. Management of these resources was relatively easy, but these environments were considered unproductive and expensive.
The 1990s saw client/server computing and new 4GL programming languages and CASE tools promise rapid application development and lower cost of ownership. It offered greater flexibility and systems could scale from a single workstation to large enterprise deployment.
A greater number of business stakeholders were included in joint application design (JAD) and prototype sessions. Object Oriented programming presented a better way to map technology to the real world - but required a fundamental shift in thinking.
On the flip side was the realisation that this open, integrated, scaleable model for computing was potentially even more costly and significantly more complex that the previous paradigm. People were slow on the OO uptake and continued to spawn spaghetti code - but now at a faster rate.
Meanwhile, as the price/performance ratio of computing resource improved, the layers of software mounted to soak up these extra computer resources. The net-effect was that the same old GL transaction was transformed from a character mode green screen to a sensory-rich Windows GUI screen. Now you could also do office automation tasks and surf the net at the same workstation!
So what do we have to look forward to? Let`s take stock. We now have a choice of open-systems computing products, the GUI user-interface, robust databases, mature packaged application software, stable networks and the Internet.
The Internet has allowed many businesses to achieve competitive advantage by extending their systems to incorporate their suppliers, intermediaries and customers, and realise the benefits of e-Business. But it`s still complicated and expensive to deliver new competitive solutions; more systems need to be integrated; it is still difficult and risky to change systems; and we are still threatened by technologies that go obsolete on us - but this time at an even greater rate.
Industry gurus talk about object, component and services application frameworks as the way to achieve greater productivity, flexibility and integration. An application framework can offer libraries of `building blocks` - reusable templates, blueprints and business components - that can be assembled into working solutions with fewer resources, less time and greater flexibility than previously possible.
Many organisations are defining architectural frameworks that support the concept of service delivery across multiple levels of business and technology abstraction. The strategic goal is to resolve five key IT issues:
- The gap between the articulation of a business need and the means by which technology is harnessed to support it;
- Inability of IT to keep pace with the increased rate of demand by business;
- Lack of flexibility to accommodate change and integration needs;
- Dependency upon technology and technologists; and
- How new technologies will accelerate convergence of media and appliances
These issues may be addressed by considering approaches to modelling, productivity, flexibility and separation. In the ideal world, business people should be capable of delivering and maintaining systems with the speed to market they desire. These systems should also exist within an integrated architecture that allows the enterprise to view all resources across the enterprise. And these systems should extend to trading partners, intermediaries and customers. Wow! And you are still trying to get the General Ledger working for the nth time!
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