Software challenges—large organizations
E. R. Bond · Fall joint computer conference · 1987
The comments describe five items that are significant challenges in large decentralized organizations.Of the many problems that we face in managing the deployment of information technology in large organizations … particularly large decentralized organizations, I will comment on the five that I find most challenging.The first of these has to do with the dilemma arising from the desire to purchase more application-ready made solutions but finding that components that make them up are not consistent with individual corporate standards. Notions of layering such as in the OSI model or preparing for increasingly interconnected systems, or use of standard data base methodologies or embedded security/authentication features, etc. are frequently not found in the packages.Given the lack of industry-wide system's infrastructure standards, the growth and richness of product offerings, product differentiation characteristics, and the existing embedded base of technology, there are inherent conflicts with make/buy tradeoffs. The conflicts may even be growing. With pressures on the banking/financial services sector for improved tactical results, achieving strategic visions involving distributed processing made up of multiple vendors is still a long way off.The second item derives from the first. If one envisions distributed processing systems that are global, interconnected, composed of components of varying price/performance/functionality/ and vendor make, what are the underlying fundamentals that should be utilized in the logical and physical placement of these capabilities. Simply stated, what are the principles that should determine how to distribute functionality across the corporation.The third issue has to do with design for and managing risks arising from security, authentication, Trojan horses and failures in these meshed networks.The fourth issue deals with achieving effective merging of the specialty areas of telecommunications, office automation, DP centers, application software and data base administration to effect a total solution capability. Not only from a “build” perspective but from an operate, maintain, service and user marketing perspective.The fifth deals with disciplines. How to develop good practices in the so-called naive end-user community. They are in the process of learning, making the same mistakes we made and rediscovering everything we learned back in the 50s, 60s, or early 70s. The large central organizations are loosing influences. They no longer are able to harass or bureaucratize the users to deal with issues such as documenting programs, adhering to standards, implementing data security and recovery techniques and resolving data integrity issues. The users have a growing self-sufficiency that makes them no longer naive. They outnumber the “old guard”.