A couple weeks ago I posed the following open-ended question to a couple dozen of my weekly debunker readers:

"Why do so many IT departments love the status quo so much-why are they so reticent to change and make a leap forward to improve efficiency, costs, etc?"

Of course, this was a pretty big generalization, and a couple readers questioned my premise. But the response was excellent!

First, there seem to be five primary constituencies in this "conversation" :

• IT managers (CIO’s, CTO’s, IT directors)
• Systems experts
• Developers (software engineers)
• Other top (non-IT) executives
• IT Vendors

As if they were from Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and yes, Uranus (in no particular order), these groups see the world of IT differently. The intent of this survey is to start–not finish---dialogue among the key players so that they start better understanding where each other is coming from.

The following is a laundry list of reasons/rationales for the predilection of most IT departments to err on the side of the status quo. Thanks to all of you who responded--let’s keep up the conversation and send me your additional comments. Part I is just the first half of the list that continues in next week’s August 20^th debunker:

Whoa Nellie!

The pace and volume of new technologies is enough to keep even the most cutting edge IT types scrambling for ways to keep up. It’s easier, safer, and sometimes, perhaps, wiser to take a year or two off from reading any IT periodical or article or hearing a pitch from any IT vendor--and then step back in when the old "new" stuff actually works better. A CIO of one of Nashville’s largest public companies, wrote, " My first reaction (to your IT status quo premise) is that CTO’s, CIO’s are not reticent at all, but just have so much on the plate, as technology is changing so fast that it is hard to keep up…"

It’s not the technology

The cost of a new technology by itself (and the accruing benefits) is often not the issue–it’s the rest of the story that’s the problem. What drives IT folks to their internists for Prevacid is having to deal with the next hot (maybe very good/efficient) technology relative to older, entrenched technologies, systems integration, and the new skill sets and bodies needed to deploy that technology. Writes Rick Culpepper, Chief Architect and VP of Engineering at medibuy, "While forward leaps in technology may have a very real impact on the efficiency, costs, and even morale within an organization, the IT department generally has a LOT of work to do in order to deploy new technologies."

And of course this issue is exponential for technology companies, themselves, many who depend on 3^rd party software products for their building blocks. Changing one or more of those can have significant repercussions across a large customer base. Rick adds, "Technology vendors are improving the maintainability of their products and providing tools to ease migration from one release to the next, but the situation is far from ideal and requires a lot of "grunt" work by the IT professionals…"

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it:

Just kept the trains running on time.

This is a corollary to the previous IT status quo rationale. Today, Information Technology permeates virtually every facet of every company. The real fear is screwing up the business as it currently exists–even if things aren’t perfect right now. The consequences can be devastating. The status quo doesn’t seem so bad if there’s any reasonable chance that a new thing could inadvertently damage or break what’s working today.

Companies depend on their IT infrastructure for their very viability these days. These infrastructures are complicated, and many have been cobbled together over years. But for the most part they work and keep the company going. Writes Scott Smith, Senior VP IS and Engineering at medibuy, " one small system change, as logical and efficient as it may be, has the possibility of raising havoc on other systems and your ability to support the entire setup."

Nobody ever gets fired for buying Microsoft (the old adage used to be "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM")

Yet another corollary: Stick with the one that brought you to the dance–even though that might not be the optimal partner. Writes Mike Wicks, President & CEO of iNET Messaging, "Let's say you are a multi-billion dollar healthcare company.  You, as the head of IT, know that you can save the company millions by replacing your central intranet servers with light weight content routers and local low cost servers distributed through out your network.  Now you know this will work as long as you can complete the task and have the money to do but you also know that many times in the middle of the project it could be pulled. Then you're to blame for the project not getting done and having to reverse engineer…"

Techies love their tools

At the end of the day the people who write the code have to buy in to big changes in technology, or any major new initiative can be sandbagged. Even IT developers who see themselves as needing to be on the cutting edge and who typically take more risks than the systems IT folks usually like specific (software) tools to do their thing–not unlike other artists and craftsmen–and really don’t like to change, at least very often.

Writes Jim Aylward, CEO of Sy.Med, "They (developers) are meticulous and protective of their "art." They tend to latch onto a new tool, for example Cold Fusion, and have a very hard time changing. They have a high comfort level with what they’ve got and don’t necessarily like other "foreign" languages." Ken Pitts, CTO of TrustFile, adds, "even if handed the latest, greatest technology (regardless of the cost), tech types will often complain–they’d complain if you gave them the Ferrari of technology–since it would be a different tool."

Developers get cozy with their current tools and feel most productive with them. They resist big changes in anything that impacts their world--and sometimes fight tooth and nail against any changes; the company’s interests are secondary.

More IT status quo reasons & rationales in Part II on August 20^th!

And remember to send me your examples of your favorite business web sites. Thanks, and I’ll talk to you next week–or any time you want to contact me.

Tom Ranseen NoSpinMarketing 615.383.7157

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Tom Ranseen NoSpinMarketing 615.383.7157