<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Julien / all -<br class=""><div><br class=""><div class=""><div class="">On Aug 07, 2019, at 5:24 AM, Julien Kirch <<a href="mailto:archiloque@archiloque.net" class="">archiloque@archiloque.net</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><div class="">For anyone who believes the marketing bs about these still operational systems “moving to the Cloud” I’ve got some Florida beach-front property to sell you. Priced to move. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The cracks in the “going to the Cloud” fantasy are just beginning to quietly surface. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The Cloud is effectively yet another layer of poorly documented complexity, built on top of existing decades old “legacy” systems. Reality is if an organization has a difficult-to-maintain collection of applications, moving to the Cloud means you will have TWO difficult-to-maintain messes.</div></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Finally, in my experience, maintenance in IT is often a more complex / difficult work than creating new systems: you have to deal with existing constraints, documentation is often lacking with important knowledge lost, and breaking the system has real consequences.</div><div class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><br class=""></div><div class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;">So in many places things are pretty dire, and I don't think they will improve soon.</div></div></blockquote></div><br class=""><div class=""><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">I’ve been in IT since 1970, when (for the next decade large clerical organizations — insurance companies, banks, mutual funds, etc.) back office paper flows were being furiously automated.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">Even as a clueless (history major, facile with details & obscure footnotes) newbie I did notice a core value of IT culture… “Smart people write new systems… dumb people maintain old systems.” The maneuvering to get onto a “new” project was intense. Today this manifests itself in $15,000 coding camps. As a coder one has at best a 15 year career until you’re deemed too expensive & your once hot tech knowledge is seen as out-of-fashion. In my day, all I needed to get another job was how to spell COBOL, IBM, JCL & CICS.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">It took several decades to grok that, as you say, maintaining existing collections of systems — a small Fortune 350 firm will have perhaps 800+ mainframe applications accumulated, cobbled together over the decades as the organization bobs & weaves to survive in the marketplace — is significantly more challenging than starting with a blank sheet of paper.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">Unfortunately the cultural / organizational rewards & psyche still favor “new.” Even when the “new” is just another layer hammered onto the side of existing systems.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">In 1986 I passed through a firm that in its hiring pitch went out of its way to describe itself as a “development” (e.g. “new”) shop. This was purely semantic hair splitting / hand waving. Something that took only two weeks was defined as “maintenance” (bad) vs more than two weeks was “development” (good). NOTHING could be accomplished in two weeks.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">On the realistic side they did (quietly) understand that it took a good journeyman programmer with 5 years experience about 18 months to come up to speed on the “nuances” of how the systems & culture worked.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">I have two bottom lines:</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">1/ - Harvard Business School (HBS) does not teach “systems” [1] as a required first year course, woven throughout all the other courses. (Old Army saying: “If the Army, in its infinite wisdom, thought you should have a wife, they’d issue you one.”) I leave it to the motivated student to translate that Army wisdom to the HBS experience.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">2/ - It ultimately takes dead bodies [2] — both literally & euphemistically for events like Equifax in 2017, CapitalONE currently & a $10M fine to Morgan Stanley (WSJ, 2018-12-16 "Finra Slaps Morgan Stanley With $10 Million Fine Over Anti-Money-Laundering Program”) to ever-so-slowly BEGIN [3] to garner attention.</span></div></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">
<div class=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; line-height: normal; border-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none;"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; border-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class=""><br class=""></div></div></span></div></span>_____________________________________________________________</div>[1] - “Systems” is NOT just learning to write code. Required reading for non-computer folks is Fred Brooks’ classic: “The Mythical Man-Month,” the story of creating IBM's mainframe operating system in the early 1960s — now 55 years old & rebranded to z/OS — where he points out writing code was 1/6th — 17% — of the effort.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">[2] - We’ve had a local tragedy. Seven motorcyclists (veterans, JarHeads) died when a truck driver with suspended license (on drugs, naturally) slammed into them. The RMV (Registry of Motor Vehicles) had been filing violation citations in a warehouse. More directly the RMV had a buyout a few years back where the oldest, most knowledgeable people — who I have to assume knew the systems — took the retirement package & ran.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">[3] - This point emphasized at my initial Congressional Y2K hearing where the US House subcommittee chairman offered that with difficult issues one needs to have pitched the issue 1,000+ times to anyone & everyone you can button hole. At which point someone you regard as intelligent & have explained the issue multiple times will come to you & have their “understanding" totally bass-ackwards. This is the the signal you’re BEGINNING to make progress.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><div style="orphans: 2; widows: 2;" class="">__________________</div><div style="orphans: 2; widows: 2;" class="">David Eddy</div><div style="orphans: 2; widows: 2;" class=""><a href="mailto:deddy@davideddy.com" class="">deddy@davideddy.com</a></div><div style="orphans: 2; widows: 2;" class=""><br class=""></div></div><br class=""></body></html>