Posted by John Bledsoe on Thu, Apr 23, 2009
Does Yogi Berra, the quotable former New York Yankee baseball catcher, have any words of wisdom for information technology professionals working in a today's dismal economy?
"Why buy good luggage? You only use it when you travel," said Yogi. New hardware and software definitely aren't in most budgets today, so maybe we should start thinking like Yogi and work on getting more out of our old "luggage." Wouldn't this be an excellent time to work on integration projects with existing email, word processing, spreadsheet, database and ERP software rather than evaluating new technology that is not in the budget?
"I knew exactly where it was, I just couldn't find it," said Yogi. Doesn't this sound like a few network environments you know of where there is a massive amount of valuable data hidden from users in numerous data files and applications? Why not leverage the software and data your organization already owns with integration projects that put information in the hands of those who need it.
It doesn't matter whether you call it a mashup, portal or just a hybrid integration project. What's important is to get the most productivity and cost savings possible by using existing software and hardware when there is not money in the budget for "new luggage."
And there is no better time than now to move forward with existing technology to improve productivity in your organization. As Yogi was fond of saying, "If you come to a fork in the road, take it."