Need A Change? Newer Isn't Necessarily Better

We all love new, shiny objects. When the washing machine dies, most of us don't run to an appliance store that sells used models or parts to repair your machine. You drop the money on a new one with all the bells and whistles.

Same goes for enterprise technology. When a legacy system starts to fail, our eyes tend to widen as we evaluate all the fancy toys on the market. Absolutely everything in hardware and software is about novelty — yesterday's innovation is tomorrow's doorstop.

While it doesn't appear as glamorous as the newest, most disruptive technology, often your old systems can be updated to deliver the performance your organization needs, saving your business the money and time associated with "rip and replace" projects.

During the pandemic, IT scaled back on higher risk new investments and looked at how they could invest in the systems they already had. In a post-COVID world, this trend hasn't changed, even as IT spending returns to pre-pandemic levels. Even though there is increased investment in projects to better service hybrid work environments as well as the hot new trends like hybrid cloud, organizations are realizing they can save valuable time and money by modernizing existing technology rather than throwing capital at the next big technology trend.

It's only natural that IT leaders would consider replacing systems they believe are outdated, especially if there is a perception that the systems cannot natively support a need of the business. In fact, that's often the first order of business for new CIOs when they walk into an IT organization. What often is overlooked, however, is...Continue reading