IT Organization: Building a Worldclass Infrastructure

Chapter 9. The Organization for the Twenty-First Century

Whether it's the twenty-first or thirtieth century, whether it's legacy computing, client/server computing or something new coming along in the next N number of years, if you're supporting mission-critical systems, don't tamper with something that's worked for several decades. As we mentioned earlier in the book, mission critical in the IT world is synonymous with mainframe computing, Please don't let mainframe computing turn you off. Keep an open mind as you read this section. Much of what we discuss evolved from the nasty mainframe era.

In our 1994 book, Rightsizing the New Enterprise, we made a comment which we still use at speaking engagements, "Don't trash mainframe disciplines." ...