Climbing Aboard the Starship Enterprise

If you are a large organization, you breathe a huge sigh of relief when you adopt technology.

Then the headaches kick in.

A new version comes out. One upgrade broke another system...until you bought that upgrade too. Now your employees need new machines: the old ones are just so slow.

By the way, the good news is, there's a new Operating System to buy. The bad news is, it's full of bugs and security holes.

Uh-oh--security! I bet you didn't give IT Security a second thought when you put all this together back in the '90s. You slapped McAfee on everything and called it a day, right? Oh, dear--you need firewalls. And countermeasures. Hrm...but you also need to make sure the guards don't punish the peasants: let the right people pass in and out of the gates, and keep the wrong people out. Don't forget to keep an eye on everyone so no one's sneaking your goods through the gates: your enemy pays a high price for your intellectual gold.

What to do with all this growth? "Go Enterprise", they say. The word "Enterprise" signifies a bold business venture. It's both Star Trek and an aircraft carrier--sounds pretty robust.
Enterprise IT is robust. The simplest explanation is this: it manages big systems, in a big way, by thinking big.

And requires you to chuck everything out the window and start over. Really, when IT scales to the Enterprise, it's a good idea to build out the entire infrastructure for an Enterprise scale of operations, and it's a bad idea to try to get there by just bolting on pieces-parts to an existing system.

This is when you start to realize that the NASCAR way is not your way: you don't need a ton of stickers on your Formula One, you just want a couple. No, I don't need Microsoft, SAP, HP/Compaq, Cisco, Symantec, IBM, and some third-party vendors to wander around tinkering with things: just Dell and Microsoft will do. Maybe some Cisco to tie it all together.

Time for another huge sigh of relief: the system is done. It's out there for everybody--Intranet, Internet, Extranet.

So now what? Time to sit back, and reflect. No, really--reflection is good for the soul. Amidst that hive of activity, there are a lot of busy bees bumping heads. You need to turn your gaze inwards. Work that Enterprise system to build a better Enterprise. Use Reporting to tell you what everyone's doing, and how it's working out. Use Analytics to uncover how they're doing it, and see if maybe they could be doing it better.

Are you ready for the challenge? Because the last thing you want to do is outsource it. Vendors will line up at your door if you say you need Business Process Reengineering, and they'll eagerly drop all those buzzwords that got you into IT in the first place: "out of the box", "robust", "turnkey", "integrated" and of course, the twins: "zero configuration" and "high ROI".

At the end of the day, nobody cares about your company like you do. Care enough to find good people who'll commit to the Enterprise. Bring them in, put them to work, and treat them well. You'll find that everything you do isn't as disposable as it once seemed. You'll see that there's a price for dumping developers back in the ocean and fishing around for more. It costs time and money to jettison Project Managers and have the new one rebuild political bridges. And no one knows your systems like your Analysts do. They're the ones who understand your users, and figure out how your IT can serve them.

More headaches? Well, yes and no. More of a brief aftershock, followed by an epiphany. You'll know that an Enterprise-level company deserves a system to match. And you'll see that everyone being on the same page will always serve the Emperor better than a land of fiefdoms.