Easy to say but hard to do. So what else is new in the world of IT?
Build once and use many times. The mantra to live by if you are doing just about anything in business. The only mantra that matters if you are in the business of building software?
CIOs have been rocked by the internet boom. First came the push to build “browser” ready applications i.e. applications that run in the browser. But you already had applications that could not be rewritten. So what do you do?
Put lipstick on the pig. Companies created “front ends,” used connectors and patched them to backends. One system for internal users; one for external.
If architected correctly, one could minimize duplicate development and the waste associated with it. But the waste was there and will be for a long time to come. There will be two versions of some of these software applications for some time to come.
Now, technology is making it possible to build one interface for both the web and the desktop. Are you in?
On the surface it makes sense but when we scratch it things start to get complicated. The issue is that in solving one problem are you creating a plethora of others? Till there is a lack of industry wide standards, this is going to be a tricky activity no matter how well meaning some or all the players are.
Now there is another issue that you must factor in: all those APIs that Amazon, Facebook, Google’s “Anybody-but-facebook” posse and others are releasing. How are you going to take advantage of all these services? Is there a place for them in your architecture?
In a way, the more things change the more they remain the same. Who said it was going to be easy?
