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SuraLinkThe Challenge Of Choosing The Right Technology For Your Organization
Written by Walter Branning, Abacus Technologies
Hints Of Spring
Hints of spring are in the air, crisp mornings warming to balmy afternoons. Where the sun drenches you in its warming rays without toasting you in the process. Splashes of green brighten the senses as Spring creeps its way back from the dull tones of winter. The early flowers are in bloom and the buds are popping on the dogwood trees.
Many fishermen perk up when they see those buds, as there’s an old understanding in the South that when the dogwoods bloom, it’s time for the crappie to start biting. The promise of soaking in the sun on the lake hooking crappies after the long winter months, cheers the spirits of even the most occasional fisher. The more serious fishermen, of course, are more serious in their excitement but all are ready to gather around their favorite crappie hole.
However, not all the fishermen excited for Spring have crappie in mind. The bass fishermen know the bass are bedding down soon after the crappie and are excited to spend their crisp mornings and warm afternoons hitting their favorite fishing holes too. Regardless, soon there will be a steady stream of boats lining up at launches everywhere, and the banks and piers lined with rods.
Fitting Tackle To The Fish
If you were to take a quick glance at the gear and tackle of both the crappie fishermen and the bass fishermen, you could be forgiven for not initially noticing any differences between the two. Both have rods and reels, and both have tackle boxes filled with lures and jigs. But if you look more closely, you will start to notice subtle differences between the two.
Crappie rods tend to be lighter than a bass rod with a lower test line. The lures and jigs also look different. Crappie are generally smaller fish with smaller mouths than bass, along with different feeding habits. As such, artificial crappie bait is generally much smaller than bass. Crappie also tend to respond very well to live bait, with many crappie fishers dedicated to using crickets, minnows, and night crawlers for great results. While, in bass fishing, there is a rich tradition of using crank baits, some of which are nearly artwork in and of themselves.
We could go on for some time on the differences and, if we were to throw in catfish, saltwater variations, and trout fishing, we could spend hours upon hours talking. The key here, though, is that crappie and bass are two very different fish with different tackle suitable for them. This isn’t to say that there isn’t any cross over, many bass are caught on light crappie tackle and live bait, and crappie have been known to hit bass-sized top water lures.
Fishing In The Technology Pool
This isn’t a new concept. Properly fitting your tools to your needs is, in many ways, common sense. Yet, in the technology space, we tend to get bombarded with bright new shiny things all the time. Every day there is a new framework, library, or other new technology that promises to solve our problems. Many of these come with fantastic promises, and many with great success. But… The astute technology decision makers understand, just like the experienced fisherman, that success lies with intentionally fitting your tackle to your target.
New Lures
Many technology decision makers strike at new technology the same way that a new shiny lure may capture our eye at the bait shop, never mind that old hands know a catfish will hit stink-bait far more times than that flashy new spoon. In the same way, we must best match our organization’s technology investments to our organizational needs. It may be that the bright new shiny framework really does solve all our problems, but, it is also as likely that the stalwart and proven system that remains stable and actively developed, while not flashy or catchy, gives us the stability and maturity that is best suited to both our long and short-term needs.
It is this same reason why COBOL is still used in some old large institutions, against all expectations. It works so well at what it does and the overhead of updating to modern languages and platforms hasn’t been worth the cost. Will there come a day when that changes? Probably, but it may be further out than you think. Even then, it is only one in a long line of other legacy systems that we can point to and say the same thing. The reason is that large enterprise operations have the maturity to say, “Just because it is new and shiny, doesn’t mean it is the best fit for us.“
A Rusty Hook
To give an example: Rust is fast becoming a big name. It’s performance and memory safety make it a fantastic choice for building many software solutions and, it is the bright sparkly top water spoon in some circles, including big names like Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon who are now using Rust in production. These companies know their needs, know the limitations, and know their goals, and Rust fits their requirements.
Rust also has drawbacks that must be balanced to the needs of a company. For instance, it has one of the highest learning curves of all programming languages and the talent pool is much smaller than many other popular development languages. Turnaround times to develop and maintain software is going to be much steeper than some other options in comparable fields.
For companies like Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon, this is fine, but for many organizations, it doesn’t make sense to strike at the Rust(y) hook. In most cases, one of the many other options out there would better fit their needs for talent, assets, and budget. For instance, if a company needed an API, unless you are a huge corporation handling an incredible amount of traffic or processing an incredible amount of data, most companies would be well served by a FastAPI (Python), ASP (C#), or Go built API.
Once again, it is about fitting your technology to your needs. Rust is bright and shiny, but not necessarily the best business decision.
Old Corks
There is also the other side of the conversation that can’t be ignored. An organization also needs to be prepared to adopt new and emerging technology that will help them meet their goals. We can’t adopt an attitude of, “This is the way we have always done things, and the way we will keep doing them.” without doing the true due diligence of examining organizational needs and goals. To be unwilling to adapt to changing technology can be as detrimental as jumping on board every new thing that comes around. The argument could even be made that it is worse, since most new technology is trying to fix older problems or leverage advancements in underlying technology.
The Pier or a Boat
Example: Many older companies have legacy on-prem IT infrastructure, and indeed, most have a legitimate need to have some level of on-prem hardware for one reason or another. This comes with many upsides, including long-term savings, cost predictability, and better long-term cost to performance.
But the level of scalability and reliability that we now see with cloud offerings is truly impressive and has opened the doors for flexible infrastructure. Yet, this takes a shift in how an organization’s IT team approaches infrastructure administration and design. Is the old on-prem bad? Not at all, in fact, hybrid on-prem to cloud solutions are becoming increasingly popular. The long-term savings of on-prem, especially for resource intensive workloads where regional access isn’t needed, can greatly outweigh the speed and ease of deploying cloud resources.
But once again, it is about balancing organizational needs with technology. It may not make sense for an organization with a good deal of mature infrastructure in place to uproot and move to the cloud. In fact, it could potentially be a very expensive endeavor, but at the same time, cloud services can open up a lot of other cost savings in other areas that otherwise wouldn’t be practical. For less mature organizations, the flexibility, scalability, and lower upfront costs of cloud services can be an early game changer.
Know Your Catch
Making technology decisions is a challenge far more nuanced than choosing the right bass fishing tackle (no small feat itself) but a challenge that every organization faces. It is why organizations need to start with having an idea of what their needs are, and what their goals are. It doesn’t have to be perfect but there does need to be clear prioritization and goals. Needing to make technological pivots because of ill-defined goals and needs, without some forward thinking, can come with serious complications, upsets to business, and compounding costs. The more you know now, the less you have to pivot in the future.
While certainly not comprehensive, here are some example questions to ask when considering technology decisions:
1. Scalability Needs 🚀
Every organization has unique scalability requirements, whether gradual growth or the ability to rapidly scale on demand.
Considerations:
- Initial Implementation Cost – What is the upfront investment required?
- Ongoing Costs vs. Benefits – Will the long-term cost justify the advantages gained?
- Scalability Flexibility – Can the technology scale easily with your business?
- Speed of Scaling – How quickly does scaling need to happen in response to demand?
2. Performance Needs ⚡
What are the performance needs or limitations?
Considerations:
- Forecasted Demand – What is the expected workload, both now and in the future?
- Complexity of Development – Will the technology introduce unnecessary development challenges?
- Framework & Library Support – Does it support necessary tools, frameworks, or integrations?
3. Resource Efficiency 🛠️
Efficient resource utilization impacts both costs and performance, making it a key factor.
Considerations:
- Hardware & Resource Demands – Will the platform be resource-heavy?
- Cost vs. Efficiency Trade-offs – Does it balance resource consumption with financial feasibility?
4. Maintenance & Long-Term Viability 🔄
Sustaining technology over time requires active development and support.
Considerations:
- Active Development & Support – Is the technology regularly updated and maintained?
- Licensing & Compliance – Does the licensing model align with business needs?
- Customization & Flexibility – Can it be modified to suit specialized or evolving needs?
As you consider your company’s technology needs, if you have any questions or if you would like some assistance in thinking through these questions and more, please reach out to our team at Abacus Technologies. We would be happy to sit down with you to discuss your current situation as well as what may or may not benefit your company. Reach out to us by calling (844) 443-5900 or visit our website at www.abacustechnologies.com.