Building out applications has been a topic in these editorials for a few editions. It sort of started with the need to be innovators and drive that all forward at the clients/companies we all support.
There are so many choices now. With our own systems, I really struggle choosing platforms for specific projects. Which is best is not simply a matter of “what are we standardized on?” any more. It’s not that simple and it really does required that you take a bit longer to weigh options if you’re to get it right, I believe.
Some questions to consider:
– What are your in-house expertise levels? It’s important of course because you’ll have to support whatever selection you make. But if your in-house expertise options are limited, in addition to pointing the way in the current platform selection, I would respectfully suggest it may be time to expand those. You or your team can quickly get up to speed on options and start to understand what it takes to deploy on those options. It will add different choices in the future that an be nothing but good for your supported companies.
– What is the lifecycle of the project in question? This is important to understand fully. There are some projects that are quick, one-off projects. In those cases, your options are less critical in terms of weaving the item into an overall plan and may more importantly need to key off of cost and functionality issues. If the project lives on, becomes part of the fabric of the company, a more strategic selection may be needed. Tactical vs. Strategic can be a huge definitive decider here.
– What applications do you need to support? Of course this is a killer question. If the application is database agnostic, you can do pretty much whatever you need to. But if you have specific support requirements, perhaps that alone will drive your platform selection. But I would also suggest it’s a bit more complex than this. If the data you’re generating must be used by other platforms or applications, make sure you take that into account as well. Make sure you can support those data transition activities that may be required.
I think platform selection is more and more critical to the cost structures of IT departments, to the performance metrics of data professionals and to just flat delivering on the applications and solutions we all support. It’s important to have a careful, open mind to options you have before you, which are comprehensive and impressive, as you go forward on an application-by-application basis.