The Great Technology Refresh of 1999: Fear, Control, Entropy, then Value

Fear

I started my professional IT career in January of 1999, which was a fantastic time to start. The world was careening toward the ticking time bomb of Y2K, and IT budgets were infused with capital to squash the bug and usher technology-dependent enterprises into the new millennium.

I don’t know first-hand how IT was run before 1999, but I saw evidence of it. IT wasn’t much of an enterprise function before then. Technology was a hodge-podge of unstandardized components, put together at the whim of the distributed business people. Computers, networks, and systems were disparate and localized. It took the crisis of Y2K to bring forth the Great Technology Refresh, which is what IT wanted to do all along, but up until then, didn’t have the clout or budget to pursue.

Control

Fixing the Y2K bug was doable when you had standardized computers, networks, and systems. For the first time, we had a well-managed environment, and it was a beautiful thing. IT was finally enterprise-grade and enjoying the investment it deserved. How long did this state of standardized enterprise IT blissful nirvana last? Not long.

In the following two years, everything changed. IT budgets were slashed. The Y2K investment was so big, it was unsustainable. Frankly, the business had an all-new bright and shiny IT environment. Further investment wasn’t urgently needed. Then, we had the dot-com bubble burst. All of a sudden, the world stopped consuming and investing in technology.

Entropy

What happened when we stopped the cycle of consuming and investing in technology? Entropy. The beautifully standardized IT environment started the slow degradation from order to disorder. No one intended to dismantle all of that progress, it just happened. Fortunately, technology investment and consumption did recover over-time, and IT organizations got enough investment to maintain relatively sustainable health, but it never again reached the level of the Great Technology Refresh of 1999.

It’s funny. Growing up, the year 2000 was the symbol of the distant and fantastic future. Now, it’s the good-ole-days. Enterprise technology professionals now look back at that era with nostalgia, recalling the fantastically standardized systems and wondering if we can ever get back to that state.

The technology refresh scope in 1999 was comprehensive because whatever wasn’t standardized, might not work on January 1, 2000. In 2017, we do what we can. We don’t have the funding or power to do it all, so we do what matters most. What do we do with the rest? We do our best to risk-manage it, hoping it won’t bite us. Sometimes it does, but most of the time it doesn’t, thus validating the approach.

Value

So, what’s the point of this blog article? I think it’s fun and interesting to understand past goals and motivations. We should admit to ourselves that IT wants to party like it’s 1999, but the business won’t let us. We should also understand that the Y2K crisis made that possible, not normal business conditions. That’s not to say we should keep our fingers crossed for the next Y2K-like crisis to hit. That’s not an IT strategy. We lead with value, not fear and control. Legacy costs steal from investment opportunities. IT budgets can grow when they are connected to business outcomes. Standardization is good, but so is customization, agility, and adaptability. We’ve learned a lot since 1999. Let’s not go back there. Let’s go forward.

Read this article on my blog site: https://zachonleadership.com/the-great-technology-refresh-of-1999-fear-control-entropy-then-value/