Standards: How Varied Are You?

by Stephen J. Andriole

Variation in your environment -- whether furniture, heating, air-conditioning, transportation, or your technology infrastructure -- is expensive. But while there are great savings embedded in standardized environments, the whole is fraught with emotion. Nearly everyone in your organization will have an opinion about what the company should do about operating systems, applications, hardware, software acquisition, services, and even system development lifecycles. Even the people who have nothing to do with maintaining your computing and communications environment will have strong opinions about when everyone should move to the next version of Microsoft Office. In fact, discussions about standards often take on epic proportions, with otherwise sane professionals threatening to fall on their swords if the organization doesn't move to the newest version of Windows (or Notes, or Exchange, or whatever).