Once upon a time, I was the guy who always wanted to play with the new “shiny,” whatever that happened to be. However, keeping up with the latest and greatest becomes an end in itself and IT architecture is about solving problems and enabling business.
Sometimes, dare I say a lot of times, the tried and true ends up being a good enough solution to a technical problem. I didn’t say best solution because new technology might mean I can do more, a lot more. And it might mean that in the long run it could save the organization some money. However, if we take a step back, the resources required to onboard the new solution means we are likely spending time, people, and capital which could be spent elsewhere. Part of architecture is figuring out if it’s best to where to spend one’s limited resources. If we are always going with the “best” solution, that means we will likely not be able to accomplish as much as an organization if we focused on best where it mattered most or gave us the biggest return.
There’s the old saying, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Maybe I just need a plain old SharePoint site instead of the latest content management system. Or perhaps the application I put in years ago running MySQL might be more “performant” running on a different database platform but users are fine with the current responsiveness of the application. Is it really wise to spend time upgrading from MySQL to something else? What else could you be spending that time on?
If a technology is still viable, don’t overlook it. Don’t get caught up chasing the “shiny” or the “perfect” solution just because you can. Sometimes, even a lot of the time, the truly best solution isn’t the best or newest tech. The best solution is the best solution for the organization because it solves the problem at hand and allows key people to move onto more important problems.