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About a month ago we had some people over for dinner, and the discussion drifted to top-10 lists of the Letterman variety. As part of that conversation, I got challenged to name the top 10 worst IT decisions ever -- something I couldn't do then and still can't do now, which is why I'm asking for your help in defining the criteria needed and then identifying examples. The "rules," as I made them up, are that the technology component of the decision must have been subordinate to the business decision.
Re: The Top 10 List of Worst Business IT Decisions
Posted by: lfrank 2004-04-09 06:08:08 In reply to: Paul Murphy
I have always thought the Apple's decision to extract high margins on hardware rather then violume on software was a disaster. They have always been a leader in user friendly interface, etc. but gave Microsoft/Intel the primary user market despite a hugh lead in GUI, etc. As a result, they continue to be the also ran in the PC market place. Despite the obvious advantages, companies refused to pay the Mac premium for the "same" capability they could get with an IBM clone - althoguh they probably paid the difference in training and lost productivity!
Re: The Top 10 List of Worst Business IT Decisions
Posted by: erwin-k 2004-04-09 05:25:10 In reply to: Paul Murphy
While my post is not about a single incident, it shows the incredible stupidity and arrogance of the "brains" in the management at Commadore.
In 1982 or 1983 the Commadore 64 accounted for about 25% of world wide computer sales. In 1985 the company introduced the highly advanced Amiga series of computers. Like Sony in the Beta video format wars, C= was mighty proud of the product without knowing quite what to do with it.
A few years later Sun wanted to start a series of low end workstations as sort of an entry level thing. Sun wanted to license the Amiga OS for considerable $$$. Commadore turned them down flat.
Hollywood special effects people and other film industry techs liked & used the Amiga. When Star Trek IV (the one with the whales) went into production they needed a 20th century computer for a prop in a scene with Scotty & McCoy. They wanted to use an Amiga system. Commadore turned them down flat.
So they called Apple. Apple put an engineer and the latest, greatest, Mac on the next plane to L.A. The engineer was instructed to make the Mac do whatever was asked of it.
These are only two in a series of unthinking, bone headed, bean counter, moves that put the company under. (Or, as some Amiga fans say, they repeatedly shot themselves in the foot with a fifty calliber machine gun.)
In 1982 or 1983 the Commadore 64 accounted for about 25% of world wide computer sales. In 1985 the company introduced the highly advanced Amiga series of computers. Like Sony in the Beta video format wars, C= was mighty proud of the product without knowing quite what to do with it.
A few years later Sun wanted to start a series of low end workstations as sort of an entry level thing. Sun wanted to license the Amiga OS for considerable $$$. Commadore turned them down flat.
Hollywood special effects people and other film industry techs liked & used the Amiga. When Star Trek IV (the one with the whales) went into production they needed a 20th century computer for a prop in a scene with Scotty & McCoy. They wanted to use an Amiga system. Commadore turned them down flat.
So they called Apple. Apple put an engineer and the latest, greatest, Mac on the next plane to L.A. The engineer was instructed to make the Mac do whatever was asked of it.
These are only two in a series of unthinking, bone headed, bean counter, moves that put the company under. (Or, as some Amiga fans say, they repeatedly shot themselves in the foot with a fifty calliber machine gun.)
Re: The Top 10 List of Worst Business IT Decisions
Posted by: Nuke 2004-04-08 14:53:46 In reply to: Paul Murphy
No mention of OS/2 yet. I believe that what took it off the rails was IBM's decision to make it back-compatible with the 286 processor.
In those days people did not foresee the continuous cycle of hardware upgrades that we take for granted now. A 286 was regarded as the basic desk top for the forseeable future and a 386 was only for a power user. A bit like 35mm compared with 6x6 cameras, if you know anything about cameras - or horses for courses if you prefer. Therefore the 286, widespread in corporates at the time, had to be supported.
So IBM spent $guzillions and wasted maybe 2 years trying to get OS/2 to run on 286's (and with only 2Mb I believe). It was not easy because of the 286 crippled architecture, and it is not clear if they ever succeeded, because eventually the effort was overtaken by the start of the hardware upgrade race and the huge drop in memory prices - by then everyone was buying 486's and even 386's were toast.
Of course, the delay made Microsoft lose patience and led to their split with IBM, and of course to Windows.
In those days people did not foresee the continuous cycle of hardware upgrades that we take for granted now. A 286 was regarded as the basic desk top for the forseeable future and a 386 was only for a power user. A bit like 35mm compared with 6x6 cameras, if you know anything about cameras - or horses for courses if you prefer. Therefore the 286, widespread in corporates at the time, had to be supported.
So IBM spent $guzillions and wasted maybe 2 years trying to get OS/2 to run on 286's (and with only 2Mb I believe). It was not easy because of the 286 crippled architecture, and it is not clear if they ever succeeded, because eventually the effort was overtaken by the start of the hardware upgrade race and the huge drop in memory prices - by then everyone was buying 486's and even 386's were toast.
Of course, the delay made Microsoft lose patience and led to their split with IBM, and of course to Windows.
Re: The Top 10 List of Worst Business IT Decisions
Posted by: Paul_Murphy 2004-04-09 04:29:10 In reply to: Nuke
An interesting candidate. Thanks!
Re: The Top 10 List of Worst Business IT Decisions
Posted by: tungtung 2004-04-08 12:51:03 In reply to: Paul Murphy
I'm betting that Sun's refusal to put Linux on their servers will go down as one of the worst business decisions of all time.
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Alex
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Alex
Re: The Top 10 List of Worst Business IT Decisions
Posted by: Paul_Murphy 2004-04-09 04:30:23 In reply to: tungtung
Actually both BSD and Linux have been available on SPARC essentially from the beginning.
Re: The Top 10 List of Worst Business IT Decisions
Posted by: tungtung 2004-04-09 11:31:19 In reply to: Paul_Murphy
Oh, sure, it's available, but you'll never hear a Sun rep say, "We can give you your choice of Solaris, Linux, or BSD on Solaris hardware."
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The problem isn't availability, but Sun's unwillingness to push the currently hot technology. When Schwartz says, "We don't believe in Linux on the server." I hear, "We don't have a clue."
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Alex
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The problem isn't availability, but Sun's unwillingness to push the currently hot technology. When Schwartz says, "We don't believe in Linux on the server." I hear, "We don't have a clue."
.
Alex
Re: The Top 10 List of Worst Business IT Decisions
Posted by: handelbarr 2004-04-08 11:56:52 In reply to: Paul Murphy
How could you overlook the "Y2K" hoax? It was primarily a business decision (avoid business interruption) which business owners and leaders had a clear choice to buy into or ignore. The outcome was a business disaster for every industry except the IT industry, and the proof is that productivity gains due to IT investments were not recognized until well into 2002 and 2003. I believe business productivity should have been evident in the 1990's except for the hugh investment that businesses made in that period for IT upgrades that were never proven to be required.
Of course, I admit that I enjoyed the IT spending boost as much as anybody (my best years were 1999 - 2001) but it was still a business spending disaster in my opinion. I'm looking for a great 2004 as business gets back to enjoying higher productivity and smart IT investing.
Of course, I admit that I enjoyed the IT spending boost as much as anybody (my best years were 1999 - 2001) but it was still a business spending disaster in my opinion. I'm looking for a great 2004 as business gets back to enjoying higher productivity and smart IT investing.
Re: The Top 10 List of Worst Business IT Decisions
Posted by: gnuphie 2004-04-09 10:48:12 In reply to: handelbarr
I don't think the Y2K was a hoax. My company at the time (GE), like many others, had massive Y2K problems. The Y2K problem was definitely overhyped by companies trying to cash in on the hysteria, but if the hysteria wasn't there the management incompetents at companies like mine would have done NOTHING until it was too late. Even as it was, the GE management incompetents dragged their feet until the last possible minute, leaving the technical people like myself having to pull off a miracle to keep things running after Dec 31, 1999.
We did pull off the miracle but luckily I saw, like a few others, that as long as you have the pointy-haired in charge there would never be a future at GE. I left shortly after and they have since shipped many of the jobs overseas, a testiment to their own incompetence.
We did pull off the miracle but luckily I saw, like a few others, that as long as you have the pointy-haired in charge there would never be a future at GE. I left shortly after and they have since shipped many of the jobs overseas, a testiment to their own incompetence.
Re: The Top 10 List of Worst Business IT Decisions
Posted by: Paul_Murphy 2004-04-08 12:33:14 In reply to: handelbarr
I wonder. A lot of people share your opinion on this one - I don't, I'm in the camp of those who think the remediation effort avoided the disaster, but I've never seen anything that looked remotely like a definitive answer one way or the other.
<P>
On the other hand you'd still have a point even if I'm right about this because you could argue that the creation of the Y2K disaster by short cutting programmers represented a perfectly valid example - and I'd have to agree with you.
<P>
I didn't think of the Y2K issue, but I did think
of a class of disaster into which this one fits: lemming behavior. Real lemmings don't actually march of cliffs; but decision makers seem to have herd instincts that lead to this all the time (and not just in Apple ads) and I may devote a future column to some examples - like adopting client-server!
<P>
On the other hand you'd still have a point even if I'm right about this because you could argue that the creation of the Y2K disaster by short cutting programmers represented a perfectly valid example - and I'd have to agree with you.
<P>
I didn't think of the Y2K issue, but I did think
of a class of disaster into which this one fits: lemming behavior. Real lemmings don't actually march of cliffs; but decision makers seem to have herd instincts that lead to this all the time (and not just in Apple ads) and I may devote a future column to some examples - like adopting client-server!
Re: The Top 10 List of Worst Business IT Decisions
Posted by: abarter 2004-04-08 08:28:57 In reply to: Paul Murphy
One that I've had to deal with is on a low level, maybe not what you are looking for. Microsoft's decision, while probably making sense at the time, of putting ROM/System Use RAM in MSDOS from location 640k to 1024k was a problem. Later in it's life memory managers had to be made to leap over this part of system memory for programming to get access to 1meg and up RAM. Perhaps putting those at 0k to 384k would have made managing RAM in later versions of MSDOS easier. It was still a barrier until Windows 2000 I believe.
Re: The Top 10 List of Worst Business IT Decisions
Posted by: Paul_Murphy 2004-04-08 12:49:45 In reply to: abarter
As bad technical choices go almost everything about that one was a winner. The original bad choices go back to the process of ripping out the kernel/shell separation in CP/M to make it run faster on an Intel 8088 and so produce QDOS (not that MS has ever really admitted this happened; but they did settle a lawsuit on this very very quickly) but the expanded/extended memory choices have an even more chuckle worthy history.
<P>
IBM's System 360 used 24 bit addressing but 32bit "words" made up for four bytes. That "wasted" byte in addresses then became a target for programmers seeking ways to save on core (memory) use and eventually trapped IBM into continuing the 24bit structure pretty right up to the System 390s. One of the attempts to get around this was later copied by intel - the use of an eight bit latch to select which 24bit memory block an address went into.
<P>
What MS copied (intentionally or otherwise, I've no idea) was a consequence of the System 370 memory architecture in which the first 24bit address space had special properties and you couldn't buy enough physical memory to get near the 128MB accessible via the latched addresses - allowing some in memory addresses to actually point to drum or disk pages.
<P>
Some of that was treated as extended - meaning program accessible - and some as expanded - meaning hypervisor accessible (I may have that backwards. MS copied one of these (extended?) and
Oracle independently copied the other - resulting in an MS-DOS release that supported special drivers for both and confused millions of users.
<P>
IBM's System 360 used 24 bit addressing but 32bit "words" made up for four bytes. That "wasted" byte in addresses then became a target for programmers seeking ways to save on core (memory) use and eventually trapped IBM into continuing the 24bit structure pretty right up to the System 390s. One of the attempts to get around this was later copied by intel - the use of an eight bit latch to select which 24bit memory block an address went into.
<P>
What MS copied (intentionally or otherwise, I've no idea) was a consequence of the System 370 memory architecture in which the first 24bit address space had special properties and you couldn't buy enough physical memory to get near the 128MB accessible via the latched addresses - allowing some in memory addresses to actually point to drum or disk pages.
<P>
Some of that was treated as extended - meaning program accessible - and some as expanded - meaning hypervisor accessible (I may have that backwards. MS copied one of these (extended?) and
Oracle independently copied the other - resulting in an MS-DOS release that supported special drivers for both and confused millions of users.
