Sorry. 1 year. $2 Million.

Carnac the Magnificent was a Johnny Carson character (here is a refresher).  He gave the answers first, and then revealed the questions.  

Unfortunately Carnac is alive and well in businesses everywhere, where the not so funny joke in the IT organization to the answers “Sorry. 1 year. $2 Million,” address the questions:

• Can our current systems do this important thing?
• How long will it take to change the systems?
• How much money will it cost?

Earlier in my career I worked with a Fortune 500 company.  The company wanted to add additional currencies to their systems to purchase from some European vendors.   The answers I had to deliver to the CEO were “Sorry. 1 year. $2 Million.”

Our Canadian company was required to have a website with French Canadian translations.  The answers I gave to the Canadian company President were “Sorry. 1 year. $2 Million.”

We in the IT Department knew our systems were holding the company back.  We knew the business needed to be more nimble.  But knowing did not make the underlying problem go away.

Sure there were cases where we could be nimble and efficient.  There were also occasions where the systems could easily perform certain new tasks.   Far too often, however, the answers resulted in too much time and too much money.

Since we started TrueCloud in 2008, one of the most refreshing results is that we no longer say “Sorry. 1 year. $2 Million.”
   

A client called recently with a need for additional currencies.  He asked the standard questions of can it be done, how long it would take and how much it would cost.

My answers: “Yes. Do you have 10 minutes now for me to talk you through it? We don’t charge clients for this small of a job.” 

To the client needing a multi-language website, the answers were “Yes. It will take a few hours to import the translations. Your biggest cost will be having someone translate your content.”

Many companies, big and small, are still trapped with stifling IT systems.  If you company is among them, please take the time to look at some cloud computing alternatives.  In the cloud, the answers are usually:

“Yes. A few hours.  An affordable amount.”