Have you noticed? Its the time of the year for virtually all the computer trade press to fill their pages with semi-knowledgeable predictions or guesses of what's going to be hot next year. Where will technology go next? Once I to participated in this annual ritual. In my younger days, (more than a decade ago), I forcefully asserted that UNIX was not a business operating system and was never going to become a commercial success. In my defense, this was before the AT&T consent decree.

With these historical credentials now well established, I feel safe resting on my laurels and not joining this years guessing games. However, I do have some more germane thoughts regarding the utilization of new technology. Having worked with numerous hardware vendors, Vars, and end users over the last couple of decades, some patterns of success seem to be visible. It is so very easy for the typical MIS shop to get totally bogged down in the day-to-day struggle to keep the system up and make the innumerable small fixes and changes necessary to simply maintain the status quo. Even when a company stuck in this cycle avoids major disasters, they are rarely truly successful -- they eventually get passed up by competitors who have been more technologically aggressive.

Pick has historically been a very proprietary (read 'closed') environment. Only fairly recently have various Pick vendors seen the light of Open Systems and begun to actually provide meaningful openness, but still we significantly lag the other major databases. In the past, Pick was able to remain proprietary because of the relative completeness of the Pick environment compared to the competition. Today's system vendors (particularly Vmark, Unidata, and those traditional vendors on UNIX platforms), aided by a number of new third party tools, are rapidly expanding data interchange and technology options. One side effect of this newness is that many of the longer term shops and senior people in our industry still believe its difficult or impossible to open up Pick applications and integrate them with new technology.

I suggest you make an effort to break out of your old views by setting aside some specific time to evaluate new technology. I'm not talking about emerging (so called 'bleeding edge') technology -- these are generally to risky for the typical small shop to implement. You hear about the sometimes spectacular successes in this higher risk arena, but they rarely publicize the spectacular failures. I believe most of my readers can achieve dramatic benefits without taking undue risks.

There is a huge collection of computer technology well proven over the last few years that is under utilized in our corner of the world. In the MultiValue community, everything from really usable E-mail to bar coding and scanners/wand readers, optical disk archival storage and imaging, EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) with customers and vendors, voice recognition and response systems, interconnection with phone switches for call distribution and transfers, and the integration of PC's, faxes, and other stand-alone data bases have all lagged the rest of the computer community.

These and many other technologies are no longer "bleeding edge". They are well understood and getting easier to integrate into your current computer operations every day. Look around your own company -- which of these ideas might save staffing costs or improve your efficiency and service levels? Service is the competitive edge these days. If you are waiting until your competitor forces you to add these services, you may find you've waited too long.

How do you integrate these ideas? For most of us there are two parts to this question. The most important part may be 'how do I make the time' to look into this? As pointed out earlier, many of us are too busy with the day-to-day problems to work on new technology. I am reminded of the cartoon you must have seen by now where the salesman with the machine gun is rebuffed by the Roman general wielding a sword -- "Not today -- I'm too busy fighting this battle." How do you make the time? Big companies have a Technology Officer who's sole job is to examine new technology and how it might benefit the organization. Most of us don't have this resource and have to make do on our own.

The first step is to learn about the technology. This is actually the easy part. Trade shows and industry publications such as this copy of News and Review cover both the manufactures press releases and the end users success stories with new technology. Every time you attend a show or read this newspaper you should be asking yourself "How might I beneficially apply this to my company?". The next step should be to have occasional brainstorming sessions with your top people (MIS and end users). Ask the really tough questions. Where is the business changing and how do we adjust? Where are we failing to provide needed services? How can we improve service efficiency or reduce turn-around? These types of questions will point to new MIS systems, major system changes, and the need to employ new technology. This process isn't easy, but takes less time than you might think.

Once you have a consensus and have embarked on a project using new technology, how do you implement it quickly? The answers obviously depend a lot on your individual project, budget, and internal skills. Some thoughts from my twenty five years in the business are: Consider a quick prototype rather than an all inclusive project -- it will show problems earlier and allow time to refine the final design. Talk frankly to vendors and other end users. Technology vendors often offer consulting or installation services that are cheap compared to a project failure. Other end users (found through vendor references, in articles, at trade shows and user groups) are often very willing to share what works and what doesn't, again saving learning it the hard way. Consider an outside consultant to get a quick start. You may not want to have the whole project done outside, but using a consultant to train your people and validate the design is worth many months of false starts and hands on learning experiences. Remember the old adage -- a learning experience is what you get when you don't get what you wanted!

I believe that today's successful MIS shop requires a balance of three major efforts. The unavoidable middle ground is the maintenance and gradual evolution of the existing systems to follow the changes in the business. The second is the focused and specific quality programs that identify and resolve deeper problems in the original designs and implementations. The last is to explore the changing options presented by new technology and to apply the best of these to the business. If you or your shop are stuck spending all your energy fighting the here-and-now fire fights, take a little more time to look forward and backward. The perspective you gain will undoubtedly improve your attitude as well as your success ratio.