Feature Parity

On many occasions when my colleagues find themselves talking to IT executives they hear how the executives have a suite of aging applications built using soon to be, if not already end of life technologies. More often that not these systems are hosted in costly data centers managed by 3rd parties and with inflexible contracts. These applications are critical to the successful operation of the business, while at the same time being one of the largest sources of business and operational risk.

One approach in this situation is to try to minimize the impact of replacement on the broader organization by 'simply' replacing the technology while leaving everything else 'as is'. Whilst Feature Parity often sounds like a reasonable proposition, we have learnt the hard way that people greatly underestimate the effort required, and thus misjudge the choice between this and the other alternatives.

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