IT strategy - Down but not out

Client/server has become old hat – before most IT users and many consultants really worked out what it was in the first place. In the US, IT directors are more excited by new buzz terms such as “integrated applications” and “Internet-enabled”. Like so many crazes in the IT world, client/server was overhyped, and then a combination of fatigue, disillusionment and confusion set in to topple it from its premier position in IT buyers’ hearts.

But the concept of client/server computing is far from dead. Just as the notion of client/server – splitting applications, data and processing across different platforms, usually with localised desktop machines or clients accessing information from centralised databases – existed long before the term hit the headlines, so it is now too firmly entrenched in our working practices to go away.

It is vital for users, IT managers and particularly consultants to realise this, because client/server working has become part of corporate life even when such computing projects have not always been entirely successful.

The real revolution has been nothing to do with technology, but has been in management style and working practices. The fundamentals of IT are not so different to those of a decade ago. For instance, the mainframe has not disappeared, even if it now, more fashionably, calls itself a superserver. Corporates are as interested as ever in huge, monolithic business applications such as SAP, despite the hype about running core software on networked PCs. Windows 95, the big splash of last year, and this year’s much-vaunted network computer, are just the latest steps in trends that are, in IT terms, ancient-graphical user interfaces and simple terminals for accessing information from a central point.

In the world of corporate structures, however, we can see a genuine sea-change. Here the old hierarchies have been replaced with flat structure, cross-functional teams, “virtual teams” where members rarely physically meet, mobile working, empowered and highly skilled employees making their own decisions rather than hosts of workers supervised by many layers of management. Few companies have adopted this approach wholeheartedly, and many will revert to more traditional organisations, but the point is that no traditional approach now goes unquestioned and almost every company at least considers adopting a “client/server” way of working.

The key to success is to introduce the working practices and the IT underpinnings in a co-ordinated way, so that one supports the other rather than working against it. This has rarely happened and the divergence between how people work and the IT that they have to support this has been responsible for a huge proportion of so-called client/server failures.

This is where consultants can play a valuable role. Companies desperately need a middle link between IT and business. Despite all the talk of bridging this divide in culture and methods, it has happened in very few companies.

The functions that must be involved in any dramatic change in working methods – IT, human resources, training and so on – are all pursuing their own agendas and have little comprehension of each other’s. Small wonder, then, that the computing systems that are developed at such great cost seldom fully support the new working methods that are introduced.

These methods, nowadays, are almost sure to be based on “client/server” approaches – decentralised decision making, flat management, empowered users reporting into a small but powerful central team. All these management trends can only be put into practice if the information needed to make decisions can be delivered to the desks of the newly responsible managers and employees, and that means client/server computing.

Forget whether to keep mainframes as servers, or to introduce Unix or NT, or to select PCs or the new network computers as clients. These are easy decisions compared to making whichever technology is chosen really work for the company. Even the notorious problems of client/server – which have kept technically specialised IT consultancies in good money for years now – such as new programming skills, complexity of multi-tiered applications, exploding maintenance and testing workloads, pale into insignificance beside the reworking of corporate organisation and methods that will be required if client/server computing is to have any impact beyond inflating IT development budgets and cutting the maintenance bill on the mainframe.

So management consultancies, especially those that get heavily involved in strategic IT projects, certainly should not be writing off client/server as a source of work and income. You may want to change the terminology in your presentations to something more trendy, but the basics remain the same – information and decision making will continue to be devolved out to the desktops of empowered users. If these two things can be done in tandem the users will find they not only have a stack of new information, but that it is all appropriate for their tasks, and they have the right tools and communications links to manipulate it, make informed decisions and share these with others. This is the goal of client/server working, and it’s time that we forgot about technology fads and realised that client/server computing – by whatever name – is just a support for an unfolding management revolution.

Caroline Gabriel is a group editor in VNU’s IT portfolio.