The papers in Sweden reported last week that resources with expert level knowledge on standard platforms and systems are hard to come by. In summary it says that its an emerging trend in Sweden to use standard platforms, but the fact that resources are hard to come by is pushing resource prices up. The majority still considers it to be worth it, because of the wins they foresee.
It’s not a moment too soon. And I’m not saying that because I happen to be one of those scarce resources that will (supposedly) be high priced (in fact I see prices being pushed down due to the economy if anything). The reason that I think that it’s about time is that too many companies has for too long been all about the “not built here” attitude in combination with “that doesn’t meet up to our exact standards, therefore it can’t be any good” point of view. Standard platforms are better. They do incur less overhead and less time spent on plumbing. We see that more and more with different technologies emerging; Microsoft and others are moving in to alleviate the burden of doing plumbing from developers. WCF is an excellent example of this. Standard platforms is another. BizTalk Server certainly contains a lof of functionality that would otherwise be quite complex and time consuming to build. Unfortunately not everyone is following the trend, just the other day I heard of a large A-listed company that is going against the trend instead…
But of course, for standard platforms to be successful it demands people that know how to utilize them, or the end solution will turn up nearly as complex as without, and far from standardized. But please, look at standardized platforms before looking to develop it yourself. Don’t reinvent the wheel!
The article, (in Swedish) is here: http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.194781/stor-brist-pa-experter-pa-standardsystem
Be Logical - Notes from Johan Hedberg 