The Importance and Reality of IT Systems Maintenance

One has to question whether this constant global spend on IT is achieving anything of actual substance given that so much is being put into keeping our systems up to date. Is humanity better off from the US$4 trillion spent? Have we further advanced and grown as a species? It's a question worth pondering on. 

So where is all this money in IT going to then?

I would bet a lot of this expense comes from upgrades and renewals of older IT infrastructure. It is fair to say that by now most businesses have adopted a digitalised approach to their operations. It is rare to see companies working without any form of digitalisation as it has become a modern requirement. Hotels, for example, are nowadays expected by customers to have some form of free wifi system that not only works but works well. If you don’t have this as a hotel you can expect to see some bad reviews from customers as not being connected to the internet these days is more than a bugbear for many, it is a completely incomprehensible thought. 

The speed of IT growth has been increasingly fast pace and whilst this means newer innovations hit the market at quicker rates it also means that software and IT systems get dated very quickly.

Case Study - VueJS

VueJS (a web frontend framework) is a classic example of this. When I started out developing in VueJS in 2018, version 2.5 was the most recent and recommended version. When version 3.0 came out in 2020 new syntax and design methods were introduced that required numerous rework of the existing applications to adopt. It also brought an updated refreshed method of tooling using the Vue CLI, a command line interface for Vue which the application came to rely on.  

Meanwhile, in 2020 a new tooling system called Vite was released. This tooling system proved to be very popular in the developer community and low and behold in 2022 Vue decided to migrate away from VueCLI to adopt Vite as their main CLI interface for Vue. 

In a nutshell, what I am sharing here is that in the space of 5 years, a huge amount has changed. If you spent money on getting a Vue JS application built in 2018 using Vue 2 you would find now that only 5 years later the guts of that application are long out of date. Sometimes upgrading is simple and relatively easy. However, in my experience, this is not always the case. 

A Vue application just like any other application can have a lot of other software it relies on to operate. When a major release or change happens every one of these dependencies will equally need to be redeveloped to support the latest versions available. This costs time and money for everyone involved and naturally, some of the people developing these dependencies do not always decide to upgrade their software, leaving you in a position as a developer where you need to find other software to fill the hole that was left.  

The Bottomline - Your IT Team's Approach

This drive to constantly develop new and better things does come at a price and that cost ultimately means that there is a need for ongoing maintenance to keep your application running as smoothly and as efficiently as possible. No amount of investment cost upfront can ‘future-proof’ your application so that it will not have these ongoing maintenance requirements.

However, staying up to date with new technologies and new versions makes planning and decision-making a lot easier. At Your IT Team, we have the know-how and the experience to help guide you through any of your IT systems' decisions. We make sure to stay up-to-date with what's happening in the industry, and our strong partnerships with technology providers and vendors give us the level of insight needed to help you with your investment strategies. 

In addition to our IT strategy and consulting services, Your IT Team has affordable and reliable maintenance plans available so you can keep your applications running and up to date at minimal cost. We understand that investment in an application is a major cost for a business and we want to support you to make sure that investment is worthwhile.