"B A R R Y" wrote in message
t...

Some of the old apps include 30+ years of undocumented work arounds, and
are based on many distributed, custom versions obtained via mergers and
takeovers. These are the basic daily operation systems for the
corporation. The vendors who sold the original applications either no
longer have access to the talent, or they demand way-insane, got ya' by
the short ones, consulting fees to help define the problem to be solved in
SAP.

You -just- described the future of my workplace. There's one person who
wrote the app, hasn't documented it and the company now relies on it. They
can't fire him because they replaced an industry-wide standard with a
software monopoly owned by one employee who spends all day long looking up
parts for his car. If he gets hit by a truck tomorrow there will be nobody
to support the application that interfaces thousands of customers.

We've been telling them that for three years, but...I don't know if it's
some MBA method that has been getting taught or what...management everywhere
seems to be a bunch of bobbleheads; they nod their heads at whatever you say
all day long, acknowledging what a big problem it is, but they never
actually -do- anything about those problems. When everything falls apart,
they take their severance, find a job elsewhere and move one. SNAFU.

-c