22Jul/10

Redchester is the new capital of Switzerland

I may get berned at the steak by Swiss federalists for spouting hearsay, but I've heard some stories that I must share.

Those clever Swiss folks learned long ago that being neutral can have considerable political and economic benefits. Why choose sides when you can carve out a profitable niche in the middle?

This lesson can be equally well learned and applied to making IT decisions. I often find organisations defining themselves as an AS/400 or a .NET shop as though these are mutually exclusive identities. It's true that Rochester and Redmond are at almost opposite sides of the country, but their technology stacks can come together to form a happy place that I have christened Redchester.

Redchester - a happy place

Redchester is a place where teamwork produces better results than solo endeavor. In plain English, it's where the power of IBM's midrange systems meets the personal productivity benefits of Microsoft's product suite. In Redchester data flows freely but securely between systems so that each citizen always has the information they need where and when they need it.

The best news of all is that Redchester is not a fictional place, although, I confess, it is not the new capital of Switzerland. Recently  I came across a couple of real-life customer stories that brought the benefits of unifying the IBM and Microsoft stacks into sharp focus for me. Continue reading “Redchester is the new capital of Switzerland” »