Re: in-house development versus packaged solutions

Ray,

I frankly find it difficult to understand the scope of a problem that takes 2 years of meetings to resolve yet it is brittle enough for some management change to cause the solution to be ignored.

So pardon me for being paranoid but I see the new management's reticence to be related to the in-house software, now present and the one to be developed, not being in the "latest and greatest" architecture and language of the times. IOW, if the solution were to be using .NET and C#, maybe the new managers would be OK with it. Not that this would be correct, but they may have read something about .NET or Java in an in-flight magazine.

Maybe this does not happen in academia, but I have seen two large companies thread water for over 2 years because they wanted to change to ..NET and C# (one from Delphi and the other one from PowerBuilder). Of course, we have taken advantage of their management's decisions using our Delphi programs.

If you consider that this is the case at your institution, it may help you in presenting your solution (in-house vs. off the shelf vs. outside development) in a more favorable light so you can get going with your project.

Good luck!

- Eduardo
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