-
Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
-very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure. It is the
-simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
-open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
-Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
-thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
-avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
-application.
-
-
This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
-independently of the server applications. One can even allow users to
-use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
-protocol and format. In the normal case, only one client application
-is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
-application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
-blocked from doing so.
-
-
It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
-users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
-best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
-requirements change.
-
-
I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
-open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
-application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.
-