Buck Stuart, chief architect for Great American Insurance Group, calls it the "Law of Complexity Conservation"–the vexing tendency of IT complexity to move from one point to another, rather than diminish.
"When we make [systems] easier for our customers to use, that complexity is shifted to the developers, and IT must be prepared to manage [it]," he says.
Case in point: Great American's legacy environment, which Stuart colorfully characterizes as a "hairball" of systems and complicated connections. "These systems are 30 years old, with point-to-point mapping and multiple user interfaces," he says.
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