Planning for Technology Upgrades and Improvements

The rapid pace of change in information technologies ensures that sooner or later they will have to be upgraded. Ray Kurzweil identified three factors driving rapid changes. Computer processors are becoming more powerful and dropping in price. Storage is becoming more abundant, faster, and cheaper. The capacity for transmitting information over the Internet is also becoming greater and faster at the same time it is becoming less expensive. All these changes are occurring at an accelerating rate. Taken together, these three factors lead to an unprecedented pace of change in technology.

To keep up, information technologies generally need to be upgraded every 3 to 5 years. However, technology should not be upgraded merely because newer technology is available or because everyone else is upgrading. Technology upgrades ...