The things that make a long term operational system cheap have several levels.
Before explaining the rest of this argument, it's important to make sure the person you're talking does see how his website is his banks most important (long term), and fragile channel for selling his services. People will use it more and more, and people that use it can easily switch if they feel the service they get is not trustworthy, because they come to depend on it. So the website is something that needs to always work perfectly. Any failure will cost money (lost customers), and fixing the deviations will also cost a lot of money, because it'll be urgent. And fixing things quickly requires the expensive people, which then are in a position to name their price. The way to avoid this, is not to depend on technologies that will require messing around with. Since MS-specific technology is very fast changing, the more one uses it, the more one will be subject to the above effects. Standards based sites are quite likely to work for as long as possible, with minimal effect from anyone's changing technologies. Even if MS puts out a client technology that breaks with the standard, the bank is less affected, because it'll probably break lots of things, and be (properly) seen as MS's fault. This last part is a little shakey, because MS sure are good at having others pay for their choices, try not to need it. The costs above might (or might not. ideas for numbers anyone?) be an order of magnitude higher than the cost of simply maintaining a site with good foundations, and even worse, they will appear as crises, and be laid at the door of the IT manager in charge whenever they happen. Hiring a few more costly personnel to do a proper site, OTOH, can be presented as a wise investment. If permanently employed, then once the site is stable, they can be used to modify the site to serve whatever business opportunities come up. Occaisonally having opportunities because of a wise investment is a better prospect for an IT manager than occaisonally having crises. Depending on the IQ of higher management, of course, but we're allowed to hope. Daniel > > because the vast majority of web developpers are too used to ASP, dev > > studio, frontpage, wizards and wysiwyg and other ra'ot kholot, tfu tfu > > tfu. They are the cheap workforce. they may know how to read HTML but > > they feel lost in it, and they would never dive into it. > > > > the ones who DO dive in there are too expensive to justify the budget I > > guess. > > Ultimately, the people needed to be convinced are decision-makers, not > techies. Decision-makers can only be convinced by money arguments. If > you decide that it is cheaper for Bank Leumi to offer an > IE5.5SP1889-whatever-specific web site, *taking all the relevant > factors into account*, then you'd better not even raise the issue at > all with Bank Leumi. > > Coming back to Shachar's original request for ammunition, please give > him economic arguments in favor of standard compliance. No other > arguments are relevant in the context, IMHO. > > -- > Oleg Goldshmidt | [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > ================================================================= > To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with > the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command > echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
