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When you do and don’t want Shelfware

No matter the size of your organization, you can be sure you have old software sitting on a shelf somewhere. Robert Bogue talks about how to reduce the shelfware in your company.

Every organization has “shelfware” (software that has been put on a shelf). Whether an organization has 100,000 people or only one person, you can be sure there’s software sitting on a shelf somewhere in the building. In some ways, shelfware is like cholesterol. There’s a good kind of shelfware and a bad kind of shelfware. The trick is to increase the good shelfware and reduce the bad shelfware.

How does shelfware become shelfware?

There are actually a few different kinds of shelfware, some shelfware was never used or never returned the value that was intended. Other shelfware was retired to its position only after it had performed its service and was no longer needed.

For example, I once licensed a program called LinkBot Pro from Watchfire that validates web references. This tool was invaluable in helping me validate links in older versions of Que Publishing’s Official Internet Yellow Pages. I bought the license, used it for the project, and then it became shelfware. This is a good form of shelfware —software that more than provids its value and is then peacefully put out to pasture.

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/when-you-do-and-dont-want-shelfware/

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