It’s the same old story, your vendor has released a new version of software for one of your mission critical systems but you’re not able to upgrade. As long as you’re running legacy, on premise solutions where the responsibility is yours to maintain and keep current, you will forever be chasing to keep up with more current releases.
In some cases, new releases are more like patches that resolve bug fixes, display changes or processes errors or may include some nice enhancements that have been added as part of a vendor’s roadmap delivery schedule. Then there are upgrades that are mandatory; to
resolve compliancy issues like credit card PCI to support the vendor’s EMV solution, or a gaming regulatory change that affects not only the customer but governmental report-ing by the business. So you sit in your office, evaluate the release notes by the vendor and stare at a complex set of multi-property installs across your enterprise that have been “wired together like a Christmas tree” since 2004 – laced with modifications that are not well documented and unique to your company running on different servers at different release levels across the enterprise. With the complexity of system environments, you skipped the last upgrade because the cost and disruption to the business was such that your boss decided to not approve in your previous IT budget.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY MICHAEL CARUSO IN THE FALL 2019 EDITION OF GAMING & LEISURE MAGAZINE.