A few years ago I had a really bad year where I lost two brothers, a sister and my father all in about four months, and I spent a week in the hospital right in the middle of that with sepsis from a medication side affect and it put me in a really wierd place for a long time. It was basically my entire family. Most of my life they were on me about reaching for anything, telling me to stay grounded and just be happy with doing mediocre things in a mediocre life. So I did what anyone would do and submerged myself in whatever I could to keep me sane and sober. about this same time I was put in charge of organizing paper documents, blueprints, work orders and inventory for the machines we had at our facility. I was happy to take on the challenge figuring it would keep my mind occupied and keep me out of trouble. Or so I thought.
Shortly after starting this project I got a reality check on the sheer magnitude of what I was getting myself into, it was truly a monumental task. I started by taking inventory of machine manuals, microfilm drawers and digital folders containing relative data. I hadn't even started on the work orders, parts request forms or completed PMs when I realized that there were 23 4 drawer filing cabinets packed to the hilt with just manuals alone, another 8 dual drawer cabinets containing literally thousands of microfilm and an entire drive dedicated to just that data on the network. I started to panic and had the overwhelming sensation that I would never see the end of this project before I retired.
After working on it dilligently for a few months I started lookin at our network system and realised that all these filing cabinets, the scanned microfilm, the literal tens of thousands of prints and the entire drive should all be in one spot instead of scattered across a mile of facility in several different forms. No way to know what we had, what we needed or what was missing.
Thats when I had an epiphone, why couldnt I build a hub and spoke type platform that could manage and incorporate what was on the drive already and automatically check for new scanned documents and file them in the proper location? I went down a rabbit hole head first and didnt come up for air for like 24 months. About 2 weeks before my Frankenstein went live on its own URL I was informed that I would not be able to use my creation to simplify my daunting task on the company network unless it was properly vetted by IT, so I submitted it.
The response I got back from IT was suprising. They said they were not sure of the required licensing required to operate the platform, that they never heard of it before and there is no company associated with the name of my platform. And they hadn't taken the time to bother contacting legal because the felt it was pointless. I responded and let them know there were no licensing requirements, legal issues or due dilligence because I owned it, I wrote the source code and that I had planned to use it to assist me in modernizing and streamlining the mess of documents and data we currently use.
Thats when things got uncomfortable, even though it was live and completed, tested, retested, stress tested and bug free, IT insisted that if I wanted to submit software or a platform that program development would have to be involved, even after I told them it was 100% completed and ready to go. They had absolutly no interest, wouldn't even take the time to visit the URL. I was offended at the least.
So now here I am, almost 3 years after coding the first block, sitting on a enterprize level platform with no clue what to do with it or where to do it. I have no interest in marketing it. So it has been sitting in my repository until an opportunity presents itself. The image accompanying my post is a pretty accurate depiction of the integration topology. If anyone has any input or suggestions please feel free to comment or reach out.
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