Access 2003 failure

Ferenik 

To help with the discussion with the this boss, you might want to familiarize yourself with the concept of "Technical Debt". In a nutshell, that refers to the practice of deferring investment in technology as long as possible, until system failures occur. At that point, the cost of recovery is often larger than the costs that would have been incurred over time in incremental, but regular, updates and modernizations. Not to mention the fact that you are now in a critical situation losing productivity as well.

The corollary to that is deferred maintenance or improvements to infrastructure and equipment. That's usually easier for business people to see. They are aware that the machine in the corner was installed 37 years ago and finding parts to repair it is now nearly impossible, and finding mechanics to work on it is even harder. 

Yet somehow they don't see that the same problem exists in their software systems. Help the boss understand what is happening to you.