Business Technology Trends & Impacts: Council Assertions

Established by Cutter Consortium to help spot emerging trends in IT, digital technology, and in the marketplace, the Cutter Business Technology Council's members are IT specialists whose ideas have become important building blocks of today's wide-band, digitally connected, global economy.

Assertions are available for the following domains:
Collaboration | E-Business | Government | Innovation | IT Industry | IT Strategy | IT Technology | Market Mechanisms | Organizational matters | Security | Software Development | System Architecture |

DOMAIN # ASSERTION
Are patents on software more likely to foster sensible innovation or to be abused and thus inhibit innovation? This month, in a departure from our usual debate-style Opinions, Cutter Business Technology Council Fellows each offer up his or her own perspective on this controversial and timely topic. (" The Software Patent Mess ," Council Opinion, Vol. 6, No. 10.)
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Have you seen a lot of bummed-out IT people at work lately? Are they working harder -- somewhat begrudgingly -- in no small part because the organization in which you toil and manage is smaller than it was a year or two ago? Have you seen signs of stress? Are you stressed? Welcome to the Hunt-Kill-Eat economy, which is, put a simpler way, a period of business doldrums and uncertainty. In this Council Opinion, the Cutter Business Technology Council breaks with convention as each member answers one question: What should IT people do now to position themselves for the eventual recovery? (" IT in a Hunt-Kill-Eat Economy ," Council Opinion, Vol. 4, No. 5.)
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If there's a mantra in IT, it's "Listen to your customer." We've had that preached at us -- and preached it ourselves at others -- almost from the beginning. In this month's Opinion, Council members, along with Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Vince Kellen, look at the wisdom of this advice. Not surprisingly, they detect ways it can skewer you -- and ways that not following it can hurt you as well. So you almost can't win. What else is new? (" Listening to Your Customer (Or Not) ," Council Opinion, Vol. 8, No. 9.)
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From our very first security Opinion, "Pandemic I: Malicious Disruption (The Halloween Scenario)" in October of 2001, we have dealt with security problems more than any other issue. This is in part because our clients tell us it's what they worry about. And just as important, it's because the pieces of a very worrisome whole have been accumulating. In this month's omnibus Opinion, Council members weigh in on their hopes and fears for what the new year may bring. Whether we're on the brink of an accelerating attack on our underlying infrastructure -- similar to the attack that the Russians seem to have mounted on Estonia's digital networks back in May -- or it's just business as usual with billions of dollars going down the drain for security, the problem just won't go away. And it won't stay the same either. That leaves only one ugly possibility ... (" Happy New Year (But Don't Count On It) ," Council Opinion, Vol. 8, No. 12.)
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Collaboration 36 Collaborative, real-time messaging will have a far-reaching impact. (" Instant Messaging ," Council Opinion, Vol. 2, No. 1.)
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89 The gradual reinvention of the telephone, scheduled to take place over the next five to seven years, will strongly influence the ability of geographically distributed teams -- particularly IT teams -- to function. (" Telepresence: Removing Barriers to Collaboration ," Council Opinion, Vol. 4, No. 3.)
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93 Continuous partial attention will become the most common mode of human interaction with the most popular technology, many work tasks, and much leisure time. (" Continuous Partial Attention: All You'll Be Able to Expect ," Council Opinion, Vol. 3, No. 8.)
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103 In the development of IT products and services, the time spent in compliance activities (as opposed to product delivery activities) tends to grow without limit. A strategy of rigorous separation of these two different kinds of work will be increasingly necessary to maintain effectiveness. (" Lean Development: Delivery Versus Compliance ," Council Opinion, Vol. 4, No. 1.)
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114 An accelerating trend toward consensus decisionmaking is overtaking Western economy companies. A direct side effect of this trend is a kind of Parkinson's Law of Meetings: "Time dedicated to meetings is expanding to fill the working day." (" Meetings and Consensus Decisionmaking ," Council Opinion, Vol. 4, No. 6.)
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128 Invention, innovation, existing technologies, and dropping prices are all combining to bring a flood of collaboration tools to the marketplace. While these products will be immediately useful for those of us in the systems world, they are the harbingers of work and social change on a global scale as well. (" Collaborative Computing: Changing How We Work, Changing How Everyone Works ," Council Opinion, Vol. 5, No. 5.)
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131 In organizations, poor interaction -- principally in the form of large meetings -- is displacing rich one-on-one and team interaction during the workday. (" Rich and Poor Interaction ," Council Opinion, Vol. 5, No. 9.)
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158 In an era of ever-increasing digital bandwidth, we are confronted by a curious backlash: younger workers showing a marked preference for extremely limited bandwidth interaction. (" Narrow Bandwidth ," Council Opinion, Vol. 8, No. 2.)
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166 Telepresence is happening, but a lot more slowly than its advocates expected. Nevertheless, this now-nascent trend, when it does blossom, has the potential to be utterly transforming. (" Telepresence (Again) ," Council Opinion, Vol. 8, No. 11.)
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E-Business 42 The wireless Web (m-commerce) will turn out to be bigger than the wired one; moreover, the wireless Web revolution will happen faster than the wired (current) version of the Internet. (" The Wireless Web ," Council Opinion, Vol. 1, No. 7.)
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47 Dot-com companies will continue to be both the leading and the bleeding edge of business. Although 80%-90% of these companies may not prove economically viable, the survivors will change business forever. Organizations that view the dot-com failures as the failure of e-business in general and a rationale to return to "business as usual" will suffer accordingly. The key to success will be separating the speculative bubbles from the enduring trends. (" Dot-Coms: The Bubble and the Trend ," Council Opinion, Vol. 2, No. 4.)
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Government 14 Government at all levels will find itself increasingly incapable of taxing revenue derived from information. (" Transactions Without Taxation ," Council Opinion, Vol. 1, No. 9.)
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143 The current reduction of R&D funding by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for long-term computer science research coupled with a corresponding reduction in computer science R&D funding by many of the largest US high-tech companies puts the future of US technology at risk. If this process is not reversed, the US's preeminent position in the world of high-tech will be increasingly challenged. (" Eating Our Seed Corn: DARPA Funding for Computer Science R&D and Technology in the 21st Century ," Council Opinion, Vol. 6, No. 9.)
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164 Changes in federal discovery rules are affecting the IT/legal partnership and creating new areas of business risk. (" E-Discovery: Be Ready for Litigation ," Council Opinion, Vol. 8, No. 8.)
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Innovation 112 To create a viable competitive-advantage force within companies, IT must differentiate itself by implementing a low-cost exploration strategy -- an ability to simulate, model, and visualize products and business processes.(" Low-Cost Exploration ," Council Opinion, Vol. 4, No. 8)
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150 After finally experiencing the law of diminishing returns on efficiency improvements, many companies are now placing innovation as a top priority. Innovation requires a different environment and a different culture; most companies will require an extreme makeover in order to be successful. (" Fighting the Enemies of Innovation ," Council Opinion, Vol. 7, No. 5.)
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151 The application of wikis will increasingly infiltrate forward-thinking, mainstream enterprises in the form of applications that will save these companies money and enable them to collaborate, and therefore innovate, in new ways. (" The Wiki Phenomenon ," Council Opinion, Vol. 7, No. 6.)
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160 Driven by ongoing technology trends of miniaturization and mobile computing combined with an increasing phenomenon of information overload, more diversified groups of users and types of application environments, and user backlash against user-hostile interfaces, computer-based products and systems will gradually shift away from traditional user interfaces in the next few years and will adopt a variety of new forms and factors. (" Bye-Bye Browsers, Goodbye GUIs -- Hello ??? ," Council Opinion, Vol. 8, No. 4.)
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IT Industry 10 Average age of IT workers will continue to increase; retirement will devastate certain relatively low-tech sectors. (" IT and the Aging Work Force ," Council Opinion, Vol. 1, No. 4.)
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45 Software functionality and other services traditionally provided by internal IT departments will be increasingly delivered "over the Net" via supply chains composed of multiple external service providers. (" New Models of IT Service Delivery ," Council Opinion, Vol. 2, No. 3.)
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49 Litigation is becoming a more common lifecycle phase. It will continue to grow and become a major financial sinkhole until the IT industry reexamines its posture on contracts involving package purchase, contract development, subcontracting, and outsourcing. (" Litigation Looms ," Council Opinion, Vol. 2, No. 7.)
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59 Risk management will become pervasive in organizations that undertake IT system construction or procurement. (" Risk Management: A Coming of Age ," Council Opinion, Vol. 3, No. 2.)
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60 Top management of large organizations will be increasingly concerned with showing that their accountants are truly independent and, as a consequence, will be increasingly insistent that they do not have conflicts of interest with consulting contracts. This breakup of accounting from consulting services will have a significant effect on both the consulting and IT industries in the next few years, as well as a potentially serious impact on the rate of technological innovation in many large publicly traded companies, resulting from the historically close relationship between the audit firms and corporate CFOs and boards of directors. (" The Enron Debacle: The Impact on Consulting and IT Industries ," Council Opinion, Vol. 3, No. 3.)
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78 The Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA) was designed to protect software vendors in their relationships with their customers. The bill is so one-sided that it will cause significant short-term and long-term problems for software customers, small software developers, and small competitors to large publishers, as well as for the software engineering profession and for the public as a whole. (" UCITA Will Cause Short- and Long-Term Harm to the Industry and the Public ," Council Opinion, Vol. 3, No. 1.)
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81 Declining stock market valuations have created an incentive to acquire new systems by acquiring the companies that own them. The challenge of integrating these secondhand systems will be substantial and will force us to reexamine and rethink our enterprise system architecture (ESA).. (" Systems Acquisition and Management in the 21st Century ," Council Opinion, Vol. 3, No. 7.)
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82 The next several years, unlike the past several, will be a time of modest innovation in IT. Market forces have shifted in favor of large vendors that will exert monopoly power to control the rate of new technology introduction. The entrepreneurs and visionary technologists who once panicked these large firms have, for now, been laid low. The world is again safe for lumbering dinosaurs. (" Innovation Interruptus ," Council Opinion, Vol. 4, No. 2.)
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86 Companies that invest now in new IT infrastructure will emerge from the present downturn markedly stronger than their less confident competitors. (" Timing Information Technology Investment ," Council Opinion, Vol. 3, No. 6.)
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99 We can't "cost cut" our way out of a recession; our ability to create economic value by making further cuts diminishes with each additional dollar we extract. Eventually we have to return focus to the top line. Ultimately, that's what business is all about: expanding, not squeezing; creating, not cutting. (" Returning to Growth ," Council Opinion, Vol. 3, No. 10.)
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101 The technologies being developed today as part of Internet2 will create new opportunities and change the way business is done to an even greater extent than the circa-1990s Internet. (" Internet2: Coming Soon to Your Job ," Council Opinion, Vol. 3, No. 12.)
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113 The apparent mass migration to outsourcing is showing signs of pullback as some IT organizations are actively insourcing for sound financial, legal, security, and control reasons. (" Insourcing: The Other Alternative ," Council Opinion, Vol. 4, No. 7.)
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120 In the US, the patent system is broken. Other countries are scrambling to avoid falling into the abyss of litigation over ownership and rights to software and system products. Organizations across the globe must take steps to protect themselves from expensive lawsuits that waste resources and divert energy. (" The Katz-SCO Syndrome: Working the Courts for a Living ," Council Opinion, Vol. 5, No. 2.)
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130 Over the next year or two, the IT industry will reassert customer-empowering trends based on open standards by embracing Linux and other open source software. In the long run, this outcome will benefit everyone, even vendors with much to lose should open source prevail. The alternative outcome, a significant retreat from open standards, would yield too much power to incumbent firms over the speed of industry innovation. (" Linux Wars: IT Industry at a Crossroads ," Council Opinion, Vol. 5, No. 8.)
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134 Smart companies will soon borrow the best of open source practices and begin to internalize a radical new way to develop software. (" Internalized Open Source ," Council Opinion, Vol. 5, No. 12.)
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140 An economic power shift from the US to Europe is now gaining steam and promises to have a far-reaching effect on the world technology sector. (" Le Défi Européen ," Council Opinion, Vol. 6, No. 6.)
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141 IT has lived safe inside its technology egg, which was laid many years ago. The mother organization supplied large amounts of cash nutrition, and some computer systems were delivered. Like it or not, IT has hatched; it is now a self-sufficient organism facing life or death on its own. We don't live in a children's book, though, and we can't guarantee a happy ending for IT. (" IT Asks, "Are You My Mother?" ," Council Opinion, Vol. 6, No. 7.)
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145 In developed economies, creating business value with information technology will soon be less about reducing costs and improving efficiency (the traditional cost-side value creation objectives) and more about supporting activities that lead to new markets, products, services, and strategies (revenue-side value creation objectives); many IT managers have cost- and efficiency-based management reflexes that prepare them poorly for this shift. (" The Future of IT Value Creation in a Global Economy ," Council Opinion, Vol. 6, No. 12.)
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148 A side effect of ever-higher-density electronics (e.g., blade servers) is the production of surprisingly much unwanted heat -- enough so that facilities costs over the next five years will grow to more than offset any expected Moore's Law savings. (" Some Like It Hot: Moore's Law and Facility Costs ," Council Opinion, Vol. 7, No. 3.)
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152 The current prevailing mechanism of software pricing is doomed; what will ensue is a period of chaos followed by the emergence of a services model in which supplying free or nearly free software is the price of doing business. (" Selling Blades Instead of Razors ," Council Opinion, Vol. 7, No. 7.)
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156 After decades of employment gains in information technology, women have quickly reversed the trend and are now rapidly abandoning IT -- leading to the defeminization of IT. (" The Defeminization of IT ," Council Opinion, Vol. 7, No. 11.)
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162 IT has been found to be an accelerator in a company's market share formula, controlling the speed of process innovation and the effectiveness of deployment. This reality is increasing the pressure on businesses to engage IT as an equal business partner in order to gain and sustain competitive advantage. (" IT: Determining Competitive Advantage ," Council Opinion, Vol. 8, No. 6.)
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  This month, the Cutter Business Technology Council shares its opinions on the business technology trends that will likely impact your organization in 2007 and offers advice for achieving competitive advantage. These predictions will assist you in making informed business decisions that strive toward the optimization of upcoming trends. (" 2007: Council Predictions and Advice ," Council Opinion, Vol. 7, No. 12.)
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IT Strategy 133 We are in a slow, transitory period of IT technology development that affords organizations an opportunity to focus on the strategic use of IT rather than simply chasing the current must-have product or service. As the technology pace quickens, organizations that use this period only as a chance to reduce costs may find themselves at a competitive disadvantage. (" Opportunities and Pitfalls: Surveying the IT Landscape from a Technology Plateau ," Council Opinion, Vol. 5, No. 11.)
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138 Within the next five years, IT managers will spend most of their packaged software budget on services designed around open source software applications rather than on licenses for closed source executables. (" Enterprise Software: The Inevitability of Open Source ," Council Opinion, Vol. 6, No. 4.)
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147 Within the next five years, IT managers will be spending most of their mobile device budgets on mobile thin clients and will be minimizing or eliminating traditional laptop PCs for their mobile users. (" Anchors Aweigh: Fat Laptops Considered Harmful ," Council Opinion, Vol. 7, No. 2.)
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154 Systemic agile methods implementations across organizations are replacing the periodic "rogue" project team implementations of previous periods. (" Agile: From Rogue Teams to Enterprise Acceptance ," Council Opinion, Vol. 7, No. 9.)
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IT Technology 157 Agent technology is now necessary to reduce costs; to improve efficiency and effectiveness; and to support the requirements of individuals, groups, companies, and universities as they collaborate globally. More importantly, it will enable us to create and support a whole class of IT applications and approaches that we previously could not have developed. (" Agents: A Necessary Ingredient in Today's Highly Collaborative World ," Council Opinion, Vol. 8, No. 1.)
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165 The trend toward higher-resolution displays promises to be expensive but unstoppable. Its effect on the desktop may pass unnoticed, but it is likely to cause serious retrofit of anything handheld. (" The Two-Megapixel Eye ," Council Opinion, Vol. 8, No. 10.)
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167 Artificial intelligence (AI) technology never died; rather, it became the secret sauce in many of today's most successful technologies and now offers brave IT departments the opportunity to deploy truly innovative solutions to enable business success. (" Artificial Intelligence: Rumors of Its Demise Were Greatly Exaggerated ," Council Opinion, Vol. 9, No. 1.)
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168 Present advances in home media promise to be the tail that wags the dog of organizational computing. (" HDTV and the Office ," Council Opinion, Vol. 9, No. 2.)
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Market Mechanisms 44 Ultimately, most capital employed by successful firms will be human, not physical, and it will flow, like financial capital, to its most productive use. (" Human Capital ," Council Opinion, Vol. 2, No. 2.)
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126 The global communication and computing network has turned on the very workers who created it, exposing them to labor market competition from all over the world. This trend will accelerate and expand to other professional occupational categories as clever entrepreneurs figure out ways to use distant workers to obtain economic advantage. (" The Globalization of the IT Workforce ," Council Opinion, Vol. 5, No. 1.)
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153 The growing phenomenon of "infinite inventory" and nearly free distribution of goods, combined with increasingly sophisticated search mechanisms like Google, has begun shifting attention away from the familiar 80-20 Pareto Principle. In the coming years, more companies will begin focusing on the "long tail" of products and services, selling less and less to more and more niche markets. (" The Long Tail ," Council Opinion, Vol. 7, No. 8.)
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155 SOA is the latest in a series of vendor-driven initiatives that, by being vague about their contents and less than candid about their goals, sow confusion in our industry. (" SOA: Architecting Confusion ," Council Opinion, Vol. 7, No. 10.)
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163 Online social networks will become more important and will increasingly function like and have the significance of our more traditional real-world ("meatspace") social interactions. As advertising loses both its viewership and its impact, the desire to use corporate social networks to replace more traditional means of influencing potential consumers is increasing. And yet even high-traffic online social networks will not directly translate into means of selling products or communicating with customers. Since the IT group will ultimately maintain corporate social networking sites, it will be necessary for it to have a deeper understanding of consumer behavior, consumers' desire for information, and the sources of consumers' trust. (" Harnessing the Power of Social Networks: Can User-Generated Online Content Sell Your Product? ," Council Opinion, Vol. 8, No. 7.)
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Organizational Matters 29 During the next 10-20 years, there will be substantial growth in the use and acceptance of distance learning to either augment or replace traditional learning mechanisms. (" Distance Learning ," Council Opinion, Vol. 2, No. 6.)
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31 The present trend toward responding to each new challenge by increasing the load (and work hours) of knowledge workers will not persist. The already evident stress on knowledge worker retention obliges companies to rethink how they use people -- or use them up. Efficiency and productivity were the watchwords of the 1990s, but today the emphasis needs to be more on agility. The prescription for organizational agility is markedly different from the prescription for efficiency and productivity. (" Organizational Agility ," Council Opinion, Vol. 2, No. 8.)
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33 Telecommuting will eventually become the norm. (" Telecommuting as a Competitive Advantage ," Council Opinion, Vol. 1, No. 3.)
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87 IT ownership is shifting into the business units. Thus, IT governance needs to be revamped to be effective in a dispersed IT organizational structure in order to balance the agility and responsiveness required by the businesses with the need to have the necessary checks and balances that will ensure the integrity of corporate-wide IT. (" In Search of a New IT Governance Model ," Council Opinion, Vol. 4, No. 4.)
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118 The provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, especially Section 404, represent the new standard for corporate governance. CIOs may have to attest to the accuracy and reliability of systems controls so that the CEO and CFO can sign attestations with confidence. (" What Does Sarbanes-Oxley Mean for the CIO? ," Council Opinion, Vol. 4, No. 11.)
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122 The time we spend serving the needs of our digital systems infrastructure is rapidly exceeding the time that systems save us by serving our needs. (" The Infernal Dynamic of Systems ," Council Opinion, Vol. 5, No. 4.)
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132 Once a rare and foreign subject for board members, IT is a critical issue that is reshaping the board of director membership and structure. (" IT as a Permanent Fixture in the Boardroom ," Council Opinion, Vol. 5, No. 10.)
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136 Organizations that have been using the concept of core competency as an argument for outsourcing, particularly outsourcing of IT, stand a strong chance of lacking the skills necessary to manage key outsourced activities over time. New thinking on the subject indicates that core competency is at best a questionable concept and a poor management guide for future decision making. (" Not-So-Core Competencies ," Council Opinion, Vol. 6, No. 2.)
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144 The increasing complexity, distribution, and fragmentation of organizations is leading to a glut of suboptimal management decision making. (" The Unintended Beer Game ," Council Opinion, Vol. 6, No. 11.)
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146 Because of the growing need to attract and retain the people that are categorized as members of the "creative class," organizations will need to spend more time and effort developing (and encouraging the development of) environments and software systems that appeal to individuals in this important group. (" Care and Feeding of the "Creative Class" ," Council Opinion, Vol. 7, No. 1.)
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170 There is a growing culture clash within the walls of the corporation caused by outdated and untenable rules as perceived by the Millennials, or Gen-Yers, and other techno-savvy employees. (" Thinking Outside the Moat ," Council Opinion, Vol. 9, No. 4.)
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Security 56 The capacity to create unstoppable denial of service attacks and other Internet disruptions will become increasingly available to those so inclined. The barriers of entry to potential disrupters will be dramatically lowered. (" Pandemic I: Malicious Disruption (The Halloween Scenario) ," Council Opinion, Vol. 2, No. 10.)
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57 Every server on the Internet is attacked every day by hackers or hacker agent software. For organizations serious about doing business in a borderless and intimately connected world, the only responsible defense is an active intrusion detection and response system. (" Pandemic II: Malicious Intrusion (The Global Attack Scenario) ," Council Opinion, Vol. 1, No. 12.)
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58 The capacity to create unstoppable denial of service attacks and other Internet disruptions will become increasingly available to those so inclined. The barriers of entry to potential disrupters will be dramatically lowered. (" Pandemic III: Government Backlash ," Council Opinion, Vol. 3, No. 5.)
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116 Spam has reached a threshold that makes it no longer ignorable; organizations must drastically revise their approach to mail management or risk increasing cost, massive loss of productive capacity, and isolation from customers and suppliers. (" Spam: Tragedy of the Digital Commons ," Council Opinion, Vol. 4, No. 9.)
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125 The denial of service attacks and other Internet disruptions initially predicted by the Cutter Business Technology Council in the fall of 2001 and spring of 2002 have indeed increased, and the threat of large-scale deliberate disruptions remains high.(" Pandemic Redux ," Council Opinion, Vol. 4, No. 10.)
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127 The interconnectedness of our increasingly electronic economy poses business and security risks that together mandate new consciousness for responsible computing. (" The Case for More Responsible Computing ," Council Opinion, Vol. 5, No. 6.)
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135 Biometrics, identifying a person by his or her physiological or behavioral characteristics, has gained ink space in the press and even front-page color spreads in journals. For some organizations, identification of individuals will be a profitable activity as these new technologies move out of the lab and into the field. For others, beware the siren song of technology. What problem are you trying to solve, and at what cost? We're not prepared to store a unique biometric ID for every living organism in a database anytime soon. (" Identification and Authentication at the Frontier: Who Are You? Prove It. ," Council Opinion, Vol. 6, No. 1.)
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139 Organizations that fail to improve their information-sharing capability will fall behind their peers and competitors in both the public and private domains. Simultaneously, these same organizations must do a better job of protecting (i.e., securing) critical information -- especially personal data about customers and employees. In other words, organizations must develop strong and effective safe information-sharing programs. (" Building a Safe Information-Sharing Culture ," Council Opinion, Vol. 6, No. 5.)
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159 Identity theft is now such an Internet-enabled plague that the liability for damages is switching away from the individual victim to any institution that has personal data stolen. (" Identity Theft: No More Innocent Bystanders ," Council Opinion, Vol. 8, No. 3.)
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Software Development 2 Data quality will become a primary concern in developing systems. (" The Data Quality Challenge ," Council Opinion, Vol. 1, No. 1.)
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37 A combination of light/thin methodologies, combined with "fat" skills, will emerge in software development. (" Light Methodologies ," Council Opinion, Vol. 1, No. 5.)
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43 The "task and artifact" focus of traditional process improvement has run its course. The next wave focuses instead on skills and relationships. This trend requires process specialists to gain new skills, retool, and rethink their relationship to software projects. (" Skill Over Process ," Council Opinion, Vol. 1, No. 8.)
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48 The use of third-party components places an unexpected and potentially severe limitation on the reliability of software products. (" The Dark Side of Components ," Council Opinion, Vol. 2, No. 5.)
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61 Product development organizations will continue to be early adopters of agile development and project management methods. (" Product Development and Agile Methods ," Council Opinion, Vol. 3, No. 4.)
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129 The long-running IT industry fight over which Web development strategy to use -- J2EE or .NET -- is coming to an end. Most large or very large organizations are recognizing that they must support both platforms for development. The ultimate compromise is now increasingly seen as some form of Web services. This emerging consensus -- the byproduct of what might be called round 2 of the "platform wars" -- will create a new class of opportunities and problems for development organizations and enterprise architects. (" Platform Wars, Round 2: J2EE Versus .NET ," Council Opinion, Vol. 5, No. 7.)
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142 Extreme Programming (XP) has come of age. Considered little more than a curiosity only five years ago, today it is a fairly common approach, widely understood and either an accepted method or a likely contender in companies that hardly think of themselves as "extreme." More importantly, XP is tailored to the kind of IT endeavor that is unlikely to be outsourced or offshored. (" Reassessing XP ," Council Opinion, Vol. 6, No. 8.)
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System Architecture 11 A willingness to invest in cross-family architectures will distinguish successful from unsuccessful IT user organizations. (" Cross-Family Architectures ," Council Opinion, Vol. 1, No. 6.)
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21 E-business and e-commerce are emerging as powerful economic drivers for integrated applications and are pushing organizations into premature integration solutions. (" E-Business and E-Commerce as Drivers of Integration Solutions ," Council Opinion, Vol. 1, No. 2.)
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78 Within the next decade, XML will have a major impact on the way that application systems are put together (interfaced) and will revolutionize the interconnection between businesses and individuals as well. (" XML: A Critical Factor for Application Interfacing ," Council Opinion, Vol. 2, No. 9.)
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94 The image of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems has been badly tarnished. While some companies have realized significant benefits from ERP, those organizations that thought ERP was a silver bullet that would forever slay the rising costs and frustrations of IT have been greatly disappointed. The era of large, monolithic, everything-from-one-vendor systems -- the sales strategy of many ERP vendors in the past (and some still today) -- is over. This one-size-fits-all approach will be replaced with a three-pronged strategy: targeted best-of-breed applications, continuous legacy transformation, and systematic integration. (" The Death of the ERP Myth ," Council Opinion, Vol. 3, No. 9.)
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107 Most organizations have an ever-growing inventory of vernacular computing products (programs, scripts, spreadsheets, and even entire systems cobbled together by users or contracted outside normal channels); the support, redevelopment, and integration of these vernacular components are increasing challenges to IT. (" Vernacular Computing ," Council Opinion, Vol. 3, No. 11.)
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117 The complexity of most large organizations' infrastructure has increased to the point at which this infrastructure will be incapable of supporting requirements such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, high-demand e-business, or critical business process initiatives without serious analysis and redesign. As the "virtualization" of enterprises across the world increases, the limitations of current architectures and the lack of systems transparency will become a serious drag on organizations' ability to keep pace with business and technological change. (" Dismantling the "Software Shantytown" ," Council Opinion, Vol. 4, No. 12.)
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124 Organizations will come to recognize that their biggest software vulnerability is the fact that many of their critical mainframe/legacy applications are maintained by a dwindling number of maintenance programmers and database administrators who are nearing retirement. (" The Graying of IT: The Aging Workforce and Legacy Applications ," Council Opinion, Vol. 5, No. 3.)
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137 Thin-client devices and technologies hold tremendous promise to lower IT costs, improve cybersecurity, and reduce complexity. Some IT departments are quietly realizing the value of thin clients, while others forgo the benefits as they remain mesmerized and paralyzed by the vendors that profit from the current fat-client environment. (" Shhh ... The Ever-Arriving Thin Client Has Quietly Arrived ," Council Opinion, Vol. 6, No. 3.)
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Business Technology Trends and Impacts: Council Assertions