Cutter Consortium: Enterprise Suite

Summit 2012

6 Feb 2012 15:37:38 GMT

Summit 2012 Executive Education+

Executive education on leadership, teaming, and cutting edge IT. A year's worth of professional development and personal enrichment in 3 invigorating days. The Cutter Summit will change how you think, lead, and innovate.

http://www.cutter.com/summit/2012.html

Contra Goals in Architecture

3 Feb 2012 15:33:44 GMT

Mohandoss, Ramaswami |

In technology architecture, it's easy to spot a wrong solution but almost impossible to design the perfect system. The primary reason for this ever-changing nature of the solution is its evolution toward staying relevant to the changing business use case. A seasoned architect soon realizes that a sound architecture or design is actually a zero-sum game with "contra goals": pairs of two critical design goals (or priorities), where one priority can only exist by compromising (or even eliminating) the other.

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/updates/2012/eau1201.html

Hot IT Trends 2012

2 Feb 2012 15:30:29 GMT

Kellen, Vince |

What a difference a few years makes! At the end of 2008, we were entering the depths of the great recession, and everyone in IT had battened down the hatches, shuttered the windows and doors, and scrambled for their shelters to wait out the storm. Innovation was erased from the CIO agenda, and just as prior downturns had done, this one prompted a collection of pundits to question the viability of the role of the CIO and the modern IT organization. Rome was burning. The end was near.

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/advisor/2012/itj120201.html

Agile: 10 Points of Organizational Friction

2 Feb 2012 15:28:13 GMT

Collier, Ken |

Agile adoption for data warehouse and BI is on the rise. Agile can shorten development cycle time, improve quality, and help ensure that you build the right BI solutions for business decision makers. However, conventional IT organizational structures, policies, processes, and procedures are sometimes inconsistent with the tenets of agility. Values like customer collaboration, face-to-face interaction, and continuous delivery of value are often impeded by IT organizational protocols. Here are the top 10 points of friction that I frequently see in companies that I assist in agile adoption. While many of these also impact software teams, DW/BI departments are often more directly impacted by them.

http://www.cutter.com/content/project/fulltext/advisor/2012/apm120202.html

The Expanding Scope of Business Resilience: Linking ERM with Agility

2 Feb 2012 15:18:18 GMT

Dooley, Brian J. |

As we explore in this Executive Report, business resilience combines enterprise risk management (ERM) and agility to create robust organizations capable of withstanding any threat. A resilient organization aligns its strategy, operations, and management systems to continually adjust to changing risks, endure disruptions, and improve efficiency. Resilience is a program for taking proactive measures to ensure an effective response and preserve core values. In addition to examining ways to achieve resilience, including existing industry frameworks and models, this report also reviews some case studies that illustrate how organizations can create resilient practices.

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/summaries/2012/01/index.html

Reflections on Innovation -- Part IV: The Care and Feeding of Language

1 Feb 2012 15:15:48 GMT

Devin, Lee |

A few weeks ago, the New York Times published an opinion piece by Susan Cain titled, "The Rise of the New Groupthink."1 It was a controversial article, and she took her lumps the next day in the "Letters" section. In the online comments, folks were more in agreement. They all shared, however, the imprecise use of language that is the subject of this Advisor.

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/advisor/2012/bit120202.html

Performance Without Appraisal

1 Feb 2012 15:13:53 GMT

Derby, Esther |

As I write this Executive Update, it is the season for annual performance appraisals. Managers and team members gather feedback, catalog accomplishments, and fill in forms. Managers collate, rate, and rank. All this activity culminates in the annual review. Many managers tell me this process consumes enormous time but yields little benefit in terms of improvement or better working relationships. Managers who support teams find the appraisal process particularly troublesome. They struggle to differentiate individual contribution to combined effort, and they worry the message of individual appraisal works against team work and collaborative effort.

http://www.cutter.com/content/project/fulltext/updates/2012/apmu1202.html

Defining Enterprise Performance Architecture

6 Feb 2012 15:10:00 GMT

Rosen, Mike |

Management guru Peter Drucker is famous for saying "You can't manage what you can't measure." From a different perspective and equally guru-like, W. Edward Deming once said, "The most important things cannot be measured." Deming clarified this by explaining that "the issues that are most important, long term, cannot be measured in advance. However, they might be among the factors that an organization is measuring, just not understood as most important at the time." Perhaps many organizations fall in between, where they are neither exactly sure what the most important things are nor how to measure them. Can you answer the question, "How is my enterprises business performance measured?" or the follow-on question, "How do my IT systems contribute to business outcomes?"

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/advisor/2012/ea120201.html

Webinar: When a Business Plays Games: It Can Be a Good Thing, Too

1 Feb 2012 15:07:35 GMT

Perkins, Bart |

When you hear that a business is "playing games," you probably think something shady is going on. But not necessarily! A new class of games - video games - is emerging that is extremely useful to virtually every organization. Businesses, not-for-profits, and governments are starting to use video games to address a wide range of business challenges.

http://www.cutter.com/events/multimedia/playing-games.html

The Expanding Scope of Business Resilience: Linking ERM with Agility

31 Jan 2012 15:03:44 GMT

8 Great Reasons to Attend the Cutter Summit

2 Apr 2012 16:23:25 GMT

02 April 2012 |

A year's worth of professional development and personal enrichment in 3 invigorating days. The Cutter Summit will change how you think, lead, and innovate.

http://www.cutter.com/summit/2012/8-great-reasons.html

Packaged Big Data Appliances = Hadoop in the Enterprise

31 Jan 2012 16:20:32 GMT

Hall, Curt |

An important development bound to positively impact the use of the open source Apache Hadoop technology in the traditional enterprise is the introduction of packaged Big Data appliances from the enterprise hardware and software vendors. These offerings -- from Oracle, EMC Greenplum, Dell, and NetApp -- bundle Hadoop distributions along with database, storage connectors, and other software for integrating Hadoop applications with various data sources and into an organization's data center. They also come preinstalled on hardware or include hardware-based storage systems. All offer various levels of support for organizations wanting to build and run Hadoop applications.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2012/bia120131.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Does your organization currently analyze unstructured data from social media sites?

31 Jan 2012 16:18:33 GMT

Cutter Consortium |

Curt Hall points to the conversational nature of social media content that makes it difficult to analyze. "Simply put, most end-user organizations do not have staff readily on hand who possess a strong understanding of social media analysis tools, which depending on their sophistication can include advanced algorithms and natural language processing (NLP) as well as other linguistical analysis techniques derived from AI and advanced statistics."

http://www.cutter.com/press/120131.html

Webinar: "Big Agile" Is More than Just a Software Method

30 Jan 2012 15:59:39 GMT

Gat, Israel; Smits, Hubert |

Small is beautiful in software. While big software might not be beautiful, more often than not, it's in the nature of what needs to be accomplished. This contrast between the beauty of small and the requirements of the big generates systemic tension in many software projects, organizations, and companies. Resolving this conflict is the focus of this webinar.

http://www.cutter.com/events/multimedia/big-agile.html

The Implications of the Cloud in 2012 and Beyond

27 Jan 2012 15:52:21 GMT

Kellen, Vince |

Vince Kellen takes on the entirely obvious trend of cloud computing and discusses the different ways it is likely to impact organizations in 2012 and beyond. Once again, if we think about what has been happening to computing's three components, it becomes clearer that cloud computing is a logical consequence. Why? Commodity-class, large-scale clusters are already commonplace, Web services have been maturing over the past decade to allow for better integration, and server virtualization has matured, with three or four dominant ad hoc standards emerging (hypervisors from VMware, Microsoft, Citrix, and KVM). Large-scale and reasonably well-integrated infrastructure has now been made available as a commodity product on demand. As regional networks achieve 40 gigabit (and beyond) speeds, cloud providers and cloud consumers can build virtual data centers spanning multiple data centers across the globe.

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/2012/01/itj1201d.html

Social Media Speaks Out

27 Jan 2012 15:49:18 GMT

Andriole, Stephen J.; Schiavone, Vincent J. |

Advances in the components of computing have enabled massive social media sites and application tools like Facebook and Google. It is the scale of these platforms that makes social networking interesting and economically viable, politically potent, and of great interest to businesses. As Cutter Fellow Steve Andriole and Cutter Senior Consultant Vincent Schiavone point out in their leadoff piece on social media, this new form of computing is powerful because of its massive reach and its massive volume of data and interactions. With social media now so globally pervasive, the authors pose a simple question: why wouldn't a company invest in social media, especially in the analytics of social media? They deftly delve into the critical elements of a social media strategy, how companies ought to take advantage of this technology, and how the future of social media may unfold. Here in 2012, any company that thinks social media is a passing fancy or isn't relevant to them simply hasn't been paying attention.

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/2012/01/itj1201a.html

The Consumerization of IT: Predictions, Wishes, and Dart-Throwing Monkeys

27 Jan 2012 15:46:36 GMT

Love, Jim |

Cutter Senior Consultant Jim Love, is correct in pointing out that the tension between the current consumer market and the resistant IT organization will be a challenge in 2012. Love argues forcefully that we in IT should not resist this change but embrace it. If we think more broadly about what is going on, it becomes clear that cell phone data networks are continuing to grow faster (although sometimes not fast enough); are being augmented with WiFi networks at home, work, and play; and are being used to reach hundreds of millions of user devices with powerful CPUs distributed across the globe. With the ubiquity of Internet protocols and with HTML5 poised to be a common-enough user interface development environment, consumer devices and software can now reach unprecedented scale at lower costs than ever. Love writes that the "tipping point" for consumerization is near. I would argue it is past us already, and the rest is merely denouement. Laggard IT shops will have to catch up to those organizations that sprinted ahead.

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/2012/01/itj1201c.html

Hot IT Trends 2012

27 Jan 2012 15:01:43 GMT

Kellen, Vince |

Each of these trends described in this issue is powerful on its own and requires devoted study from IT planners and leaders. Taken collectively, they can be a rather large tsunami that engulfs organizations faster than they can adjust. 2012 will likely emerge as a critical transition year in which two well-established trends, social media and consumer technology, meet up with two emerging trends, Big Data and cloud computing, and transform corporate IT from the inside and the outside. There is a lot of promise and peril in these trends. To some, they represent the beginning of the end of the modern IT organization. I -- and I think our authors -- would disagree. This is merely the end of the very early phase of an important transformation that will require all the best and brightest IT leaders across the globe. New tools enable new strategies, and, boy, do we have new tools available to us in 2012! To sort this out, I encourage you to read on and learn how these trends will impact you and your organization.

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/2012/01/index.html

An Executive Primer on Big Data

27 Jan 2012 14:56:03 GMT

May, Thornton |

Thornton May, pokes holes in the term "Big Data," pointing out that it has no clear definition and that the focus on "big" may miss the mark. May makes clear that the variety of types of data, the variation in analysis methods, and the speed of business decision making should also be considered when looking at the Big Data trend. He then goes on to give several current, real-world examples of organizations that have successfully used Big Data methods for business advantage (and one that didn't).

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/2012/01/itj1201b.html

The Gen Y Retention Challenge

27 Jan 2012 14:50:14 GMT

Schildkraut, Laura |

As we continue in questionable economic times, many have been wondering how the extended downturn will impact Gen Y retention. (Gen-Yers were born between 1981 and 1999.) As a cohort, Gen-Yers are known for their facile use of technology, their strong interest in social issues, and, often, their delaying "adulthood." This extended adolescence can often manifest itself in Gen-Yers viewing their early jobs as enrichment opportunities rather than the start of a lifelong career. Additionally, many of them expect that their professional lives will involve a series of parallel employment endeavors where they will have one primary job and several smaller money-making and/or altruistic projects on the side.

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/updates/2012/bitu1202.html

Hot IT Trends 2012

27 Jan 2012 14:47:52 GMT

How to Transition from a Traditional to a Robust APM Environment

26 Jan 2012 14:45:46 GMT

Wysocki, Robert K. |

In this Executive Report, I describe a process for migrating from whatever current project management model environment your organization embraces to a robust portfolio of models. Through this robust process, you can evolve and expand your model to a comprehensive portfolio of models and effectively manage any project. Answering the following six questions best explains the transition process: (1) Where are you? (2) Where do you want to go? (3) How will you get there? (4) How are you doing? (5) How will you know you got there? and (6) How will you improve what you have done? In this report, I answer these questions.

http://www.cutter.com/content/project/fulltext/reports/2012/01/index.html

Enterprise Agility

26 Jan 2012 14:43:01 GMT

Watson, Jim |

Agile development has revolutionized the way systems are developed from a waterfall or phased-based approach to an iterative-based approach that continuously reexamines development progress, current priorities, and sufficiency of solution. The important considerations from an enterprise governance perspective are the notions that the system design/solution will emerge over time (rather than being completely preplanned) and teams will seek continuous integration testing (including system-of-systems integration) in confirming completion and correctness of functionality. Within agile development, the overall context of a system is loosely understood (e.g., online banking), while the details of the application requirements, priorities, and design emerge through the iterations. Systems development teams adopting agile development methods -- Scrum, XP, Crystal, and so on -- need to be supported organizationally in different ways than how they are supported when utilizing waterfall methodologies.

http://www.cutter.com/content/project/fulltext/advisor/2012/apm120126.html

Too Smart By Half

26 Jan 2012 14:38:37 GMT

Orr, Ken |

Those of you have been following my Trends and Enterprise Architecture Advisors will recognize that I have become increasingly concerned about software reliability and security and the role that design and complexity play in these areas. Recently, I received a really interesting hyperlink from my colleague and Cutter Business Technology Council Fellow Lou Mazzucchelli. The link reported a study done by CAST Software, in which the results of an analysis of a huge number of programs and code (365 million lines of code in 745 applications) showed that more recent languages such as Java tend to have many more problems both from an application as well as a security standpoint.1 In this study, the newest languages had the most problems and the oldest the least, with COBOL, of all things, having superior results in both application and security defects.

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/advisor/2012/bit120126.html

Establishing the Business Architecture Practice: A Case Study

26 Jan 2012 14:36:25 GMT

Hazra, Tushar K.; Kumar, Sanjiv |

Business and IT professionals are rapidly embracing business architecture (BA) as a mainstream concept to recognize their needs, goals, and vision for business transformation. However, establishing a comprehensive, pragmatic BA practice is still in its primitive stage. In today's adverse economical climate, where businesses try to do more for less, understanding business architecture -- and its related challenges, risks, issues, and concerns -- can go a long way toward successfully achieving business transformation. This Executive Report presents a real-world case study to highlight the realities of establishing a BA practice. Our lessons learned and cultivated best practices will add significant value to establishing your own BA practice.

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/reports/2012/01/index.html

Playing the Customer Role Is Easier for the 21st-Century IT Professional

25 Jan 2012 14:33:20 GMT

Malladi, Suresh |

Last September's Cutter IT Journal contains many insightful contributions about 21st-century IT professionals to help you gear up for the new world in which products like smartphones and tablets are playing a growing role (see "21st-Century IT Personnel: Tooling Up or Tooling Down?" Vol. 24, No. 9). The articles touch on the essentials for the 21st-century IT professional, including usability, user interfaces, smart devices, and so on. The authors also discuss the skills demanded of these professionals and suggest roles for them to play. I believe another role that IT professionals can play more effectively than ever is that of the customer. I see this as a byproduct of the smartphone and tablet revolution itself. In this Advisor, I highlight the following points in the 21-century professional world:

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/advisor/2012/itj120125.html

Cutter IT Journal Call for Papers: Enterprise Security Architecture: Trends and Best Practices

25 Jan 2012 14:31:06 GMT

Rosen, Michael |

Hardly a day goes by without some security issue, information or identity theft event making the news. Although still a concern, teenage boys hacking your system are the least of your worries these days. Organized cyber crime is establishing a stronghold with determined and concerted efforts to move into the 21st century. Even governments are getting into the act. Whereas from an enterprise perspective we often say 'information is an enterprise asset', from a security perspective we say 'lost information is a liability'. Concepts like de-perimeterisation tell us that we can't secure the enterprise by building a wall around it, and the cloud and mobile devices just make it that much harder. So what is an enterprise to do in the age of increased threat and reduced budget?

http://www.cutter.com/content-and-analysis/journals-and-reports/cutter-it-journal/callforpapers03.html

BYOD or Enterprise-Supplied Mobile Device?

25 Jan 2012 14:28:38 GMT

Hall, Curt |

Mobility is one of the top priorities for organizations in 2012. When it comes to utilizing mobile devices in the enterprise, organizations basically have two options for supporting employees with smartphones and tablets. One, which is becoming increasingly popular, is the "bring your own device" (BYOD) strategy, in which employees are permitted to use their own personal devices for work. The other is for the company to supply select employees with phones or tablets. Both options have their benefits and drawbacks.

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/advisor/2012/ea120125.html

Predictions on Collaboration in 2012

26 Jan 2012 14:24:50 GMT

Coleman, David |

Every year I am asked, "What's next for collaboration?" I came up with 10 predictions for 2011, with about an 80% accuracy, according to my own calculations. I began to work on this year's predictions in mid-December, hoping to finish them by the New Year. This year's predictions cover a wide range of collaboration topics, from community management to reinventing the supply chain. I have been thinking a lot about my predictions and wrote about a number of them on my blog (www.collaborate.com). I offer my eighth prediction in this Advisor and will describe my final two predictions in subsequent articles.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2012/bia120124.html

Collaborative Intelligence

23 Jan 2012 14:21:57 GMT

Coleman, David |

We have all heard of IQ (intelligence quotient) and even EI (emotional intelligence), but very few people seem to deal with collaborative intelligence (CI). I have been focused on collaboration for the last 20-plus years, and I have become aware that true collaboration rarely is successful unless all those involved have the mindset of collaboration. This is not as easy as it sounds, even though thousands of collaboration vendors promise great collaboration by using their tool.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2012/biau1202.html

Summit 2012

2 Apr 2012 17:36:48 GMT

Schedule

More and more CIOs are being promoted into CEO leadership positions. In his keynote, Cutter Fellow Dick Nolan will introduce you to one of them: Jim Barton,* the new CEO of Santa Monica Aerospace. Jim's job won't be easy. His company is bleeding cash, struggling to regain investors' trust after an accounting scandal, and striving to transform its culture to become a global aerospace integrator.

http://www.cutter.com/summit/2012/schedule.html

Webinar: When a Business Plays Games: It Can Be a Good Thing, Too

1 Feb 2012 17:32:14 GMT

Perkins, Bart | Events |

When you hear that a business is "playing games," you probably think something shady is going on. But not necessarily! A new class of games - video games - is emerging that is extremely useful to virtually every organization. Businesses, not-for-profits, and governments are starting to use video games to address a wide range of business challenges.

http://www.cutter.com/events/multimedia/playing-games.html

Webinar: "Big Agile" Is More than Just a Software Method

30 Jan 2012 17:27:51 GMT

Gat, Israel; Smits, Hubert | Events |

Small is beautiful in software. While big software might not be beautiful, more often than not, it's in the nature of what needs to be accomplished. This contrast between the beauty of small and the requirements of the big generates systemic tension in many software projects, organizations, and companies. Resolving this conflict is the focus of this webinar.

http://www.cutter.com/events/multimedia/big-agile.html

Agility, Adaptability, and Alignment

19 Jan 2012 17:25:33 GMT

Gat, Israel | E-Mail Advisors |

It often starts as a seemingly plain training request. Having decided to go the agile route, a client would like Cutter to train a certain number of employees in one agile method or another. We collect data on the demographics of the target population: architects, UI designers, product managers, project managers, developers, testers, and so on. We then move on to discuss the way these folks are geographically dispersed and what the team structure for the launched agile teams will be. Once these parameters have been nailed down, it largely becomes a matter of figuring out the logistics for training and coaching. A fairly straightforward process for rolling out the agile process, one might say.

http://www.cutter.com/content/project/fulltext/advisor/2012/apm120119.html

The Economy, the Cloud, and the iPad: Notes from a CIO Breakfast

19 Jan 2012 19:43:31 GMT

Rau, Ken | E-Mail Advisors |

I had the good fortune recently to attend a bimonthly breakfast meeting of CIOs. In addition to me, seven of the 23 regular members of the group were in attendance. The group meets at 7:30 am in a conference room at the location of a member who is the designated "host of the month." There is no agenda or presentation; just informal discussions about current topics of interest or concern to the attendees. During the course of the next hour, three main topics were discussed, which I summarize in this Advisor.

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/advisor/2012/bit120119.html

Weeding and Seeding Internal Crowdsourcing Initiatives

18 Jan 2012 19:38:28 GMT

McLellan, Sam; Muddimer, Andrew | E-Mail Advisors |

A 1983 New Yorker cartoon shows a man taking his son on a walk. "It's good to know about trees," he says to the boy, then adds almost as an afterthought, "Just remember, nobody ever made big money knowing about trees."

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/advisor/2012/itj120118.html

Applying Architecture to Business Intelligence

18 Jan 2012 19:35:20 GMT

Rosen, Mike | E-Mail Advisors |

As architects, we are constantly challenged to provide value to the business. Much of the value we provide comes from avoiding costs and problems before they occur and is difficult to demonstrate or quantify. But architecture can also deliver value by providing a better, broader, more flexible, and extensible solution to business requirements. I always look for opportunities or projects where an architectural approach will provide a better solution and try to seize these chances when I can.

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/advisor/2012/ea120118.html

Webinar: Right Requirements Right Now

18 Jan 2012 19:22:59 GMT

Stribrny, Scott | Events |

Poorly defined software requirements are a classic barrier to software project success. To succeed, you must know how to find the precise requirements, prioritize them in a credible way, and validate whether the implementation exactly matches that requirement. Once you're better at defining requirements, the automated products that you build will become a seamless part of your users' work -- no matter what kind of work it is.

http://www.cutter.com/events/multimedia/rightrequire.html

The Value of Social

17 Jan 2012 19:18:56 GMT

Coleman, David | E-Mail Advisors |

With Facebook closing in on one billion people (one in every six people on the planet is on Facebook), it is clear that consumer social networks are having great influence on how the enterprise is now using these technologies. It is this transfer of technology adoption from the consumer to the enterprise that is interesting.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2012/bia120117.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- What is your understanding of the term "open innovation"?

17 Jan 2012 19:14:35 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 17 January 2012 |

"There are still a fair number of us who aren't looking closely at open innovation", states Joe Feller. "This number -- about a quarter of respondents -- seems high to me. Just to be clear: I do not think that open innovation is a panacea with something to offer everyone. However, I do think that every contemporary organization that has not asked 'Can we benefit from the talents and capabilities of people beyond our organization?' and 'If so, how?' needs to stop right now and answer these key questions."

http://www.cutter.com/press/120117.html

Agile EA: Governance Introduction

13 Jan 2012 19:10:34 GMT

Watson, Jim | Executive Reports |

This Executive Report explores processes in enterprise architecture governance to achieve improved agility using technology advancements in Maven and virtualization. The report describes approaches for enterprise situational awareness, agile systems integration, and dependency management, along with technology variants and innovation.

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/reports/2011/09/index.html

Unsuccessful Agile and Lean Adoptions

12 Jan 2012 19:07:56 GMT

Elssamadisy, Amr | E-Mail Advisors |

Agile and lean adoptions don't always work. This Advisor shares a few examples of lean and agile adoptions that failed to make things better. These types of agile adoptions are more common than we would like to think. If you are experiencing any of these failure states, you are not alone. But remember that you do not have to accept results like these; they can be fixed. Let's examine four of these failure states more closely.

http://www.cutter.com/content/project/fulltext/advisor/2012/apm120112.html

Secure Software: Part II -- Hackers and Cyber Attackers

12 Jan 2012 19:03:02 GMT

Bennatan, E.M. | Executive Updates |

If you're looking for a great idea for a high-tech startup, read on. The idea comes from the second-largest center of startup companies in the world, namely Israel.1 This hub of innovation has just experienced a cyber attack from Saudi Arabian hackers in which some 20,000 credit card owners (the hackers claimed 400,000) were jeopardized when their personal information, including passwords, was posted online. The goal was to disrupt the country's economy.

http://www.cutter.com/content/project/fulltext/updates/2012/apmu1201.html

Who Watches for the Watchers When the Watchers Don't Watch?

12 Jan 2012 19:00:22 GMT

Charette, Robert N. | E-Mail Advisors |

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? "Who will guard the guardians?" Roman poet Juvenal supposedly asked that question nearly 2,000 years ago, and it is one that often comes to mind when speaking of the current financial crisis as it drags itself into yet another year.

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/advisor/2012/bit120112.html

Cloud Computing: Don't Miss the Forest for the Trees

11 Jan 2012 18:57:58 GMT

Malladi, Suresh | E-Mail Advisors |

Much has been discussed about the potential and perils of cloud computing. While there is promise in provisioning elasticity on demand, cautionary tales point to security, interoperability, portability, and privacy, among others. A recent edition of Cutter IT Journal was forward-looking with excellent suggestions on architectural and operational strategies for effective cloud sourcing (see "Cloud Computing: A CIO's Perspective," Vol. 24, No. 7). In fact, this echoes well with a call by institutions like the World Economic Forum that it might be time to move beyond the concerns about cloud computing and investigate the possibilities it can offer.

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/advisor/2012/itj120111.html

Cloud Strategy: Some Good Tactics to Implement

11 Jan 2012 18:53:51 GMT

Teti, Frank | Executive Updates |

It appears lately that all business consulting has something to do with cloud computing. For instance, an organization I am currently working with has a mandate in place requiring all forward-engineering projects to be developed using a virtualized cloud environment. This effort is, in this organization's "corporate mind's eye," a way to prepare it to move production applications into the cloud, which is something it has not previously done. The company believes that this tactic will ensure that cloud architects are competent at administering applications hosted in the cloud, since code development within the cloud is relatively transparent from a developer's perspective.

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/updates/2012/bitu1201.html

Growing Data Phenomenon and Shrinking Response Times

10 Jan 2012 18:51:27 GMT

Hate, Sudhanshu | E-Mail Advisors |

Today's unprecedented growth rate of data (structured and unstructured) necessitates faster and cost-effective processing for near-real-time decision making. Over the years, many have viewed high-performance computing (HPC) as a monster too complex and too unaffordable for processing large data. However, that viewpoint is changing rapidly due to open source innovations such as Apache Hadoop, the advent of the cloud, and simple and affordable platforms like Microsoft.

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/advisor/2012/ea120111.html

"Big Data" Is More than Just a Lot of Data

10 Jan 2012 18:48:27 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors |

"Big Data" was one of the hottest IT buzzwords of 2011, and you can expect the hype only to increase this year. BI vendors, the IT press, and analytics gurus go on and on about the need for organizations to meet their Big Data requirements. All the excitement around Big Data is not just hype, however. Today we are seeing organizations develop some very impressive applications that were impractical, if not impossible, just a few years ago. Still, the term is misleading, because processing Big Data can actually involve more than just handling a lot of data. It can also require processing diverse (nonrelational in nature) data as well as streaming, fast data. This can pose a number of application development and operational issues.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2012/bia120110.html

HPC Steroid for Big Data

9 Jan 2012 18:40:42 GMT

Hate, Sudhanshu | Executive Updates |

Today's unprecedented growth rate of data (structured and unstructured) necessitates faster and cost-effective processing for near-real-time decision making. Over the years, many have viewed high-performance computing (HPC) as a monster too complex and too unaffordable for processing large data. However, that viewpoint is changing rapidly due to open source innovations such as Apache Hadoop, the advent of the cloud, and simple and affordable platforms like Microsoft. In this Executive Update, we examine how various HPC techniques, deployment patterns, and Microsoft technologies are emerging to solve various Big Data problems.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2012/biau1201.html

Summit 2012: Executive Education+

2 Apr 2012 18:55:25 GMT

02 April 2012 |

Summit 2012: Executive Education+ provides a unique venue for IT and business professionals to meet and debate with one another and noted experts in the IT field.

http://www.cutter.com/summit/2012.html

Big or Little, Devops Needs a Complete Picture, Part II

5 Jan 2012 18:53:02 GMT

Glazer, Hillel | E-Mail Advisors |

In my last Advisor (see "Big or Little, Devops Needs a Complete Picture," 23 November 2011), I promised to provide examples of using systems thinking to incorporate compliance into devops. I described an aspect of applied systems thinking called "IPPD" -- integrated product and process development -- that has been in use in manufacturing operations for decades and is now finding its way into IT operations, albeit perhaps by other names.

http://www.cutter.com/content/project/fulltext/advisor/2012/apm120105.html

Commander's Intent and Corporate Guidance

5 Jan 2012 18:50:07 GMT

Pritchard, Carl | E-Mail Advisors |

A financial services client last month asked me if I had read anything about management and the relationship to "commander's intent." While I had to confess that I had not, I did some quick searching to find out what the concept was about and how it might relate to effective management practice. What I found was a compelling object lesson on how we should be drawing on the lessons learned from other practices.

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/advisor/2012/bit120105.html

Embedding Devops in the Enterprise

4 Jan 2012 18:44:48 GMT

Debois, Patrick | E-Mail Advisors |

With the term "devops" picking up steam, vendors are now (re)branding their tools as devops tools. Similar to unit-test tools that supported an agile workflow, the current discussion on deployment automation supports the devops ideas. Even though tools have their merits,1 after reading the August 2011 issue of Cutter IT Journal -- "Devops: A Software Revolution in the Making" -- it should be clear that tools are merely one aspect of devops and must be complemented with other aspects. The nice thing about tools is that they give you something concrete to discuss, as compared to the more intangible notion of "culture." Within large enterprises, tools are probably the easy part. Therefore, in this issue, we would like to focus on the harder aspects, like "people and processes," or as the Agile Manifesto puts it, "Individuals and interactions."

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/advisor/2012/itj120104.html

EA New Year's Resolutions, Seventh Edition

4 Jan 2012 18:41:53 GMT

Rosen, Mike | E-Mail Advisors |

Welcome to the seventh-anniversary edition of my enterprise architect's New Year's resolutions. I hope it will give you food for thought and some inspiration for architectural growth in 2012.

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/advisor/2012/ea120104.html

Creating Crowd Value: Taking the Next Step Beyond the Social Enterprise

3 Jan 2012 18:36:42 GMT

Coleman, David | Executive Reports |

As a business leader you're probably just starting to contend with social networks in your business and often find them to be of questionable value. The "social enterprise" is being touted as the next big thing: the new way to do business and a "social" way to do business. But the next big thing in collaboration is crowds, not the social enterprise. Social is only a new method of connecting and discovering information; it does not enable and guide action or have an outcome or result. Business is about delivering results and for that you need a crowd. In this Executive Report, I define a crowd as a network of people that has business value and drives an outcome, task, or goal. Understanding how crowds can add value to your business and making sure your business does not get disintermediated (the removal of intermediaries in a supply chain) by a crowd-based business is the focus of this report.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/reports/2011/07/index.html

The Year Ahead: Will 2012 Be a Breakout Year for Predictive Analytics?

3 Jan 2012 18:34:02 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors |

Happy New Year! As we head into 2012, I thought I'd offer some predictions as to what I see happening with predictive analytics. This analysis is based on various surveys and other research1 we've conducted over the past year or so, as well as on discussions with readers, clients, and vendors.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2012/bia120103.html

Top 5 Intriguing Business & Enterprise Architecture Articles for 2011

28 Dec 2011 18:31:17 GMT

Coburn, Koren | E-Mail Advisors |

This week, we're taking a look back at five of the most intriguing articles published in Cutter's Business & Enterprise Architecture practice over this past year. As you might imagine, it was no small task to cull the list and pare it down to just five articles. Look for these lists from each of our four practice areas for a compilation of Cutter's 20 most-intriguing articles of the year. Stay tuned for the next issue of this Advisor on 4 January.

http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/advisor/2011/ea111228.html

Top Intriguing Data Insight & Social BI Articles for 2011

27 Dec 2011 18:28:20 GMT

Coburn, Karen | E-Mail Advisors |

This week, we're taking a look back at five of the most-intriguing articles published in Cutter's Data Insight & Social BI practice over this past year. As you might imagine, it was no small task to cull the list and pare it down to just five articles. Look for these lists from each of our four practice areas for a compilation of Cutter's 20 most-intriguing articles of the year. Stay tuned for the next issue of this Advisor on 3 January.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia111227.html

Creating the Crowd Value: Taking the Next Step Beyond the Social Enterprise

23 Dec 2011 18:24:58 GMT

Coleman, David | Executive Summaries |

As a business leader you're probably just starting to contend with social networks in your business and often find them to be of questionable value. The "social enterprise" is being touted as the next big thing: the new way to do business and a "social" way to do business. But the next big thing in collaboration is crowds, not the social enterprise. Social is only a new method of connecting and discovering information; it does not enable and guide action or have an outcome or result. Business is about delivering results and for that you need a crowd. In this Executive Report, I define a crowd as a network of people that has business value and drives an outcome, task, or goal. Understanding how crowds can add value to your business and making sure your business does not get disintermediated (the removal of intermediaries in a supply chain) by a crowd-based business is the focus of this report.

http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/summaries/2011/07/index.html

A Contrarian View of Scalability

22 Dec 2011 18:22:27 GMT

Gat, Israel | E-Mail Advisors |

In just about every due diligence engagement I carry out, the VC and I spend a lot of time on scalabity of the software architecture. The company whose software architecture we are evaluating usually has a good track record of successfully scaling up on quite a few technology and business dimensions. If we extrapolate the historical growth rate a few years into the future, the company really looks attractive. The concern, however, is that the company might run into a hard barrier for growth. In particular, getting stuck on some rigid architectural constraints is always a concern.

http://www.cutter.com/content/project/fulltext/advisor/2011/apm111222.html

Devops: Exploring the Value of Microblogging

22 Dec 2011 18:18:11 GMT

Gafni, Ruti; Khononov, Vladik; Sivan, Yesha | Executive Updates |

This Executive Update examines the potential value of microblogging for software development teams. As a reference point, we introduce TwitTeam, a prototype tool similar to Twitter that has been enhanced with special capabilities. These include automatic tags, integration with the software development environment used by the organization, automatic publication and distribution of messages, and reports for control and supervision. The use of this enhanced microblogging infrastructure is in keeping with the spirit of CAMS (Culture, Automation, Measurement, and Sharing), the four pillars on which the devops idea was established.1 In order to successfully implement an effective and efficient connection between the development and operations departments, there is a need to embed communications in the corporate culture. Collaboration is enhanced by sharing ideas and information and using automated tools for management, monitoring, and control, which can help to measure and improve the processes.

http://www.cutter.com/content/project/fulltext/updates/2011/apmu1124.html

Reflections on Innovation, Part III: The Pleasure of Special Things -- Innovation and Learning

22 Dec 2011 18:15:02 GMT

Devin, Lee | E-Mail Advisors |

Our favorite philosopher, the mighty Aristotle, remarks in his book that people are hardwired to enjoy art; it's part of what makes them human. In an earlier Advisor, I pointed you toward a writer, Ellen Dissanayake, who has done a lifetime of research that supports Aristotle's claim (see "Reflections on Innovation, Part II: A Useful Idea -- Special Things," 10 November 2011). Aristotle says that there's a basic reason we enjoy art: "man delights in learning." And in spite of arguments over homework, we have all experienced this pleasure, in ourselves and in others.

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/advisor/2011/bit111222.html

Marketing IT Operations: Part II -- Executing the Marketing Plan

22 Dec 2011 18:11:29 GMT

Keyworth, Bill | Executive Updates |

In Part I of this two-part Executive Update series, we reviewed the critical urgency of IT "marketing" its value to the business end users with a vision that is crisp, clear, and compelling.1 Businesses now have competitive options previously unavailable to them. If IT's business contribution is to avoid being marginalized in the long term, then someone must take responsibility in the short term for ensuring that the customer (business units) intuitively grasps the intrinsic value of its vendor or service provider (IT).

http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/updates/2011/bitu1114.html

Inciting Infrastructure Insights

21 Dec 2011 18:07:24 GMT

Baker, Steven W. | E-Mail Advisors |

ood infrastructure is like having a good dinner party planner -- when everything goes well, few guests notice or appreciate the careful plans and up-front investments that went into the event. Yet if and when something does go wrong, things seem to come to an abrupt halt, often with embarrassing results.

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/advisor/2011/itj111221.html

Agile Analytics

21 Dec 2011 17:28:37 GMT

21 December 2011 |

Does your Agile BI delivery team routinely fail to complete the user stories it commits to during sprint planning? Then this Advisor is for you!

http://www.cutter.com/content-and-analysis/resource-centers/business-intelligence/agile-analytics.html

Unified Portfolio Management: The Basics

9 Jan 2012 17:12:05 GMT

Dooley, Brian J. | E-Mail Advisors | Enterprise portfolio management has been evolving for the past several years toward a unified vision that incorporates the diverse areas of portfolio concepts, bringing them together through standardized measures and techniques backed by consolidated software solutions. As with other areas in IT, the elimination of silos of information and activity yields benefits in efficiency, reduced overhead, and new synergies. For portfolios, unification also provides the capability for immediate visibility into key areas of enterprise activity. http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/advisor/2011/ea111221.html

Press Release: From Alignment to Cloud Adoption, Cutter Consultants Weigh In with 2012 Predictions

9 Jan 2012 17:26:16 GMT

Cutter Consortium | With 2011 drawing to a close, Cutter Consortium Senior Consultants are making their annual predictions for the year ahead. Here are some highlights. http://www.cutter.com/press/111221.html

Agile Analytics: Curing the Common Hangover

9 Jan 2012 17:26:19 GMT

Collier, Ken | E-Mail Advisors | This Advisor is a continuation of the "Scrum Ain't Enough" series (see "Agile Analytics: Community, Customers, and and Collaboration," 18 October 2011, and "Agile Analytics: Evolving Excellent Data Models and Architectures," 22 November 2011) I started in October. With this series I aim to convince you that Scrum, while useful, is not by itself sufficient to gain the greatest benefits of agile analytics. It must be augmented with other important behavioral and technical practices to produce the real horsepower that agile analytics has to offer. http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia111220.html

Securing the Client Side With Digital Tokens

9 Jan 2012 17:26:22 GMT

Finetti, Mario | Executive Updates | This Executive Update describes two security challenges in the design of Web applications and how they can be addressed: the client-side equipment and the network used by users to connect to the Web server. http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/updates/2011/eau1117.html

Reducing Software Release Pain by Releasing More Often

Morris, Kief | Journals | Our operations director put forward a counterintuitive suggestion -- rather than releasing less often, why not try releasing more often? Initially this seemed ridiculous. If our team wasn't capable of getting a release out in six months without running overschedule and overbudget, the idea of an even shorter release cycle seemed like a fantasy. But the operations director outlined his thinking, which was based on the concepts of Continuous Delivery. Over the rest of the year, we made some radical changes to the way we worked and saw some very practical benefits to delivering one or more software release(s) every month. http://www.cutter.com/index.html;jsessionid=9307A462AC1CF6F18202C8ECB59AA60D

Embedding Devops in the Enterprise

Debois, Patrick | Journals | With the term "devops" picking up steam, vendors are now (re)branding their tools as devops tools. Similar to unit-test tools that supported an agile workflow, the current discussion on deployment automation supports the devops ideas. Even though tools have their merits, after reading the August 2011 issue of Cutter IT Journal -- "Devops: A Software Revolution in the Making" -- it should be clear that tools are merely one aspect of devops and must be complemented with other aspects. The nice thing about tools is that they give you something concrete to discuss, as compared to the more intangible notion of "culture." Within large enterprises, tools are probably the easy part. Therefore, in this issue, we would like to focus on the harder aspects, like "people and processes," or as the Agile Manifesto puts it, "Individuals and interactions." http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/2011/12/index.html

Where Is IT Operations Within Devops?

Keyworth, Bill | Journals | It would seem that the devops discussion is mostly driven by development's incentives, and appropriately so, given developers' focus on building functionality for the business user. So it's no surprise that development is the originator of the whole devops lifecycle, but are there any dangers lurking in a one-sided focus on devops issues? http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/2011/12/itj1112b.html

Devops and the People Who Practice It: Winning Their Hearts and Minds

Mueller, Ernest | Journals | On the dev2ops blog (one of the primary locations for seminal devops thought), Alex Honor states his chosen methodology as "People over Process over Tools." This is of course a riff on the Agile Manifesto's value statement of "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools." I believe that devops is at its heart an extension of agile as applied to include operations, so this makes sense as an analogous principle. Why, then, is so much of the devops discussion about those lower-priority items and not the people? http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/2011/12/itj1112a.html

Disciplined Agile Delivery and Collaborative DevOps

Ambler, Scott W. | Journals | In this article, I present an overview of Collaborative Development and Operations ("Collaborative DevOps" for short) and Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD). More important, I will describe how DAD explicitly "bakes" devops strategies right into the process framework. http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/2011/12/itj1112c.html

Metrics-Driven Devops

Le-Quoc, Alexis | Journals | Devops as a cure for the dysfunctional gap between development and operations is here to stay. Complex applications built as an orchestration of highly distributed services, some internal, some outsourced, demand that development and operations find a common language in which to collaborate. Rather than discussing the toolkit du jour, I focus in this article on the necessity to anchor the devops conversation in shared and actionable metrics. To that end, I will examine the recent transformations in the way we build and run applications, discuss the resulting need for better metrics, and introduce a simple framework for evaluating a metrics-driven devops practice in the enterprise. http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/2011/12/itj1112d.html

Embedding Devops in the Enterprise

Debois, Patrick | With the term "devops" picking up steam, vendors are now (re)branding their tools as devops tools. Similar to unit-test tools that supported an agile workflow, the current discussion on deployment automation supports the devops ideas. Even though tools have their merits,1 after reading the August 2011 issue of Cutter IT Journal -- "Devops: A Software Revolution in the Making" -- it should be clear that tools are merely one aspect of devops and must be complemented with other aspects. The nice thing about tools is that they give you something concrete to discuss, as compared to the more intangible notion of "culture." Within large enterprises, tools are probably the easy part. Therefore, in this issue, we would like to focus on the harder aspects, like "people and processes," or as the Agile Manifesto puts it, "Individuals and interactions." http://www.cutter.com/content-and-analysis/journals-and-reports/cutter-it-journal/introduction.html

Enterprise Patterns: The Key to Effective EA Application as Transformation

Evernden, Roger | Executive Summaries | Enterprise architecture is more than IT. It is more than the embodiment of strategy. When it comes to understanding and managing significant enterprise change, enterprise architecture is a crucial discipline; thus, it is now vital to also regard EA as transformation. Business architecture and business capabilities help plan and decide strategic initiatives and priorities. As we'll explore in this Executive Report, embedding new or improved enterprise patterns delivers strategic outcomes by binding them to architectural change. http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/summaries/2011/08/index.html

Why Agile Fails at Scale: The Human Side

9 Jan 2012 17:26:43 GMT

Levison, Mark | E-Mail Advisors | My Cutter colleagues will give you excellent advice on some of the key elements to making Lean-Agile work at scale. Even with their advice, however, implementing any large-scale change is very difficult. This Advisor is the first of several in a series dealing with the human issues in making change at scale. The article focuses on the systematic-level challenges. My experience suggests that, in large part, problems stem from a failure to understand and address certain key human needs: http://www.cutter.com/content/project/fulltext/advisor/2011/apm111215.html

Secure Software: Part I -- Are We All On Board?

9 Jan 2012 17:26:29 GMT

Bennatan, E.M. | Executive Updates | Several months after 9/11, I received an article that had been submitted to a journal I was guest-editing. The author, a seasoned professional, included the following passage: "9/11 didn't have the long term, worldwide effect on the economy it might have had." She then proceeded to consider the effect of the worst terror attack on US soil along with the effects of foot and mouth disease in Britain. For the author, "long term" was eight months. http://www.cutter.com/content/project/fulltext/updates/2011/apmu1123.html

Enron Redux: Struggling Not to Forget

Charette, Robert N. | E-Mail Advisors | "The company is fundamentally sound. The balance sheet is strong. Our financial liquidity has never been stronger. And we again have record operating and financial results." http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/advisor/2011/bit111215.html

Enterprise BI Architecture Groups: The Key to Effective Agile Data Warehousing Programs

Hughes, Ralph | Consulting | Agile data warehousing delivers powerful BI applications in the shortest time frame possible, yet coordinating multiple fast-moving BI teams demands more than simple project management. Organizations need an enterprise business intelligence architecture (EBIA) function to coordinate high-level requirements, designs, and technologies in order to avoid ruinously expensive mistakes and redundancies. http://www.cutter.com/workshops/enterprise-bi-architecture-groups.html

Operational Excellence -- The CIO's Friend or Foe? Revisited

Fry, Malcolm | E-Mail Advisors | Since I wrote the Cutter IT Journal article "Operational Excellence, the CIO, and Cloud Computing" (Vol. 24, No. 7), there have been some serious outages at RIM, HSBC, and Barclays Bank that perhaps could have been handled with better IT service management, which is the key to operational excellence. http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/advisor/2011/itj111214.html

Time Management for IT Leaders

Cohen, Moshe | Executive Reports | As a manager and a leader it's imperative for you to develop good habits, systems, and strategies around time management, both for your own effectiveness and for the benefit of the people you lead. As we'll explore in this Executive Report, effective time management includes an awareness of how you spend your time as well as clarity regarding your priorities so that you can develop the best systems and strategies in executing your plan. You also need to manage interruptions, delegate and eliminate some tasks, and manage your own stress along the way. Using these tools, you can become more effective at managing your time and achieving your goals. http://www.cutter.com/content/alignment/fulltext/reports/2011/09/index.html

Corporate Use of Text Mining and Analysis: Part III -- Social Media Analysis Trends for BI and CRM

Hall, Curt | Executive Updates | In June/July 2011, Cutter Consortium conducted a survey asking 61 end-user organizations about the adoption and use of text mining and analysis. One set of questions examined corporate attitudes and trends pertaining to tracking and analyzing data from social media sites (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) to assist with PR, marketing, and other corporate initiatives. The goal was to identify trends that you can use to gauge your organization's efforts at monitoring and analyzing social media. http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/updates/2011/biau1124.html

10 Neuroscience Facts for Architects

Rosen, Mike | E-Mail Advisors | In my last Advisor (see "Take a SCARF to Architecture Reviews," 30 November 2011), I wrote about the SCARF model (status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness) and the importance of understanding it to achieve better results in architecture reviews. Based on the positive feedback I received, this week I'm going to discuss some of the other lessons from neuroscience that architects can incorporate into their interaction with others and themselves. http://www.cutter.com/content/architecture/fulltext/advisor/2011/ea111214.html

Shopycat and Muppet: Social Analytics Fueling the Next Generation of E-Commerce Applications

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | The latest news to set the social analytics world buzzing is retailing giant Walmart's "Shopycat" social shopping application for Facebook. In a nutshell, Shopycat uses social data to allow consumers who indicate that they like Walmart's Facebook page (currently 11+ million people) to recommend gifts for their Facebook friends from Walmart.com, Walmart stores, and select partners. By combining search with social media analysis, Shopycat generates customized gift recommendations for a user's Facebook friends ranging from music, books, and movies to games and electronics. To the user, Shopycat looks pretty much like any other Facebook page -- except it sports a cute cat logo. But it is what's going on behind the scenes -- in the form of social analytics, search, and semantic analysis -- that is important to us. http://www.cutter.com/content/bia/fulltext/advisor/2011/bia111213.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- What are the most important management initiatives taken to reduce IT costs?

Cutter Consortium | In his analysis of cost-cutting over the past several years, Bob Benson mused, "The 'easy pickings' for strategies such as consolidation and outsourcing have already been implemented (sometimes in several iterations). So how much more can be tolerated, and for how much longer?" http://www.cutter.com/press/111213.html

Moving (Slowly) Toward Openness

23 Jan 2012 17:29:20 GMT

Feller, Joseph | Journals | In 2007, I contributed to two CBR issues: one looking at Web 2.01 and the other at open innovation,2 both emerging buzzwords at the time. Last year, Cutter Consortium reran the Web 2.0 survey, yielding some very interesting results in terms of how attitudes and activities had changed over the years.3 Based on the success of that issue, this year we reran the open innovation survey, which we'll explore here. http://www.cutter.com/content/benchmark/fulltext/2011/07/cbr1107a.html