I was reading a book about systems design recently, in which I found the following offhand quote: "Software is not is not a science, therefore...." I was immediately taken aback, since I've been studying systems (software) design for a rather long time, and I have always taken the position that software design and development is (or ought to be) a science -- a place where there are postulates, theorems, rules, and methods that make it possible to consistently allow the building of correct, efficient software, given of course that you followed carefully those postulates, theorems, and so on. Moreover, I believe strongly that software as a science yields better software, not just once in a while, but all the time.

On the surface, business process in any of its various guises appears to be a simple, even natural, activity, but it is not. Business process change -- significant business process change -- in the real world is a very difficult thing to pull off. This is because business processes occur in one organizational dimension and "management" occurs in another.

The rapid growth of the software as a service (SaaS) market, along with the closely related cloud computing industry, is attracting a proliferation of players that is creating a buyer's market for customers and raising concerns about an inevitable industry shakeout. This Executive Update examines the rapidly evolving SaaS competitive landscape and discusses the long-term implications of these trends. This is the third in a series of Updates based on Cutter's most recent SaaS survey.

There are five things that everyone better do over the next 12-18 months: 1) rethink and (re-) develop your overall business technology strategies; 2) redesign and redeploy your computing and communications architectures; 3) rethink and re-implement your technology delivery strategies; 4) re-organize your technology organizations with special attention to business technology skills gaps; 5) identify and implement meaningful and measurable technology performance metrics. These five areas define the decisions that must be made as the business technology field fundamentally changes from the world we understood just five years ago. Is there some urgency here? Absolutely, because the nature of the changes we've been tracking is so profound that a misstep here could cost a great deal of time, effort and money.