Natural resources are precious and in limited supply. Business environments are inherently complex and unpredictable. As we face these and other constraints on our ability to manage change, is it possible to produce sustainable enterprise architectures? In this Executive Update, we examine the relevance of sustainability for enterprise architecture.

At the age of 25 in 75 BC, Julius Caesar was abducted by Cilician pirates (from modern-day southeastern Turkey) while he was sailing for Greece for further study (college, anyone?).

Natural resources are precious and in limited supply. Business environments are inherently complex and unpredictable. As we face these and other constraints on our ability to manage change, is it possible to produce sustainable enterprise architectures? In this Executive Update, we examine the relevance of sustainability for enterprise architecture.

One of the major income opportunities I missed in my life was betting on a common budget question. If I had been given 100 Euros each time someone asked me, "How do I deal with budgeting in an agile environment?" I could probably fund a major contribution to the extinction of some terrible disease in the world.

I had an interesting discussion last week that started by talking about Big Data and ended in reflecting on the goals and skills of architecture.

The API Economy has become a hot topic across different industries. Experts commonly present it as a new and evolved way of doing business in today's world of the Internet, social networking, and mobile apps. However, most of the publicly available sources on this topic are informal (i.e., blog posts or Web articles) and are primarily aimed at nontechnical people.

Organizations are increasingly inundated by data: more sources of data, more types of data, and more detailed data. Yet while the volume, depth, and diversity of data continue to increase exponentially, the need to cut through the growing noise becomes more challenging and ever-more urgent. Organizations will need a new type of decision maker to address this need.

In October and November 2012, Cutter Consortium conducted a survey that asked 69 end-user organizations worldwide about their use of mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets, in order to provide their employees and partners with the ability to interact with business operations, ranging from basic email to CRM and BI while "on the go." Our goal was to determine the

In October and November 2012, Cutter Consortium conducted a survey that asked 69 end-user organizations worldwide about their use of mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets, in order to provide their employees and partners with the ability to interact with business operations, ranging from basic email to CRM and BI while "on the go." Our goal was to determine the

The API Economy has become a hot topic across different industries. Experts commonly present it as a new and evolved way of doing business in today's world of the Internet, social networking, and mobile apps. However, most of the publicly available sources on this topic are informal (i.e., blog posts or Web articles) and are primarily aimed at nontechnical people.

During the past decade we have seen a great deal of pressure placed on environmental issues. There have been more restrictive emission norms, a somewhat sense of being forced to use renewable sources of energy, the emergence of passive buildings, and even green IT.

Stakeholders new to agile are typically delighted early in the project as they see regular demonstrations of shippable software. They are often fascinated by aspects of the process such as the efficiency of daily stand-up meetings, colorful task boards, burndown charts, and gimmicks such as estimation with planning poker cards. The simplicity and commonsense approach to planning and execution quickly win them over.

In this on-demand webinar, Senior Consultant Scott Ambler explores strategies for effectively initiating and governing an outsourced IT delivery project in an agile manner.

For all independent service providers (ISVs) and IT service providers, developing cloud-based services is becoming an essential business model in order to be at par with competitors and to keep infrastructure and operational cost optimal. The challenge here is two-fold: (1) developing, deploying, and maintaining services using cloud-based models form one part of the challenge; and (2) choosing the right set of infrastructure and application components and achieving a defined level of nonfunctional aspects is the other part.

In this recorded, on-demand webinar, Senior Consultant Scott Ambler will explore strategies for effectively initiating and governing an outsourced IT delivery project in an agile manner.

In this webinar, Cutter Senior Consultant Lynn Winterboer will show you how to write user stories for a DW/BI project, and she will explain how these user stories contribute to several key Agile principles.

In Part I of this article ("Intelligent Video Analytics On the Rise, Part I"), I discussed the basics of video analytics and how the technology has evolved into comprehensive, intelligent video analysis (IVA) platforms, which are finding increasing use for automating the moni

In Part I of this article ("Intelligent Video Analytics On the Rise, Part I"), I discussed the basics of video analytics and how the technology has evolved into comprehensive, intelligent video analysis (IVA) platforms, which are finding increasing use for automating the moni

Mobile BI consists of the ability to access, view, and interact with corporate data on smartphones and tablets via mobile reports, interactive dashboards, visualizations, ad hoc reporting, and other functionality. This Executive Report examines the application of mobile BI with a focus on the use of tablets in the enterprise. It includes potential business benefits afforded by using tablets for mobile BI as well as the technology, products, applications, and issues associated with implementing mobile BI applications.

Mobile BI consists of the ability to access, view, and interact with corporate data on smartphones and tablets via mobile reports, interactive dashboards, visualizations, ad hoc reporting, and other fun

Organizations have been developing mobile BI applications for some time now. However, the "first wave" of mobile BI applications focused on the use of smartphones due to the proliferation of such devices; they were the first mobile devices to appear that really made mobile BI practical, and they were considerably less expensive than the early tablet offerings.

Organizations have been developing mobile BI applications for some time now. However, the "first wave" of mobile BI applications focused on the use of smartphones due to the proliferation of such devices; they were the first mobile devices to appear that really made mobile BI practical, and they were considerably less expensive than the early tablet offerings.

During the past decade we have seen a great deal of pressure placed on environmental issues. There have been more restrictive emission norms, a somewhat sense of being forced to use renewable sources of energy, the emergence of passive buildings, and even green IT. Although car and building industries present signs of real change in this area, IT industry endeavors raise some concerns on whether or not IT is truly "going green." And these are not about lack of true undertakings, but rather about two trends in applied IT covering the whole stack -- from hardware to applications.

At the time of this writing, I could find no existing laws or regulations that explicitly name Big Data within them. That could change sometime in the coming months as businesses and lawmakers realize that a variety of legal protections as well as associated information security controls are necessary to protect these digital gold mines.

A colleague and friend -- Olivier Gaudin, CEO and cofounder of Sonar -- has recently shared with me his "water leak" metaphor. The water leak metaphor asserts that resolving a technical debt situation is similar to the approach you need to take when you find water on the floor of your house.