Outsourcing suppliers, not surprisingly -- given their close-up view and their numerous bidding and contract experiences -- can be very insightful about clients. What they would tell clients if they could is a mix of observation and frequently helpful advice that ranges from the objective to the self-interested.

Outsourcing suppliers, not surprisingly -- given their close-up view and their numerous bidding and contract experiences -- can be very insightful about clients. What they would tell clients if they could is a mix of observation and frequently helpful advice that ranges from the objective to the self-interested.

Back in May, I discussed the development of industry-specific social media monitoring and analysis solutions, basically saying that such focused applications will make it easier and more p

Cloud computing is emerging as a defining platform coinciding with the rise of Big Data and the "always connected" mobile era. As the industry attempts to define both its promises and challenges, cloud computing is rapidly evolving.

Cloud computing is emerging as a defining platform coinciding with the rise of Big Data and the "always connected" mobile era.

Cutter Fellow Rob Austin and I are completing a book on innovation, The Soul of Design: The Surprising Power of Plot to Enhance Product and Service Experiences (forthcoming from Stanford University Press, 2012).

Cutter Fellow Rob Austin and I are completing a book on innovation, The Soul of Design: The Surprising Power of Plot to Enhance Product and Service Experiences (forthcoming from Stanford University Press, 2012).

Just as giving a teenager a credit card without a limit is a guaranteed disaster, letting an organization rack up technical debt without restriction will inevitably lead to an unmaintainable state. The simple reason for this is that without clear cost tradeoffs, the business cannot make the hard decision to give up value today for increased agility tomorrow.

While concepts borrowed from lean manufacturing have long been associated with agile software development methodologies, they have become more en vogue recently. One of these concepts, Kanban, has emerged of late as an overused buzzword.

Agile software development methodologies such as Scrum and XP have grown in popularity over the past 10 years. This growth has coincided with the injection of lean terminology and practices into the software development lexicon. Of course, software development organizations are not drawn to concepts like lean and agile for their own sake. Other underlying goals or deficiencies cause the organization to want to change. Primarily the motivation is the culmination of myriad issues that lead to the inability to deliver software on time or, more important, in a predictable manner.

In last week's Advisor, I began a discussion of SAP's new HANA architecture (see "The Coming Tsunami: In-Memory Databases, Part I," 16 June 2011).

Business architecture is gaining recognition as a game-changing discipline that enables businesses to address major challenges in new and unique ways. Simply put, business architecture allows a business to establish a common vocabulary, shared vision, and a degree of transparency that facilitates initiatives ranging from M&As to the reversal of customer attrition.

I've been saying for some time now that the advent of cloud-based predictive analytics offerings -- such as those from in2Clouds, Predixion Software, and Quiterian -- is an important development due to its potential to stir up the market for data mining and predictive analytics. A Cutter Consortium survey1 in February/March 2011 sheds some light on the use of these products.

Why the current call for more Kanban -- and better Kanban? Recently, I thought about this question while perusing the work of Professor C.K. Prahalad and his colleagues. 1 Fusing their viewpoints with my own research on five current macrotrends highlights the need for more Kanban -- and the potential for better Kanban -- which IT should explore. Let me first explain the macrotrends driving my argument.

As I explore in this Executive Update, one of the most interesting and challenging scenarios ahead for BI comes from the predicted "shift to the cloud."1 According to

It looks so easy: instead of going through all the pain of a Scrum adoption, you just take your current process, put it as columns on the wall, call it Kanban, and you’re agile!

"You can't manage a secret."

"You can't manage a secret."

SAP may have dished up a fastball high and inside, just under the chin. The target: its database competitors.

After spending time looking at the architecture for HANA, the new Intel-based BI appliance SAP has been working on, it is clear to me that this technology just might be very, very disruptive.

From the simplest to the most complex decisions, we like to believe that we are making them with an objective perspective and a willingness to take all the parameters and factors into account. The tragedy, however, is that we often don’t give enough credit to our wealth of information in making those decisions.

Actually, the real question is "How can the CIO not lose?" To better understand the recoiling from adopting IT governance, let's try to portray two -- and for the benefit of our little exercise -- radical images of the CIO and why IT governance is as alien a concept as Star Trek to both types.

Actually, the real question is "How can the CIO not lose?" To better understand the recoiling from adopting IT governance, let's try to portray two -- and for the benefit of our little exercise -- radical images of the CIO and why IT governance is as alien a concept as Star Trek to both types.

In other words, data is a collection of unorganized/uninterrupted facts. When we put those facts in the context of a schema or classification, then we have useful information. When we put that information into the context of experience, then we have knowledge. When we apply that knowledge to add value, then we have wisdom.

Your mom said it best. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. When price gets confused with total cost, it's possible to pay more overall while still buying a lower-priced commodity. An industry insider we spoke with put it succinctly:

A lot of clients say they want savings, but they don't. They want low rates, to push the risk to someone else -- and they want to make sure that you (the outsourcer) don't make money.

Your mom said it best. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. When price gets confused with total cost, it's possible to pay more overall while still buying a lower-priced commodity. An industry insider we spoke with put it succinctly:

A lot of clients say they want savings, but they don't. They want low rates, to push the risk to someone else -- and they want to make sure that you (the outsourcer) don't make money.