Businesses are faced with ever-increasing complexity, competition, and cost pressures. New products and "silver bullet" solutions are espoused by vendors, but more often than not, they fall short of expectations, and worse, add to the complexity of IT challenges. Yet, there is hope for getting a handle on this complexity and finally addressing the challenge of business/IT alignment. The approach is not based on a new product or technology but rather on an architectural foundation that brings the complexity of IT into focus from a business perspective.

In the past few years, the managerial area of demand management, portfolio management, and IT governance have become more and more popular. Organizations are adopting these processes to better manage their expenses, reduce cost, and formalize an often chaotic relationship between IT and the business.

Over the past few decades, the perception of IT has evolved dramatically from an internal unit that provides back-office support to a meaningful group that supports the organization's business processes and, finally, to a revenue-generating division. This "new era" IT is more involved in the business elements that allow the organization to grow, profit, and prosper.

This Executive Update is mainly targeted for business executives, architects, and program managers. It provides an overview about how the most commonly debated concern about reuse benefits can be planned, measured, and quantified. The Update establishes a vocabulary that can be used by various stakeholders to report/request the reuse benefits for any development initiative or software project. It also helps architects and designers plan up front for components that can be candidates for a particular reuse.

Despite the attention now given to innovation and innovation processes, and the importance in which they are viewed for the progress and survival of companies, the means by which good ideas are created continue to elude us.

Despite the attention now given to innovation and innovation processes, and the importance in which they are viewed for the progress and survival of companies, the means by which good ideas are created continue to elude us.

In his book The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development, Donald Reinertsen formulates the principle of quantified cost of delay as follows:

It's widely understood that most of the life of any product ever fielded is spent in production. Specifically, despite the time and costs of initial development and installation, most of the time invested in the life of a product is during the postinstallation phase, commonly called "operations and maintenance" (O&M).

The 1988 movie Rain Man won Dustin Hoffman an Oscar for his portrayal of a mentally challenged man who was incredibly gifted at recalling certain things; for example, recalling facts and computing complex numbers in his head.

The 1988 movie Rain Man won Dustin Hoffman an Oscar for his portrayal of a mentally challenged man who was incredibly gifted at recalling certain things; for example, recalling facts and computing complex numbers in his head.

Whether it is the collapse of a particular bank or the global financial crisis, weakness in critical thinking and inadequate strategic analysis in decision making appear to make significant negative contributions to corporate collapses. Business analysis (BA) offers an answer by sharpening the capabilities of critical thinking and analytical decision making.

In this on-demand webinar, Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Jim Love takes you through the practical issues involved in making CRM and Social CRM a success.

Two recently formed organizations have come to my attention lately that are (or should be) of interest to architects. The first is the Federation of Enterprise Architecture Professional Organizations (FEAPO), and the second is the Business Architecture Guild (BAG).

There's a lot to think about when contemplating the value and use of the mass of data that is undoubtedly accumulating every day within your firm. In this issue of CBR, we provide you with a solid footing for understanding and moving forward with your own deliberations. In a manner of speaking, your data is the "bird in your hand" that you may not even know you hold — or have not yet developed the skills to hold. Reading what our experts have to say on the subject will provide a mental framework for approaching the decisions necessary to take advantage of the wealth of information at your fingertips.

Humans have been collecting data for several thousand years. In 3000 BC, Mesopotamians recorded inventory details in cuneiform. Today's society transmits exabytes of data every day as billions of people and millions of organizations manage their affairs. As Table 1 illustrates, the dominant issue facing each type of economy has changed over time, and the collection and use of data has evolved to reflect these concerns. Let's examine various economies and the critical question each faces.

Technology around Big Data management has become of interest to most organizations due to the huge leap in the volume of data currently available and the expected geometric growth in volumes in the near future. One reason for the massive growth in data volumes comes from the reduction in size and cost of monitoring equipment, such as location monitoring of cell phones and RFID tag technology. People and things are constantly giving out information about their location and status.

In this issue of CBR, we set our sights on Big Data and how best to derive value from it. This is an increasingly critical topic (or should be!) for most organizations today, from the largest ones on down, as it becomes evermore evident that making full use of the institutional assets we have at our disposal will make sense on many levels. As Bill Gates said when he came to speak at Cornell University just a few years back, "Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven.

Like many folks, I've become fascinated watching IBM's Watson playing the TV quiz show Jeopardy! As a result, I've been examining everything I can about it. In a nutshell, Watson is a pretty amazing system, and it's got me thinking just how smart it is and about what its significance may be when it comes to BI and decision support and corporate computing in general.

Like many folks, I've become fascinated watching IBM's Watson playing the TV quiz show Jeopardy! As a result, I've been examining everything I can about it. In a nutshell, Watson is a pretty amazing system, and it's got me thinking just how smart it is and about what its significance may be when it comes to BI and decision support and corporate computing in general.

In this on-demand webinar, Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Jim Love takes you through the practical issues involved in making CRM and Social CRM a success.

In sailing, you can't head directly into the wind; you have to sail at an angle to it. To travel from point A to point B where the path is directly into the wind, we perform a series of directional changes, each one called a tack (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 -- What tack should your organization take?

In my last Advisor (" 'Click here to Learn This One Crazy Secret...'," 27 January 2011), I dropped the "V" word, "visualization," and it probably hit you like a sack of feathers unloaded from 100 feet in the air.

Chances are that your IT organization is structured in different departments, such as development, quality control, and operations. Although the names may vary across companies, the idea is to group people that execute similar work or have similar expertise.

In my previous Advisor ("When It's Snow Go: Defending Your Decisions, Part I," 10 February 2011), I told the sad tale of the massive traffic jam that a snowstorm caused in the Washington, DC, area in late January.

In my previous Advisor ("When It's Snow Go: Defending Your Decisions, Part I," 10 February 2011), I told the sad tale of the massive traffic jam that a snowstorm caused in the Washington, DC, area in late January.