Discussions of mobile computing are generally focused on smartphones and consumer capabilities. In the US, smartphones had about 17% market penetration at the end of 2009, but this is growing at about 35% year on year.1 Most businesses have yet to take advantage of these capabilities internally. Having a mobile strategy is a critical component of an organization's technology plan.

Discussions of mobile computing are generally focused on smartphones and consumer capabilities. In the US, smartphones had about 17% market penetration at the end of 2009, but this is growing at about 35% year on year.1 Most businesses have yet to take advantage of these capabilities internally. Having a mobile strategy is a critical component of an organization's technology plan.

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. What is it about visualization that makes it such an important topic that we choose to take up your time with it ... again?

The subject of this Executive Update may seem odd. I am borrowing an analogy that one of my banking clients uses to describe the requirements for transforming the company's core banking systems. They are the "cardiovascular" IT system for banks -- providing solutions that drive revenue-generating operations, such as account management, deposits, loans, and credit cards. The current core systems are largely product-oriented applications that are 20-plus years old and mainframe-based.

Unstructured data, particularly text, makes up at least 80% of all corporate data and an incalculable amount of potentially relevant data on the Web. As we explore in this Executive Report by Brian J. Dooley, developing the capability to mine these information stores and apply the data to business processes is an imperative.

Unstructured data accounts for some 80% of the data within a corporation and countless amounts of relevant additional information on the Web. This includes data that cannot fit into standard corporate databases and data warehouses and is therefore immune to the BI processing by which companies gain insight into their business and the markets in which they operate.

It's all over but the shouting: social media is now a major driver of decisions that cross-cut corporate awareness, brands, service, product development, and, ultimately, purpose. In a sense, it's amazing it took so long. After all, Facebook has almost 600 million friends and Twitter's approaching 200 million. YouTube has 450 million users.

It's all over but the shouting: social media is now a major driver of decisions that cross-cut corporate awareness, brands, service, product development, and, ultimately, purpose. In a sense, it's amazing it took so long. After all, Facebook has almost 600 million friends and Twitter's approaching 200 million. YouTube has 450 million users.

Your Web site is a mess. The social media initiative that you so desperately wanted to get going never got off the ground. You're not tweeting. You're not on Facebook, and you're not seen as a thought leader in the IT community. These were all priorities once, but now they've all fallen by the wayside. Why? Because other priorities came to the fore.

For every vendor presentation claiming that cloud computing is an unprecedented revolution, there is an analyst paper denouncing the hyperbole. Every new example of IT goes through this phase, just as surely as a child goes through the "terrible twos" -- and at about the same age.

In today's ever-changing business environment, IT service providers need to implement an effective strategy and business model to tackle the problem of cannibalization within their portfolio of business software. The cloud supply chain illustrates the link between the provisions of business software through the cloud. Game-changing technology, such as cloud computing and resulting portfolio changes within the IT industry, determines daily life within business.

Some of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of companies wanting to use consumer-oriented social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for marketing and other purposes have to do with compliance and worries about brand management. This is especially true for financial services and insurance companies, which face considerable scrutiny from government regulatory agencies.

"Are we productive enough?" one of my client's teams recently asked as the theme of a two-day retrospective. The team had done one year of agile transition and had made significant progress in its collaboration and transparency.

This week did not start out well for either J.C. Penney or Google. The reason was an article on the front page of the Sunday business section of the New York Times by David Segal, "The Dirty Little Secrets of Search" (12 February 2011).

This week did not start out well for either J.C. Penney or Google. The reason was an article on the front page of the Sunday business section of the New York Times by David Segal, "The Dirty Little Secrets of Search" (12 February 2011).

Government is the largest institution on the face of the Earth. Citizens worldwide now expect more from their governments than ever before. Perennially, we struggle in the pursuit of government efficiency and cost-effectiveness. We find new levels of government accountability, with renewed mandates for government transparency.

Government is often perceived -- by its most overt critics or ambivalent constituents -- as unnecessarily bureaucratic, fraught with inefficiency, and less than agile in its ability to react and respond to the needs of its citizens and the industries it serves. Examples abound and are highly visible across all levels of government. They include, but are not limited to, the following archetypes:

I experienced an interesting challenge last week. For 25 years I have taught in a master of information management program at a European university. This program targets IS and business professionals; the median age is probably about 35 years. In short, these are seasoned managers from all kinds of businesses and government organizations.

While IT people have a propensity to make projects out of anything, not perceiving features of an application environment in more detail, and in enough implementation detail, is a flaw in the planning process -- a rookie mistake. In many ways, technologists are obsessed with automating certain features of an application environment, but when it comes to deployment, all brainstorming seems to cease. This isn't a very enterprise-wide or Gestalt view of the world, where the "essence or shape of an entity's complete form" is understood by the application designers.

Last month I said that, according to our research, more than half of organizations currently view mobile BI as a strategic priority for their organizations to have, while others foresee mobile BI becoming a strategic imperative within approximately the next 6-12 months (see "Targeting

In recent years, demand for new BI technologies has significantly increased amid an expanding desire by business to receive all required information in a timely way without the risk of losing value.

This is the final Executive Update in a series discussing the results from a recent Cutter survey on the adoption of open source software tools and techniques by organizational software development teams.

In today's ever-changing business environment, IT service providers need to implement an effective strategy and business model to tackle the problem of cannibalization within their portfolio of business software. The cloud supply chain illustrates the link between the provisions of business software through the cloud. Game-changing technology, such as cloud computing and resulting portfolio changes within the IT industry, determines daily life within business.

In this issue of CBR, we set out to examine the ways in which strategic IT planning influences the value that IT delivers to the organization, as well as the degree to which the planning process is perceived to affect organizational outcomes and results. With this focus, we can both benchmark the planning process itself and, at the same time, tackle the question of its relationship to IT value. Given the current and ongoing economic struggles facing businesses both large and small around the world, this seemed like an excellent time to discuss the value of strategic IT planning.