Outsourcing has become an integral part of nearly every organization. Whether it is a small business handing over its bookkeeping to a local accountant or the US military outsourcing its security to private companies, it's happening every day around the globe. One area that many organizations largely outsource is IT, an issue that is hardly controversial today. Except for one component -- information security outsourcing (ISO).

Outsourcing has become an integral part of nearly every organization. Whether it is a small business handing over its bookkeeping to a local accountant or the US military outsourcing its security to private companies, it's happening every day around the globe. One area that many organizations largely outsource is IT, an issue that is hardly controversial today. Except for one component -- information security outsourcing (ISO).

Outsourcing has become an integral part of nearly every organization. Whether it is a small business handing over its bookkeeping to a local accountant or the US military outsourcing its security to private companies, it's happening every day around the globe. One area that many organizations largely outsource is IT, an issue that is hardly controversial today. Except for one component -- information security outsourcing (ISO).

There are good reasons to step back and assess where we are as an organization in our adoption of agile (or any other process model). Executives should concern themselves with these questions:

We've spent a lot of money and political capital on agile. Where are we in terms of our capability? Are we still at a beginner level organizationally, or are we fairly mature now?

What percentage of our teams are at an advanced level of practice?

Back in March, I discussed some of the important developments involving the incorporation of social computing techniques (i.e., blogs, wikis, social networks) with enterprise software (see "Facebook for the Enterprise: The New Business

Back in March, I discussed some of the important developments involving the incorporation of social computing techniques (i.e., blogs, wikis, social networks) with enterprise software (see "Facebook for the Enterprise: The New Business

And the winning numbers are:

16 ... 8 ...

And the winning numbers are:

16 ... 8 ...

Enterprise architecture continues to grow as a job title, but what does it mean to make the transition from just a title to an actual profession?

Last month (see "Corporate Use of Text Analysis and Mining Grows," 25 May 2010), I wrote that organizations are showing more interest in using text analysis and mining tools to support their BI efforts.

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.

-- Will Rogers

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.

-- Will Rogers

Much has been argued about the value of architecture, but actual proof is generally lacking. As for solution architecture, recent quantitative research has confirmed that this approach not only helps reduce throughput time and budget for IT projects but also leads to a reduction of variance in time and budget, indicating that bringing solution architecture to a project can be viewed as a quality improvement process in line with Six Sigma thinking.

In Coaching Agile Teams, Lyssa Adkins discusses the difference between cooperation and collaboration. I'd like to add another interaction dimension to these two: compliance.

Fifteen years ago, I wrote an article for IEEE Software called "Are We Developers Liars or Just Fools?" (July 1995).

Fifteen years ago, I wrote an article for IEEE Software called "Are We Developers Liars or Just Fools?" (July 1995).

Fifteen years ago, I wrote an article for IEEE Software called "Are We Developers Liars or Just Fools?" (July 1995).

Vendor management is still the rage. We talked about it a lot when outsourcing trends became clear -- when more and more companies were outsourcing a greater amount of their infrastructure and applications to partners down the street and around the world. The major outsourcing deals of the 20th century were inked in the 1990s.

Vendor management is still the rage. We talked about it a lot when outsourcing trends became clear -- when more and more companies were outsourcing a greater amount of their infrastructure and applications to partners down the street and around the world. The major outsourcing deals of the 20th century were inked in the 1990s.

In the earlier Advisor in this series ("A Sustainability Strategy That BITES — Creating an Actionable Agenda: Part I," 2 June 2010), I outlined the need for a business, IT, and environmental sustainability (BITES) strategy and discussed what green IT means and how IT (besides itself being green) as an effective tool or means could help in many different ways to enhance enterprise environmental sustainability.

"In the absence of a long-range plan, short demands will always drive out long-term needs."

Outsourcing is closely tied to an IT organization's staffing plans. Overall, our survey of IT managers suggests that outsourcing is up. In fact, the trend for outsourcing appears to have really caught on. The number of respondents who outsource work now or plan to outsource jumped to 71% in this year's survey. That's up by about 13% from the 2009 survey.

Outsourcing is closely tied to an IT organization's staffing plans. Overall, our survey of IT managers suggests that outsourcing is up. In fact, the trend for outsourcing appears to have really caught on. The number of respondents who outsource work now or plan to outsource jumped to 71% in this year's survey. That's up by about 13% from the 2009 survey.

There have been a number of recent developments pertaining to the use of MapReduce1 and its open source equivalent, Hadoop.2 These developments are important because they should help spur greater use of MapReduce and Hadoop by traditional enterprises looking to take advantage of their big data assets by implementing applications that can rapidly process vast amounts of dat

IS strategy is the organizational perspective on the investment, deployment, use, and management of information systems.1 Even though each individual business and IS executive may have his or her own particular view of IS, organizational IS strategy reflects the collective view shared across the upper echelon of the organization.2 An IS strategy determines if, when, how, and the extent to which a company will innovate with IS.3 Research by Daniel Chen et al.