The biggest trend to hit business intelligence (BI) since the days of executive information systems may not be an innovation in the technology itself but in the kinds of data the technology analyzes. The new BI foreshadows a time when, for example, a disease epidemic will be stopped because data can reveal to health officials the movements of infected people. Welcome to the world of "reality mining."

The biggest trend to hit business intelligence (BI) since the days of executive information systems may not be an innovation in the technology itself but in the kinds of data the technology analyzes. The new BI foreshadows a time when, for example, a disease epidemic will be stopped because data can reveal to health officials the movements of infected people. Welcome to the world of "reality mining."

The biggest trend to hit business intelligence (BI) since the days of executive information systems may not be an innovation in the technology itself but in the kinds of data the technology analyzes. The new BI foreshadows a time when, for example, a disease epidemic will be stopped because data can reveal to health officials the movements of infected people. Welcome to the world of "reality mining."

You can measure the effectiveness of your IT sourcing professionals by the prices and terms they get from their vendors, by the quality of the products and services they obtain, by their ability to develop relationships and integrate your company's objectives into their vendors' actions, by the time it takes them to close deals, by the wisdom of their choices as to what vendors to consider, and more.

You can measure the effectiveness of your IT sourcing professionals by the prices and terms they get from their vendors, by the quality of the products and services they obtain, by their ability to develop relationships and integrate your company's objectives into their vendors' actions, by the time it takes them to close deals, by the wisdom of their choices as to what vendors to consider, and more.

I recently conducted a workshop on IT cost containment at a national conference (note that I will give an overview and discussion at this year's Cutter Consortium Summit 2009, 4-6 May, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA). In the workshop, I present several critical principles. I separate them into the "supply" and "demand" principles.

Organizations continue to recalibrate their business models in order to cut costs in challenging economic circumstances. At the same time, cuts that are spread evenly across business units and departments may seem democratic but can be a very shortsighted strategy.

A lot has been said lately about service-oriented architecture (SOA). Still, I would like to take a look at another angle of SOA adoption in the light of the current economic turmoil.

SOA adoption has many layers: the basic enterprise service bus (ESB) infrastructure, business process management (BPM) workflow tools, other SOA-related tools, such as BAM (business activity monitoring) or business rules engine (BRE), and SOA governance -- both runtime and design time.

In last week's Advisor, I discussed findings showing that the adoption of BI search (i.e., tools and applications combining BI reporting and analysis with Internet search enginelike functionality) remains limited (see "Adoption of BI Search Remains Limited," 17 March 2009).

IT management literature provides various, more-or-less theoretical recipes for release management implementation in the scope of technology management processes in the company. Those frameworks usually focus on strict definitions of processes and hardly ever extend their scope to cover business issues related to release implementation or its practical aspects.

Application developers are achieving productivity gains by using a wide variety of sometimes eclectic tools, and virtualization and cloud computing are introducing more flexible options for deploying applications. The result: an application delivery environment that is more complex than ever for IT operations. At the same time, corporate resources are under the strain of aggressive cost-cutting mandates. This is forcing IT leadership to rethink today's application delivery models.

Application developers are achieving productivity gains by using a wide variety of sometimes eclectic tools, and virtualization and cloud computing are introducing more flexible options for deploying applications. The result: an application delivery environment that is more complex than ever for IT operations. At the same time, corporate resources are under the strain of aggressive cost-cutting mandates. This is forcing IT leadership to rethink today's application delivery models.

In Part I of this three-part Executive Update series on information security, 1 I discussed the reasons that business leaders would be wise to realize there is not a more effective information security and privacy defense than informed and aware employees.

In Part I of this three-part Executive Update series on information security, 1 I discussed the reasons that business leaders would be wise to realize there is not a more effective information security and privacy defense than informed and aware employees.

The IT organization must simply align itself with the strategic orientation of the business. It is inappropriate for IT to define a strategic orientation in an independent manner. IT should not simply react to the business strategy with the given strategic orientation. IT needs to actively participate in the organization's strategic planning process.

The IT organization must simply align itself with the strategic orientation of the business. It is inappropriate for IT to define a strategic orientation in an independent manner. IT should not simply react to the business strategy with the given strategic orientation. IT needs to actively participate in the organization's strategic planning process.

Craig Barrett, retiring chairman of Intel, opened the CeBIT trade fair show in Hannover, Germany, on 3 March, by stressing that "it is important for companies to continue to spend on R&D and upgrade plants so that they are positioned to take advantage of the upturn when it does come." Although Barrett was talking about Intel's core business -- chip development -- his comment

(This is the first in a series of Trends Advisors that will deal with the complex landscape of content, unstructured and structured, that confront organizations and individuals as we move from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 and beyond. Future Advisors will deal with the growing schism between developers and database experts.)

A company is a collection of distinct units that are supposed to collaborate well with each other in order to deliver a superior product or service. But do all the parts work together well? In times of transition and significant change, how firms do things can also change significantly, requiring the units within the firm to learn how to realign and collaborate in new ways.

A key objective of enterprise architecture (EA) is to deliver to business strategies and imperatives. This is also the basis for measuring the success of EA investment. While architectural models, specifications, standards, and so on are, of course, important; they will not, in and of themselves, enable this on their own. A foundational set of organizational capabilities must be in place that enables businesses to realize architecture-based solutions on a sustained basis.

Business intelligence optimization can result in considerable savings across the enterprise, as well as yield more efficient operation and stronger analytic capabilities. Current BI infrastructures have been strained by the increasing challenge of managing terabytes of data, which are doubling every year. At the same time, ad hoc queries and scheduled reports are growing increasingly complex.

This is the second Executive Update in a three-part series that explores the idea of "the Web as platform," one of the cornerstone concepts of Web 2.0 popularized by Tim O'Reilly, 1 among others.

This is the second Executive Update in a three-part series that explores the idea of "the Web as platform," one of the cornerstone concepts of Web 2.0 popularized by Tim O'Reilly, 1 among others.

BI search (i.e., tools and applications combining BI reporting and analysis with functionality like Internet search engines) has received a fair amount of attention over the past few years.

Much of the perceived successes of outsourcing are merely the initial honeymoon reports (i.e., the initial announcement of a deal). These are focused on celebrating a deal that has been signed and its anticipated benefits. Rarely do we get the followup report regarding whether any of the expected outcomes were actually achieved.