Despite often-touted alternatives and real drawbacks, the enterprise data warehouse remains a very popular architecture for providing the data integration and management foundation for end-user organizations' BI environments. Moreover, my research indicates that use of enterprise data warehouses will continue to grow for the foreseeable future.

Making business decisions is never easy. It becomes progressively more complicated as those around us offer their "two cents' worth" on how we should act or what practices we should adopt. And the sheer number of those around us sometimes means that we receive input from a host of different parties, all with different perspectives.

About three years ago, the term "Web 2.0" entered into public consciousness, first propagating through the blogosphere, then appearing in the mainstream business and technology media, and more recently on the agenda of a global research community. When it appeared, some greeted the term as a welcome lifeline in the postdot-bomb era; others dismissed it as marketing hype. But one thing was clear: no one knew quite what it meant.

Corporate governance is the means by which accountability to stakeholders is ensured, yet organizations often fail at creating governance plans that align with the organizational context. They also fail at institutionalizing governance that spans levels and processes in the business, particularly in global, multicultural organizations. In this Executive Update, we introduce value-based adaptive models for business governance structure design, operational planning, and implementation for complex global organizations.

Corporate governance is the means by which accountability to stakeholders is ensured, yet organizations often fail at creating governance plans that align with the organizational context. They also fail at institutionalizing governance that spans levels and processes in the business, particularly in global, multicultural organizations. In this Executive Update, we introduce value-based adaptive models for business governance structure design, operational planning, and implementation for complex global organizations.

There has rightly been much focus of late on service-oriented architecture (SOA) governance and managing the risks of SOA.1 In this Executive Update, we explain how SOA -- properly done -- is in fact a powerful mechanism for managing both IT and business risks.

Corporate governance is the means by which accountability to stakeholders is ensured, yet organizations often fail at creating governance plans that align with the organizational context. They also fail at institutionalizing governance that spans levels and processes in the business, particularly in global, multicultural organizations. In this Executive Update, we introduce value-based adaptive models for business governance structure design, operational planning, and implementation for complex global organizations.

Corporate governance is the means by which accountability to stakeholders is ensured, yet organizations often fail at creating governance plans that align with the organizational context. They also fail at institutionalizing governance that spans levels and processes in the business, particularly in global, multicultural organizations. In this Executive Update, we introduce value-based adaptive models for business governance structure design, operational planning, and implementation for complex global organizations.

About three years ago, the term "Web 2.0" entered into public consciousness, first propagating through the blogosphere, then appearing in the mainstream business and technology media, and more recently on the agenda of a global research community. When it appeared, some greeted the term as a welcome lifeline in the postdot-bomb era; others dismissed it as marketing hype.

About three years ago, the term "Web 2.0" entered into public consciousness, first propagating through the blogosphere, then appearing in the mainstream business and technology media, and more recently on the agenda of a global research community. When it appeared, some greeted the term as a welcome lifeline in the postdot-bomb era; others dismissed it as marketing hype.

In October 2008, Cutter Consortium conducted a survey that asked 85 end-user organizations about their BI and data warehousing plans. The goal was to determine the degree to which companies are adopting various types of BI, data warehousing, and other analytic technologies and practices.

Times of crisis provide the opportunity to ask whether any innovation and agility is still possible. The answer is not simple. One way to treat a crisis is by cutting costs. This is not a bad solution, and it is often very justified, but one must be aware that it may create extra danger for the future.

Many software development organizations have a growing realization that they need a more formal process than "seat of the pants." They are aware that many development methods are overly bureaucratic and unhelpful, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises. They hear that agile processes may help, but how do they make the transition to a modern-day process? How do they determine how much agility the agile processes on offer today really possess? How do they determine how much agility they need, anyway?

If cloud computing wasn't the number-one IT buzzword in 2008, it had to be pretty close. In all likelihood, it will probably hold this place in 2009. But let's face it, cloud computing is still in its infancy. This becomes vividly apparent when you consider the almost complete lack of (open) standards pertaining to almost everything associated with using cloud architectures.

Organizational skepticism about the virtues of a new technology idea are likely to run, at least in part, in direct proportion to the economic climate in which the company finds itself. When times are tough, it is essential that managers follow the basic rules of winning buy-in from key constituencies for their IT investment ideas. Here's how.

First, remember what buy-in means. It is not acquiescence or compliance but enthusiastic, active support for an investment proposal from relevant employee populations in the organization.

Are you ready for a fresh perspective on agility, architecture, and SOA? Then check out Building the Agile Enterprise with SOA, BPM and MBM, a book by Fred Cummins (Morgan Kaufmann, 2008). Don't let the title scare you away.

This is the second in a series of Executive Updates examining the results of a recent Cutter Consortium survey on the subject of open source Java frameworks (OSJFs).

Our research indicates a gradual but certain increase in the use of real-time data warehousing techniques -- such as trickle-feeding data from production sources or using technologies that capture changed data -- by end-user organizations to enable real-time updating of their data warehouses.

In my experience, firms that take on agile transformation initiatives have two very different types of leaders involved in the process. The first is an executive sponsor who has the resources and patience to stay the course while others around that individual get used to what it takes to be agile.

Part II1 of this series of Executive Updates demonstrated the power of coupling agile methods with virtual appliance technology. Together, these two ingredients enable an operational model that allows software vendors to provide markets-of-one for select customers.

Business capabilities are fast emerging as a challenge to the traditional mindset of the business process. Both business architecture and software development methodologies are increasingly embracing business capabilities, which are heralded as an important breakthrough in business-IT alignment. How much truth is there in these claims?

Getting outsourcing wrong can seriously disable any business. On the upside, the accumulated evidence demonstrates that outsourcing, when properly planned, resourced, and accomplished, can deliver significant strategic advantage to firms and governments in every sector. To help you understand the successful outsourcing journey, this year we present a series of four Executive Reports by Dr. Sara Cullen that detail the outsourcing lifecycle.

Business capabilities are fast emerging as a challenge to the traditional mindset of the business process. Both business architecture and software development methodologies are increasingly embracing business capabilities, which are heralded as an important breakthrough in business-IT alignment.

Business capabilities are fast emerging as a challenge to the traditional mindset of the business process. Both business architecture and software development methodologies are increasingly embracing business capabilities, which are heralded as an important breakthrough in business-IT alignment. How much truth is there in these claims?