This edition of The Cutter Edge explores architecture tail risk with Parler as an example, how a community bank facilitated change and improved customer loyalty through digitalization, and more!

Confidential computing offers a hardware-based solution for protecting data in use, enabling organizations to confidently migrate their sensitive data to cloud platforms by allowing them to maintain complete control of the data and to meet or exceed government and industry regulations for protecting data in cloud environments. This Advisor examines some confidential computing products and applications that organizations have developed by leveraging the technology.

This Executive Report is an update to a 2015 edition that introduced a process for deriving enterprise architecture (EA) value metrics that align with the value drivers particular to an organization — those important to both the core business capabilities of the organization as well as its key stakeholders. It contains refinements to the process as well as additional information and perspectives from the field regarding the strategic use of value metrics that will, over time, allow the EA organization to be viewed as a strategic resource/partner and eventually earn a seat at the strategic planning table.

This Executive Report is an update to a 2015 edition that introduced a process for deriving enterprise architecture (EA) value metrics that align with the value drivers particular to an organization — those important to both the core business capabilities of the organization as well as its key stakeholders. It contains refinements to the process as well as additional information and perspectives from the field regarding the strategic use of value metrics that will, over time, allow the EA organization to be viewed as a strategic resource/partner and eventually earn a seat at the strategic planning table.

This Executive Summary accompanies an update to a 2015 Executive Report that introduced a process for deriving enterprise architecture (EA) value metrics that align with the value drivers particular to an organization — those important to both the core business capabilities of the organization as well as its key stakeholders. It contains refinements to the process as well as additional information and perspectives from the field regarding the strategic use of value metrics that will, over time, allow the EA organization to be viewed as a strategic resource/partner and eventually earn a seat at the strategic planning table.

This Executive Summary accompanies an update to a 2015 Executive Report that introduced a process for deriving enterprise architecture (EA) value metrics that align with the value drivers particular to an organization — those important to both the core business capabilities of the organization as well as its key stakeholders. It contains refinements to the process as well as additional information and perspectives from the field regarding the strategic use of value metrics that will, over time, allow the EA organization to be viewed as a strategic resource/partner and eventually earn a seat at the strategic planning table.

When you watch live video recordings of jazz legend Miles Davis, he walks among the assembled musicians on stage during performances, guiding the focus or center of gravity of the music that they collectively create; he performs leadership. As one’s belonging gets more distributed in networks, relations become key to achieving collective creativity. Leaders are challenged to develop within their teams the capability to act and respond as one entity greater than the sum of their parts — to sound with one voice.

The challenge of being open to innovation is in breaking out of familiar patterns. A lot of what we do is guided by patterns. These patterns help us in a stable context but get in the way in a dynamic or complex context and hinder innovation. The first step in dealing with suboptimal patterns is to be aware that they are hard to see.

This Advisor looks at “wave alignment,” a process used to accomplish the goals of Agile enterprise architecture (EA). Wave alignment is an addition to the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), although the principles can be applied to any Agile development organization of size.

We believe that at the heart of the ability to manage an ongoing and multilayered organizational transformation rests a sophisticated enterprise architecture capability with a specific charter to act as a transformation engine connecting strategic intent and execution excellence.

Confidential computing is a promising technology that seeks to solve one of the remaining impediments to greater cloud computing adoption and data security in general: how to protect data during processing. It also offers exciting possibilities for organizations to develop new collaborative applications.

Learn how your EA team can demonstrate how it positively impacts the measures that matter to the rest of your organization, proving that the value of EA to the enterprise will not only be understood but assured.

In a recent webinar, Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Barry M. O’Reilly introduced a new way to model systems in complex environments — residuality theory. In this Advisor, we share some questions asked at the end of the webinar about using residue as an alternative building block that enables software systems designers to consider the entire environment and its complex interdependencies without slowing down the design process, delivering benefits to both architecture and risk management practices.

In a recent webinar, Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Barry M. O’Reilly introduced a new way to model systems in complex environments — residuality theory. In this Advisor, we share some questions asked at the end of the webinar about using residue as an alternative building block that enables software systems designers to consider the entire environment and its complex interdependencies without slowing down the design process, delivering benefits to both architecture and risk management practices.

Do you need a forecast of your cloud spend? In this Advisor, I investigate five cloud spend forecast methods, with their pros and cons, to help you make a choice.

An enterprise architecture (EA) practice can be best viewed and analyzed in terms of three distinct EA-related processes: (1) strategic planning, (2) initiative delivery, and (3) tech­nology optimization. This Advisor takes a closer look at the first process: strategic planning. 

Risk is not just about what we do; it is also inherent in what we don’t do. Standing still while the world moves can be as dangerous as moving out of step with real events. Architecture, too, like everything else, has risk, and it is probabilistic in nature.

During the past year, the application of technology to well-bounded problems proved its strengths in the impressively rapid R&D that delivered multiple vaccines in a previously unheard of time frame. The challenging transition from R&D and production to distribution has, however, once again proven that project and change management issues are often more challenging than product development.

This week's Cutter Edge explores the "underdog" technology trends for 2021 that are not as popular but just as important as those "celebrity" trends being touted by every research organization; why organizational culture is a vital part of effectively implementing DevSecOps; how Low-Code No-Code solutions can act as a catalyst for innovation, and more!

This week's Cutter Edge explores the "underdog" technology trends for 2021 that are not as popular but just as important as those "celebrity" trends being touted by every research organization; why organizational culture is a vital part of effectively implementing DevSecOps; how Low-Code No-Code solutions can act as a catalyst for innovation, and more!

It is clear to all that COVID-19 has dealt a devastating blow to the economy. The aviation industry, in particular, faces a new reality. While aviation, pre-crisis, was thriving from the waves of globalization and travel commoditization, it was already facing threats such as environmental pressures, unbalanced profit sharing along the value chain, and multiple constraints on operational and business agility. Thus, the recovery phase will be extremely challenging, and we believe future growth will involve nothing less than reinvention of the industry, something that is true of many industries post-pandemic.

I recently received an email from a colleague seeking advice by way of suggestions for his focus for 2021. In this Advisor, I share a glimpse into our correspondence as well as my thoughts on aligning value stream priorities.

In this issue of Cutter Business Technology Journal (CBTJ), we explore how enabling successful digital transformations through data and digital architectures can facilitate the enablement of the value streams and customer journeys companies build to stay in touch with changing client expectations and user experiences, all while building out the organization’s digital backbone.

It is a given that architects need to find ways to address the “absolutes” around a solution — the things that we know to be true for sure — in an effective, efficient, and elegant manner. Yet solving problems that truly matter generally involves a high degree of uncertainty. Unfortunately, the more ambitious the objectives, the more unfamiliar the context, and the bigger the unknowns, the greater the likelihood that those uncertainties — when unaddressed — will impede the emergence of a good architecture.

Although more devices are connected, the Internet of Things (IoT) is still far from living up to its full promise in many industries. But this is set to change — as 5G enables many of the technical requirements that have previously been lacking. Now is the time for companies to set their IoT strategies, and we believe investing in private networks, in particular, is important for companies to consider as 5G becomes a reality.